In this article You are going to discover how to get free texas hold em poker lessons from online poker schools. Not only will You learn how to play poker for free, but You also get free poker money to start playing with at real money tables. No deposit is required to get a free poker bonus and lessons.

Online Poker is booming for quite a while now and more and more people want to learn how to play poker. A while ago the only way to get a decent poker education was to read a good poker book like the ones from Doyle Brunson or Harrington for example. But the online poker boom has also brought up a new way of learning the game of poker. Online Texas HoldEm Poker Schools.

These free poker schools over a wide variety of material to help You learn how to play poker online. You usually have the choice of watching videos or reading poker strategy articles and discussing specific hands or strategies in a forum with other members. The bigger poker schools even offer free live coaching sessions with experienced online poker players.

Here’s an other great spect of the concept behind these poker schools. You join the poker school for free and get instant access to the basic lessons. After You have mastered the basics You are given the opportunity to take a quiz, that will verify Your newly gained poker knowledge. Passing the quiz will give You the chance to get a no deposit poker bonus from the poker school at one of their partner poker rooms.

You can then use the free poker bonus code and lessons to start building a poker bankroll for free. Apply what You have learned in the poker school and grow Your free poker money. If You keep playing and reach a certain amount of frequent player points the poker school will give You additional free poker money.

The good thing about online poker schools compared to poker books or DVDs is that everyone will find the right medium to learn with. If You are not feeling comfortable with reading articles about poker, then switch to the video section and learn by watching the strategy videos You are offered. The live coaching and the forum gives You the chance to get in touch with other players, discuss Your poker strategy and learn a lot from mistakes others have already made for You.

Since the poker education You get is free and supplies You with a starting capital without investing own money You can start playing online poker without any financial risk. This way typical beginner’s mistakes ( and we all make them when we start playing poker ) will not cost You any of Your own money. This takes a lot of pressure from You and helps You to develop Your best game.

By: Thomas Kraemer

Poker Books:  Whether your looking for a beginners manual or a book on improving strategy, there are numerous books available online or at the book store that any poker lover would enjoy reading. Some top picks from various sites include:

- Internet Texas Hold-Em: Winning Strategies from an Internet Pro by Matthew  Hilger  

- Harrington on Hold’em Volume I: Strategic Play

- Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book by Phil Gordon

- The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky  

- Winning Low-Limit Hold-Em (2nd Edition) by Lee Jones

- Hold-Em Poker for Advanced Players (Advance Player) by David Sklansky 

- Zen and the Art of Poker: Timeless Secrets to Transform Your Game by Larry Phillips

Poker Chips: A wide variety of poker chips are available, at an equally wide variety of costs. If you’re buying for a true Poker lover, Ceramic or Clay poker chips may be a good choice. Ceramic Poker Chips are casino grade chips. The graphics on these chips are actually part of the chip. Clay poker chips are rapidly becoming the most popular choice for chips. They have distinct feel and sound to them which is softer with a more solid sound. Also, they are not slippery like composite chips, which makes them stack better. Paulson poker chips have a distinct look and feel to them. These chips are true casino grade chips that are used by many casinos around the world, including well known Las Vegas casinos. You may also choose to customize your own chips with hot stamping, labels or full color chip graphics of your home casino logo.

Poker Chip Cases and/or Trays: There are a multitude of chip cases and trays on the market, from inexpensive plastic trays to outrageously expensive sets. Cases are typically made of Acrylic, vinyl, aluminum, leather or wood.  Acrylic or aluminum attaché cases are an inexpensive option, however If your poker player has clay chips or more expensive collectible chips, you may want to purchase a better quality case. You can also choose from different capacity chip cases, with the ability to store anywhere from 100 to 1000 chips. There are a variety of wooden poker chip case styles you can pick from, including custom cases made to your specifications. Poker cases may include chip trays or racks that can be used to protect and store your poker chips, or can be removed to stack player’s chips at the poker table. 

A Poker Table: If your poker player is serious about their game, they may enjoy their own poker table to add to their home gaming experience. The options range from $30 portable table tops that just sit on top of existing tables (such as your dining room table) to dedicated Poker tables costing hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Dealer Button / Card Protectors: Having a Dealer Button is essential for playing Texas Hold-Em Poker. This is an inexpensive way to enhance your games. A dealer button is used in Texas Hold-Em to designate the theoretical dealer for a hand of poker. Dealer buttons usually look like a big poker chip (or hockey puck) and have the word ‘Dealer’ written, stamped, etched, or engraved on one or both sides. They can be quite elaborate and cost up to $100. A plastic dealer button may be purchased for a few dollars and many poker chip sets come with a button included. You can also buy “big blind” and “small blind” buttons.

A card protector (card guard) is usually a large or unique poker chip or paraphernalia that is placed on top of your hole cards to “protect” them from being collected by the dealer or another player. Poker Card protectors make a unique gift and custom protectors make them one-of-a-kind.

Card Shuffler: An automatic card shuffler shuffles one or two full decks of cards into one. Automatic card shufflers are inexpensive ($10 to $25, generally), making this another great gift for budget-conscious shoppers.

Poker Video Games: Looking to play a little poker on your Playstation, Xbox or Nintendo? Check out these poker video games that are fun to play and make great gifts for poker fans. Some favorite picks are: World Championship Poker 2; World Poker Tour 2K6; World Series of Poker; or Stacked with Daniel Negreanu.

Subscription to a Poker Magazine

Poker Glasses & Dishes

Poker Wearables: Jewelry & Clothes for Her | Clothes & accessories for Him

By: Sven Asnien

The Texas Holdem poker phenomenon has taken the country by storm. There are reportedly over 100 million active poker players worldwide. Poker’s popularity is largely the byproduct of technology and several recent trends: 1) online gaming, where players engage and socialize in real-time over the Internet, and 2) the broad publicity created by high profile TV shows like the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and World Poker Tour (WPT).

With all the poker-mania, there’s a modern day “gold rush” underway today. Analyst estimates are a bit sketchy, but some estimate that people will spend up to $4.5 billion U.S. in 2005 on poker-related items of every kind, including:

* Online poker room play

* Poker tournaments

* Online poker room financial brokers (e.g., Firepay, NetTeller, Citadel and others)

* Casino poker rooms

* Game units for your TV

* Poker chip sets and dealer buttons (you can even get “collector” edition dealer buttons signed by the pros – got some as Christmas presents this year!)

* Poker tables and instructions for how to build poker tables

* Poker software (poker odds calculators, poker games, home tournament organizers, tournament director kits)

* Texas holdem poker rule and starting hand cards

* Poker schools and training courses

* Poker books and strategy e-books

* Poker hats, shirts and clothing items

* Local poker clubs

* Free Texas Holdem poker stuff of every kind imaginable.

To give you an idea of how many people are now playing with real-money online, have a look at PokerPulse.com. PokerPulse keeps tabs on the top online poker rooms and tracks how many real-money poker games are running at any point in time. Some estimates based upon these statistics suggest that online poker room companies are turning over in excess of $110 million U.S. every 24 hours, with hundreds of thousands of online players active any given evening.

So, with the worldwide inertia that poker has today, how far can it go? Will it be like the CB Radio – a brief flash in the pan and then suddenly – poof! Will it be just another fad and memory, with occasional reminders like Smokey and the Bandit? Hard to say for sure, but with the momentum, advertising and so many young people, including many teenagers and children playing across the Internet, it could be that the poker big bang has occured and its expansion has only really begun…

As with many new, controversial phenomenon such as poker, there’s the social morality aspect and question: Is playing poker gambling? Is it really just a game of skill? The question of whether online poker rooms are just as much about gambling as traditional casino games and online bookie operations is certainly one that is shaping some industries, and creating some others. Before we look for the answers to those questions, let’s explore what the actions of certain parties might lead us to believe.

For example, the traditional credit card processors (MC, VISA, AMEX, PayPal, and others) decided to discontinue use of their credit card services to fund player’s online poker accounts. Today, there’s a whole cottage industry that has sprung up to fill the enormous demand for transferring funds between bank accounts and online poker room accounts, processing untold millions of dollars each day.

Try advertising a poker-related item through Google’s AdWords or the Yahoo/MSN equivalent (Overture) and you’ll quickly find they have a category known as “Gambling URL” that’ll come into play. Any website that could be related to online poker rooms is considered a “gambling” site and advertising services are thereby refused. So, what happened as a result? Well, aside from these companies losing advertising revenues, it’s forced the poker industry into fierce competition for the poker-related search “namespaces”. Try searching for something using keywords like “Texas Holdem poker” and see what you find.

It’s amazing at how clogged up the search engine namespace has become, with every search engine optimization (SEO) technique and trick known to man being used by poker website owners in an attempt to gain visibility, page ranking and routing of more visitor traffic to their websites.

In my opinion, the answer to the question “Is playing poker gambling?” is – it depends. It depends on the player’s skill level. If you’re a highly-skilled player, then IMHO it’s not gambling – it’s playing a sophisticated game like chess, where you not only must defeat the opponents but you must also use strategy and play the odds in order to win.

You beat the odds by playing only certain starting hands from given positions at the table, adjusting your play based upon the game situation, understanding other players’ styles, and by developing a strategy for winning, throwing your weight (chip stack) around at the right times, and by sitting out at other times. No, it’s far from gambling for many of us. However, for those who don’t possess the requisite skills, it is gambling more often than it’s not, since skill is much less of a factor for such players. Since the basic rules are deceptively simple, people often have no idea why they’re beaten.

What makes it very different from traditional casino gambling games, though, is that you’re not playing against the house. The online poker room takes a “rake”, a percentage of the money that’s in play (e.g., 10% or so), which is how the online poker room generates revenues. It doesn’t really matter who wins or loses, since the poker operator always gets paid for hosting the game.

I’ll cover popular online poker rooms in a future article in more detail, but suffice it to say, there’s gold in them there hills and the claims have been staked by the market leaders, who are raking in fortunes providing their sophisticated online service businesses to millions of eager players worldwide.

Since these business aren’t allowed to operate within U.S. borders, they’re virtually unregulated (at least by U.S. standards) and new ones continue to pop up every month. Now I don’t want to make it sound like everyone who plays online is playing with real money – quite the contrary. There’s an enormous number of players who just use “play money” and have a real blast playing and socializing via the use of instant messaging and interactions through the online poker room site.

So, is the poker phenomenon a trend or just another fad that’s destined to take it’s place in our video library, beside Smokey and the Bandit and that CB radio wave that crested in the 1970’s? Hard to say for sure. One thing is for certain. A lot of people are having fun playing in online poker rooms, at traditional casinos and in their own home games – while an army of others are supplying that demand, and making a boatload of money in the process.

Until next time – Good Luck!

Rick

By: Rick Braddy