Poker mirrors life and therefore should make an easy transition to the silver screen. But, for some unknown reason (probably terrible writing and lack of innovation) the poker community seem to be stuck with Rounders as their only source of a half-decent poker movie.

All-In: The Poker Movie, released by 4th Row films and directed by Douglas Tirola, is the latest attempt to create the perfect poker movie. Despite the awful title the early reviews have been positive. The movie has been called informative and enlightening as it strives to find the answers to why poker is so popular the world over?

The movie is a 109-minute feast for die-hard poker fans. It searches the annals of poker history and brings the information to you in a clear, concise and interesting way. Although it is true that poker has a long and illustrious past, the age of the Internet, must be ranked of one of it’s most prominent changes in the game and All-In focuses a lot of attention on this era.

The innovative leaps such as the hole camera coverage for the World Poker Tour (WPT), television exposure of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and of course the Moneymaker effect are all examined, prodded and probed in Tirola’s movie.

All-In: The Poker Movie, covers hot potatoes such as Black Friday and contains some amazingly frank interviews with poker and sport personalities including Chris Moneymaker and Frank Deford.

Will All-In: The Poker Movie be a hit or miss? The only way we will tell is to go out and watch it, let it digest and then head to the 2+2 forums for the critique.

To see just how closely All-in matches the thrill of real tournaments it would be worth checking out the  Betfair WSOP 2012 poker tournaments.

A paired flop is any flop that contains a pair and a random third card. When a player check-calls a continuation bet on a paired flop then their range is heavily weighted to pocket pairs. The power of position will play a principle role in their decision. Think about it for a second. What types of hands would you check-call with when playing out of position yourself?

There are some competent players who may check-call with ace high, but the presence of the paired board removes the likelihood of potential draws and people making a Betfair download should remember this. The lack of draws means that your opponents’ check-call line is quite easy to pin down to pocket pairs. If your opponent was bluffing then he would more than likely check-raise. If you do come across the check- raise on a paired board you need to realise that he is representing a very polarised range of hands. The player simply has it or he doesn’t, so understanding your opponent is vitally important and fans of Betfair need to bear this in mind.

Understanding this information means you need to be prepared to double barrel a very high percentage of the time. In fact, unless you have a specific read, it will make sense to double barrel 100% of the time. If you find yourself facing a raise on the turn then you can safely fold, as this will hardly ever be a bluff.

Some paired boards are more connected than others. Example 665 is more connected than KK4. In these instances your opponent’s raises are going to be heavily weighted towards some sort of draw

Irrespective of what level of poker you are playing there will always remain one constant – players don’t like to go out on the bubble. It doesn’t matter if the min-cash is $4 or $400, people just want that cash after playing for so long. It is no secret that the very best of players take advantage of this fact by increasing their activity, but is there a method behind their increased madness?

One great way of taking advantage of the money bubble is when you have a huge stack, this is even the case at WSOP 2012. If you have been lucky enough to create a behemoth then you could simply just open up every hand and remain profitable. But more often than not the mammoth stacks will belong to someone else. So how do you take advantage if your stack is much smaller?

If you have a stack size ranging between 10-20BB then you are going to have to be patient and taking advantage of the money bubble may not be practicable. However, if you have a 20bb+ stack then you can start having some fun. Your task in these stages is to recognise who is seated on your table, what stack sizes do they have and how desperate are they to cash. Fans of online poker should remember this.

After carrying out the above analysis you can open up more frequently but understanding which opponents you are going to open/fold to. There will be some spots where every stack size to your left is in the 25-35BB regions. These stack sizes are perfect for opening up against because they do not really have much of a defence against your open. Their stack is too shallow to three-bet bluff, cold-call and to big to shove making their responses to your open more predictable.

If you play online poker, then one of your first decisions is to select a table. For the first timers, their education will begin by playing on a single table but after a while either boredom will set in or you will watch one too many online poker training videos. Then before you know it you will be trying to play six tables at once.

In order to successfully multi-table you really do need to have a very good procedural memory. Simply put, you need to have a lot of experience at doing the basics and doing them well. In our rash rush for instant gratification, players try to be good at multi-tabling before they become good at playing poker. Multi-tabling is a skill, but a rather pointless skill if you’re not winning. You should play the number of tables that allows you to make fully thought out decisions. Fans of Betfair WSOP 2012 need to remember this.

Play a number of poker tables that keeps you engaged and interested while never timing out or regularly feeling rushed. Your one goal is to play the best possible poker. It’s through this process of completely thinking through each decision that you begin to strengthen your procedural memory. When you are maxing out the number of tables you play, there very little learning going on.

Your focus on your multi-tabling skills starts when you reach a level that will provide you a reasonable income and fits your risk tolerance. For each player that level is different, but be assured if you choose to mass table 20NL you’ve decreased your chances of moving up.

For much of the final mile of a thrilling Grade 3 Betfair Hurdle at Newbury on Friday it looked very much as though the Zarkandar bubble was going to be well and truly burst as the previously unbeaten young hurdler looked in big trouble in this ultra-competitive handicap on his belated seasonal return, writes Elliot Slater.

Sent off the 11/4 favourite against his 19 rivals in one of the most hotly contested handicap races of the whole season, most Cheltenham Festival betting pundits agreed that if he was to have any chance of mixing it with Hurricane Fly in the Stan James Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival on March 13, last season’s Triumph Hurdle and Aintree Festival winner would have to win this event off a handicap rating of 151.

Settled in mid-division by Ruby Walsh, the half-brother to the outstanding unbeaten Flat sensation Zarkava travelled well enough until his rider began to niggle along approaching the turn for home. As a host of horses swept by him it looked as though the son of Azamour was almost certainly on his way to the first defeat of his career over hurdles – indeed he touched 100 ‘in-play’ on Betfair – but as Walsh threwh everything at him Zarkandar began to respond approaching the second last.

When Darlan fell at that flight whilst vying for the lead and badly hampered Get Me Out Of Here (who was immediately behind him), it looked as though Zarkandar might run into a best place at best, but as Sire De Grugy and Sailors Warn came back to the pack after the last the favourite produced a terrific change of gear between the rallying Get Me Out Of Here and the Ladbrokes Hurdle winner Raya Star, to get up in the last 50 yards to score in sensational fashion by a length-and-a-quarter. Those looking for horse racing tips will have been very impressed.

All roads now lead to the Champion Hurdle for Zarkandar who was promptly cut from 7/1 to 6/1 second favourite to de-throne the great 4/5 market leader, Hurricane Fly.

There are a myriad of ways to find the fish and most of them involve the observation of table play. I mean if you want to know if a player is any good, then just watch them play right? But poker is a whizz-bang-wallop of a game and it moves along quicker than Road Runner on roller skates. So what other ways are there for quickly identifying a fish?

One old school method is to derive a fish value from the players screen name or avatar. You might not be able to see the person, but you will be surprised how often your perception of their looks is accurate based on just screen name and avatar selection alone, and here are some examples.

If a player has an avatar of a professional poker player, who is not one of the world’s mega stars like you see at WSOP 2012, then it is very likely that they know that player in some form or other. It is not always going to be true, but more often than not this player will be half decent, given that they are having regular dialogue with a professional poker player.

On the flipside to the professional player avatar, keep your eye out for avatars of babies as these are often the sign of a middle aged married recreational player. People playing a Betfair Poker Freeroll need to remember this.

On the screen name front anybody with some reference to a sports team such as ManUtd5 is generally a fish and, strangely, players with screen names such as Crazymadbarstward are generally rocks.

Have some fun and test out the theory for yourself.

In the 1990s, as the world was preparing itself for the millennium and a complete freeze on all electrical equipment as the clock struck 00:00, online poker was having its electronic umbilical chord severed. Back in those days life was pretty simple for an online poker player, you logged on took a seat and started to play. You had no idea who anyone was and you needed to observe the game in order to make the best decisions possible.

Over time Betfair online poker became big business and big business attracts entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs started to think about compiling data on player’s tendencies so it could be sold and used by players in the game. Software sites like Poker Tracker and Hold’em Manager were created and the Heads Up Display (HUD) was born. http://poker.betfair.com/en/download/

Incredibly, some of the world’s greatest pros have never used a HUD and yet there are other players who would be as blind as a bat should it be taken away from them. Everyone can use a HUD and this is what is supposed to create an even playing field – but there is one exception – the recreational player or fish.

Why would someone who is just jumping into the game to have a bit of fun have a HUD? It just isn’t going to happen and so it creates an even wider gap between regulars and fish. As more and more fish learn about the existence of HUD’s more and more will be scared away like the little tiddlers trying in vain to wiggle their way free of the tide of the Whale.

So are HUDs a good thing or a bad thing. As usual in poker the answer is simple – it depends!

We can imagine the face of the school career officer as you let them into your little secret, “I am going to be a professional online poker player.” If indeed this was a conversation that you had, or one that you are likely to have, then you need to ensure that you have a few things going for you.

For one, you need somewhere to play and in the current climate there is nowhere better than in Europe, something fans of Texas Holdem know. Not only is poker legalised and regulated in Europe but also a lot of the countries allow players to keep their winnings free of taxation. Compare this to the United States, where you cannot even fire up a game, and when you did Uncle Sam kept a decent wedge of the profits and you can see the benefits of living in the land of the Euro.

Europe also offers you the widest variety of online poker sites, and signing up and creating accounts is as easy as losing your first deposit at the cash tables!

One person certainly taking advice of the variety of games on offer in Europe is Christopher Brammer aka NigDawg. The flame haired youngster from Winchester in the United Kingdom is currently ranked number one in the world according to the boffins over at PocketFives. Brammer has $1,710,846.62 in online tournament earnings spread over six sites and his recent scores include a 2nd place in the Pokerstars.fr FCOOP event for $236,523.91 in Nov 2011.

So if you fancy your chances in the online game there is no better place to be than Europe.

When you are playing against a competent opponent you are going to be faced with a lot of re-raises. When this happens it is important that you do not fold too often. Folding too often against this type of player is like handing him a money- printing machine. So do you have to fight back? Well, not necessarily.

The most effective way of dealing with this type of opponent is to get out of his way. If you are playing in a cash game and your opponent has position on you ask the dealer for the next choice of seat. This means you can move to a space that takes away his positional advantage and hands it to you. If there is no chance of a seat becoming available then leave the game. If you are serious about poker and are playing to win then these types of opponents need to be avoided – just leave the game. If you have made a poker download, you will have plenty of other games to choose from.

If you do decide to stay in the game then you need to be calling and re-raising his re-raises often enough to stop him re-raising with his air. These types of players are like school playground bullies. They will pick on people until they get a smack and then they will move on to a different victim – one that doesn’t fight back.

This doesn’t mean that you go to war with this type of player when playing Betfair Poker. On the contrary, instead you become very selective with the types of hands you use and your timing needs to be right as well.

While being in a good mood does not guarantee you success on the felt, being in a bad mood will almost certainly guarantee that you won’t have any. In fact you are more likely to find a leprechaun giving a bear a piggyback than find a player who has won money while being in a vile mood.

So try and play poker when you are in a good mood and focus your attention on trying to change your mood when it is bad! Make sure before you play that you are feeling confident, on the ball, comfortable and positive. This means the reverse is true, so if you feel something is out of place, haven’t slept properly and are tired then don’t play. This is true even if you are playing on a Betfair poker website.

If you are a cash game player then you will understand that the game is infinite. As it never ends you can use this to your advantage by choosing when to play or not to play. If you are a tournament player this is a little bit more complicated, especially if you have travelled to play in a particular game and are not in a very good mood. http://poker.betfair.com/en/how_to_play/

If you are serious about your poker then you need to get serious about your mood. You need to learn new techniques to try and create a more positive you. Try meditation, yoga, listening to some great music or watching a funny movie. It also helps if you make friends on the circuit or have a travelling companion. You will find that people have the ability to also change your mood for the better – well most of them!