As poker has boomed, so have the number of sites trying to make money off the boom. From time to time, this column will take a look at some of them.
CardPlayer Magazine is available free in bricks and mortar casinos. You can also subscribe for a price. Published since 1987, CardPlayer used to be the only magazine of note. As competition has arisen from new magazines like All-In, Cardplayer has improved to continue among the top of the heap.
CardPlayer's website is the online equivalent of a destination resort. My first, and often only, stop there, is the poker odds calculator (for hold 'em and omaha only). It is not particularly comforting to know that I was an 88.2% favorite to win a hand that I just lost, but at least I can assess whether my all-in bet was the right move. There is also access to magazine articles, a poker forum, free playing opportunities and newly added poker tracker software. Poker tracker software lets you analyze your own hand play and, often, other players' play. A future column will compare a number of the ubiquitous tracking sites.
Two Plus Two publishes a number of top poker instruction books. I own a number of them. As I get better, I read a little further into each book. Once I discovered that approximately 20 pages were missing from my copy. Since the pages were in the 200s, I'd had the book for a year before I discovered it. Two Plus Two was very helpful and I had a new book in a week.
The highlight of the Two Plus Two website are the forums, moderated by their authors, David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth, and Ray Zee. The wide variety of topics include just about every poker game played. particularly useful if you are starting out online is the discussion of "microlimit" games. Play differs in part depending on the stakes of a game and if you learn a theory of poker that doesn't match the game you are playing, it will actually hinder you.
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