This is an awesome question since no one knows the answer! Juicy Stakes Poker exists in cyberspace which is like being in the Western Hemisphere before most Europeans knew that there was a Western Hemisphere. As far as we know, an infinite number of players can enjoy Juicy Poker here!
Who are the Modern Day Explorers?
A lot of people have the impression that exploration ended with the discoveries of the 15th to 19th centuries. It is true that the men and women who sailed the seas and traveled across vast expanses of land gave us a tremendous influx of knowledge.
Modern day exploration can be found in outer space, at the depths of the oceans, at previously inaccessible mountaintops, at previously inaccessible rain forests, on uninhabited islands all over the world, at the point of contact of earthquakes, inside volcanoes, inside hurricanes, and in the massive digital expanse!
Juicy Stakes Poker lives in that digital expanse!
Who can forget the inimitable way the guitarist looked at his guitar after Marty played Johnny B. Goode in Back to the Future? Marty McFly was a musical explorer of sorts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_WSXXPQYeY (the “look” takes place at the very end of the clip).
Are Poker Players Explorers of a Sort?
Well, yes and no!
Poker players are like experts in any other field where the boundaries of that field continue to expand. If everything that could be known about poker were already known, the game would become boring. The same applies to many other games of skill!
Chess, for example, has been studied for almost 200 years. The openings are well known and are memorized by many players. But even today, in every tournament, a great game is awarded the “brilliancy prize”! That means that even in a game as “explored” as chess is, there is a vast unknown.
We don’t know the size of that vast unknown! And we don’t know the size of the vast unknown called cyberspace!
How Has Poker Expanded in Recent Years?
Poker has changed dramatically in the last 100 years!
- Texas Holdem was virtually unknown outside Texas until about 70 years ago and now is the most popular tournament game!
- Poker math was also virtually unknown as a course of study until recently.
- Poker nuances such as hand ranges and positional play were unexplored areas of poker even though the best players were using them even in their early stages of development.
- Most poker was played at land based poker rooms until enough players became comfortable with online poker at online poker rooms such as Juicy Stakes.
- Online poker players had to learn a different type of strategy since the in-person observation of opponents was unavailable online.
- As online poker grew it was inevitable that an online player would do well in a poker tournament and Chris Moneymaker was that happily-named online player who won the World Series of Poker in 2003. He qualified for the World Series of Poker by winning online tournaments.
Texas Holdem Forged New Realms in Poker
The key element in Texas Holdem is that it showed how having just two hidden cards and five community cards made that poker variation enormously complex! Until the Texas Holdem revolution took over in Las Vegas and then at the World Series of Poker, most players played either draw poker or stud poker.
In draw poker, you don’t see anyone else’s cards at all! Strategy was based almost entirely on observation by which we mean identifying tells and by knowing an opponent’s playing tendencies.
In stud poker, there are some open cards but they are not community cards. In seven card stud, the largest number of players who could play at a table was seven but in Holdem, the maximum number of players at a table is much higher!
The Blinds Changed Poker Strategy
The fact that the blinds exist in Texas Holdem means that any player who wants to see the flop has to at least call the big blind. That causes a lot of players to fold in early position. As a result, it takes a lot more skill to bluff with a poor hand especially if you are betting from early position.
Many experienced players will three bet from the big blind against certain opponents who have limped in from early position.
In poker variations without blinds, a player can pass with a poor hand in early position hoping that no one will force their hand with a bet until they can see at least one more card!
Exploring the Airy Realm of Poker Math
Most poker players these days know at least the rudiments of poker math. Still, players are always adding subtleties to the well-known math. This is similar to the experience in baseball where observation alone was the key to strategic success as recently as the 1990’s.
By now, everyone who follows baseball statistics knows that batting average is over-rated, wins and losses for pitchers is an over-rated statistic, and in their place are such subtle statistics as OPS and ERA+. Baseball has now evolved so many statistical categories that it can be compared to the atom in the famous way Phoebe Buffay described it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy2BcY0Drws (Phoebe talks about the atom at the 4:00 mark).
Playing Poker by Intuition is No Longer Acceptable
Just as “explorers” in so many other areas of interest are constantly pushing the envelope in the pursuit of more and better information, so is poker evolving all the time. Any action we take as poker players has to have a good reason. “I thought he was bluffing” is no longer enough to stay in hand. You need to know the pot odds, EV, hand ranges, and his or her tendencies.
We need to see all of our opponents as the type they are also realizing that there is a great deal of overlap between types of players. In a very real sense, to be a committed poker player these days makes true explorers out of us!
The Advantages of Playing at Juicy Stakes Poker
One of the single most important elements in becoming expert at poker is experience. Unless you live virtually next door to a land based poker room, you will get the necessary experience only by playing online.
Online poker players never have to pay to “travel;” to the casino! They never have to commit to a long weekend of poker! They never have to feel that they need to play for hours to “get their money’s worth”. Online poker players can play every day in short sessions or once a week if that suits their schedule better.
Online poker players can play at any stakes level they want to play at. They can play at more than one table as well!
Juicy Stakes Poker has a wonderful poker platform that allows easy access and poker against players from all over the world. May we invite you to JOIN JUICY STAKES POKER NOW!
