In order to improve your chances of making money playing poker, you must be able to capitalize on the money lying in the pots after the flop comes down. While stealing the blinds pre-flop is an important part of any poker game, post flop play will typically yield the biggest pots.

Post-flop play stems from 3 basic scenarios that are a result of the pre-flop action. Those scenarios are:

* No Action - This scenario is a result of everyone at the table folding to the pre-flop raiser or re-raiser, or of everyone folding to the Big Blind.

* Heads Up Action - When only 2 players see the flop, the resulting action will be heads up.

* Multi-way Action - When 3 or more players see the flop, this results in multi-way post flop action, or a "multi-way pot."

No Action - Nothing much to explore here. No post-flop action is the result of pre-flop play where all but one player folds. In this case, no flop is dealt, and therefor there is no post-flop action. Congratulations, you just saved some chips!

Heads Up Action - When there is post-flop action, this type of action is the preferred scenario of any professional or serious poker player. Heads up action is simply easier to play. Bluffs and semi-bluffs are successful a higher percentage of the time than in multi-way pots. It is easier to get a read on your opponent's hand strength. Often in heads up action, pots can be won with low to middle pairs or even high-card hands.

The keys to successful post-flop play include position and aggression. Successful post-flop play will depend largely in part on your pre-flop choices. You will win more pots playing from position than you will out of position. You will win more pots when you are the aggressor (the bettor or raiser) than you will by checking and calling. Therefor, one of the most effective improvements you can make to your post-flop play may be an adjustment to your pre-flop strategy. Open with aggressive raises from superior position to improve your post-flop winning percentage. By coming out aggressively pre-flop and playing from position, a multitude of different ways that you can win the pot will open up to you.

The most important tool you will have at your disposal will be the continuation bet. This is when a player raises pre-flop, and then fires another bet into the pot after the flop, whether or not the flop improved the raiser's hand. When you enter into a heads up pot with a preflop raise, you should follow through with a continuation bet 75%-90% of the time, regardless of what flopped. Your opponent will completely miss the flop roughly 70% of the time, and your continuation bet will win you the pot the in most cases.

Another tool that a pre-flop raise from position will give you is the semi-bluff. This is when you flop a draw, such as a straight or flush draw, and bet or even raise as though you have a made hand. If you get called and then hit on the turn, you are likely to get paid off in a big way! Even if you miss on the turn, you'll still have a free shot at the draw most of the time. Your opponent usually will not bet on the turn because either (a) he will be afraid of facing another big raise, or (b) will have the best hand, and will be anticipating (and probably hoping for) another bet from you on the turn. Take advantage of this opportunity to see a free river by checking the turn if it's a blank.

You can also utilize "feeler bets," which are bets or raises to determine the strength of your opponent's hand or the strength of your hand in relation to theirs. While you are spending some chips in this situation, try to avoid thinking to much about your "lost chips" when facing an opponent who is giving you clues to the fact that they have you beat. The reason you are putting out small feeler bets is to save yourself large amounts of chips if you're hand is beat.

Multi-way Action - Multi-way pots are typically the most difficult to play, and should be avoided in most situations whenever possible, especially if playing from out of position. Multi-way pots can be good to play in, however, with drawing hands or small to medium pocket pairs. The reason is that if you flop a monster with a disguised hand, you're more likely to get paid off as someone in the hand is likely to have a hand that is strong enough to call you with, even if it is 2nd best. If you were to flop a set with a small pair or a a flush or a straight with a suited connector, you'll have plenty of players in the hand who might have top-pair-top-kicker, 2 pair, or a draw that may be willing to pay you off even if you fire a huge bet.

If you do flop a draw in a multi-way pot, tricky plays aren't as likely to work. Stick to good pot odds to chase a draw. If the price isn't right, throw the hand away. You will find good pot odds often enough in multi-way pots to make it worth throwing away a few draws when the odds are against you.

Heads Up Poker Strategy - Its impossible to win any heads up poker tournament if you can't dominate your last tournament opponent in a heads up poker match. This article will help you understand the skills you need to master to out-strategize your online heads-up poker opponents.

No matter whether you are playing poker live or online, every tournament ultimately comes down to a heads up match between the winner and the best loser. Although my experience is mostly online, the following pointers apply no matter where you play. I love the online poker rooms, however, because they offer heads-up poker tournaments that allow you to use the following skills from the beginning of every game. Because most players are poor heads-up players, this gives the skilled heads-up poker player a distinct advantage.

Most poker player incorrectly believe that when it gets down to heads-up play its all about luck. They couldn't be more wrong. The truth is that most players simply don't know how to play heads-up, so they get "unlucky" a lot of the time.

The first important principle of heads-up poker play is that you MUST change your play because the value of starting hands is dramatically different when only facing one opponent. You have to play hands you might never dream of playing in any other situation.

For example, any Ace is a very good hand that should be played aggressively. This point raises another principle, which is that to be a successful heads-up poker player you must be extremely aggressive, sometimes even when you have a poor starting hand. Keep the pressure on and collect chips at every opportunity.

Some players understand they must be aggressive and you can use this against them, re-raising often to collect even more chips.

Of course, the result of all of this is that you will need to play a lot of hands. This means raising pre-flop with any Ace, King or Queen in most situations, and re-raising with the same. By keeping the pressure on, you'll amass chips quickly against a timid player and keep even good players from knowing what kind of a hand you've got - giving you a great opportunity to trap such players when you do have a very strong hand.

We live in tough economic times, where a simple bubble burst or bank breakdown has strong worldwide ripple effects which shows our interconnectivity and economic frailty in this global marketplace of social paranoia, at least in the financial speculation of the human psyche. Major banks close down such as the renowned Lehman Brothers, governments emerge to form rescue packages and purchase equity in places such as Goldman Sachs (one of the investment banking elite), and major corporations and even sports authorities fire workers such as Volvo and the NBA.

However, few industries are meant to benefit from this economic debacle, and this is the online gambling sector. Before the crisis, one would walk into marketing research firms and ask for an industry report only to see positive growth curves for the industry in terms of forecasts, and positive pro forma financial studies. Believe it or not, this is still meant to happen, and here is why. Punters will always continue to place bets, no matter the volume, it might be less than before as they will cautiously view economic downturn as a global recessionary practice in their expenditures, or they might spend more as they need to break even and hope that the online gambling endeavor will help them make ends meet.

Clients with an already addictive personality will continue to place bets. Wealthy gamblers will still make their usual monthly allotments into their gambling investments. Masses will NOT drive, fly, take public transportation to their favorite sports books or casino destinations, and instead will opt for an easy to use alternative such as betting from your PC at home or work given lower costs such as cheap broadband and no need to spend on transportation and extra costs, ease of use, and quickness combined with the safety these worldwide brands now offer the public. With the smoking ban on many brick and mortar establishments, gamblers will also take their activities online.

These are the main reasons the sector will now prosper. Some speculators even state the industry is in for a major growth due to these circumstances, and in five years, the industry will showcase top notch performance in terms of volume growth. Major gaming corporations are displaying positive value in their stocks on major world markets therefore displaying industry confidence. If Obama wins, the USA might re-open its online gambling doors yet again as the Senator has voted in favor of recent bills aimed at regulating the industry, and this will surely favor major betting operators not only in industry volume growth terms, but in financial retributions.

Bingo may seem like a relatively new invention, but the game's origins date back to the 16th century. It can be traced back as far as 1530, to an Italian lottery called "Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia", and every Saturday in Italy this game is still played today. Two hundred years later the game was further introduced to the French in the 1770s and called "Le Lotto". The game was only really played by wealthy Frenchman at this time.

The game was also adopted in Germany, although it was mainly used as an educational tool to help with teaching children math, spelling and history. The game by-passed the UK and leaped across the Atlantic Ocean, reaching North America in around 1929. Folk law has lead the belief that it was here, the game was taken on as a county fair game, where a dealer would select numbered discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards with beans. Thus the name beano was invented, as players would shout 'beano' when they won. The game finally got the name it is associated with today when Edwin S. Lowe a New York toy salesman overheard someone accidentally yell "bingo" instead of "beano".

He hired Carl Leffler a math professor at Columbia University, to assist him in increasing the number of combinations in bingo cards. By 1930 Professor Leffler had invented 6,000 different bingo cards. It is believed that this cased hi to then go insane. Years later a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania, approached Lowe about using bingo as a means of raising church funds. It was this playing of bingo in churches that helped it grow in popularity. By 1934 it was estimated that more than 10,000 bingo games were played weekly. Finally in 1961 bingo was brought to the UK from the USA by Eric Morley. In the UK bingo was a commercial proposition, and so the British version was very different to that of in the USA.

Bingo in the 1960s was helped by the rise of the television. This lead to many buildings such as theatres and cinemas being rendered as obsolete and so were turned into bingo halls. ! 1968 saw the establishment of a Gaming Board to which regulated bingo clubs that were proving highly popular. So popular in fact that during the 1980's several new clubs were opened in purpose built bingo halls.

Bingo has continued to grow in this manner up to today, and its popularity has grown even more since the introduction of online bingo.