Over the past few years, many training sites have popped up online. We have taken the time to review all these sites, and compile a comprehensive list of sites that offer the best training materials for your buck.

We would like to emphasize that we have no connections with any of these sites and are not receiving anything in return from them. These are our honest opinions on these sites. The list is in no particular order, as different sites have different strengths.

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The following list is comprised of the casinos with the best live poker tournaments in the U.S., with high payouts. We don’t have any affiliation or kickback from any of these places, we just like playing at them. We tried to include a wide variety of destinations, so as not to limit you to one place. So, what are you waiting for – pack your bags and head to the some of the best gaming places in the USA. We have provided links to the tournament page for each of these casinos.

1. Commerce Casino (Commerce, CA) – Commerce is home to two cavernous poker rooms — a sprawling low-limit area and a high-limit room that hosts some of the biggest games on the west coast. They also host the L.A. poker classic.

2. Trump Taj Mahal (Atlantic City, NJ) - The Trump Taj Mahal has a massive poker room, with well over 80 tables. They have the most diverse selection of games & limits anywhere in Atlantic City. The link here is to their daily poker tournaments.

3. The Borgata (Atlantic City, NJ) – The new 85-table Borgata poker room is a completely different experience than the Trump Taj Mahal – it is like a Las Vegas poker room in New Jersey.
The Borgata hosts a $500,000 Deep Stacks tournament.

4. The Tropicana (Las Vegas, NV) - The Tropicana, or “trop” to its regulars, is another super poker room on the boardwalk. It’s really well-run and they have a great variety of games at their 43 tables, including their unique “pink chip” game, which uses special $2.50 pink chips in a $7.50/$15 hold’em game. We’ve linked to their poker tournament schedule.

5. Peppermill Casino (Reno, NV) - The Peppermill features Reno’s most comfortable and exciting poker room. Their dealers are trained to assist new players, in addition to offering private and group lessons upon request. They host several tournaments a day, with a wide range of stakes.

6. Grand Sierra Resort & Casino (Reno, NV) – With over 115,000 square-feet, the casino at the Grand Sierra Resort & Casino is easily northern Nevada’s largest. Grand Sierra is known for their structured poker tournaments with high payouts. They play all kinds of games here, including HORSE. They comp their regulars well, and it’s a great place for vacationers.

7. Caesars Atlantic City (Atlantic City, NJ) - Most people have heard of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and they also have a huge poker room that is newly remodeled in the past couple years. But this is the Atlantic City counterpart. Their poker room is open 24 hours a day for live cash games. With structured games starting at $2-4, $3-6 and $4-8, this is the place to play. Higher limit games are also available based on demand. They have a schedule of deep stacks poker tournaments that are listed at the link we provide.

8. Gold Strike Casino and Resort (Tunica, MS) – With two levels of poker play, the Gold Strike Casino is the hottest non-stop poker action in Tunica. Match wits with players of all skill levels in Texas Hold ‘Em, 7-Card Stud, etc., as well as a daily slew of tournaments.

9. The Wynn Las Vegas (Las Vegas, NV) – The Wynn offers a twenty-six poker table room with a variety of games and limits to suite all levels of play. Game limits generally range from $4/$8 up to $100/$200. Their tournaments run daily at 2pm and 7pm currently, with buy-ins of $100 and up. The page we linked takes a while to load, I guess the Wynn does everything to the max.

10. Bicycle Casino (Los Angeles, CA) - The Bicycle Casino ranks as one of the world’s largest Card Casinos and is renowned for its World Class Poker Tournaments. They have 3 tournaments most days, and it is packed with players from all over. If you’ve never played at The Bike, you owe yourself a trip.

This list is by no means comprehensive, and there are some really good live poker tournaments out there that we haven’t listed, especially in Europe (which we’ll cover separately) or related to the World Series of Poker (which we figure everyone knows about). But, the above casinos are offering some of the best daily tournaments in 2009. Why not check them out and report back to us!

Most serious poker players read blogs at one time or another. It’s hard to avoid them if you spend any significant amount of time online reading about poker. But some blogs are definitely better than others. All of the blogs listed in this article are active and have high quality posts.

It’s important to note that we are not affiliated with any of these blogs, and these rankings are just based on the opinions of our team here at www.testyourpoker.com. There are plenty of blogs that we read, but these are the ones that really stood out to us. If you have a personal favorite that we’ve missed, feel free to comment about it.

1. Tao of Poker by Pauly – This blog deals with the social aspects of poker, by providing weekly posts for readers to follow and comment on. Always entertaining, and gives you a good picture of what’s going on in the world of poker. This is not a blog for someone looking to become a much better poker player - there isn’t all that much serious poker content. But several of us follow Pauly’s blog, and it’s one of the most widely read poker blogs on the net for a good reason - it’s entertaining.
2. Full Contact Poker – This is Daniel Negreanu’s blog. He keeps his fans informed about how he’s doing, and also gives a bunch of insight into the way he thinks. Posts are made 4-5 a week, so there is always something to comment about. This is an absolute must for fans of Daniel’s.
3. Hard Boiled Poker – This blog deals with the serious nuts and bolts discussion of poker. The blog posts a discussion daily, so this is a great blog to bookmark and check out to learn the ins and outs poker. This is the place to go if you want to read a serious blog for serious players.
4. Pokerati - This is another great blog that deals with the social aspects of poker, as well as the tournament scene. Posts are daily, so you are never left without something to read about. This is one that will keep you entertained, as well as informed.
5. Neverwin Poker Blogs – This is not really a single blog, it’s a compilation of blogs. But it’s great for keeping up to date with what’s going on in the poker world, and it is a very highly followed website.
6. Las Vegas Vegas - This blog deals with everything going on in the world of poker, mostly in Las Vegas. Posts are made 4-5 a week, mainly about tournament news and results. One of our favorite parts of this blog are the pictures. They make you want to be there in the action.
7. Melted Felt - This blog deals with the social aspects of poker, by providing posts 3-4 a week for readers to follow and comment on. Most of the posts will make you laugh. As an example, they recently had a post titled, "Credit Crunch Hits Poker World as Matusow Auctions Lucky Underpants".
8. Noted Poker Authority - This blog deals with the serious nuts and bolts discussion of poker from acclaimed author, Ed Miller. Ed posts 2-3 times a week, by providing poker advise to people’s questions. Ed has very strong opinions on a variety of poker topics, and gives advice that is bound to make a thinking player take some time to assess it. This is not a blog to read for pleasure, this is for serious players who want to improve.
9. Guinness and Poker – This blog deals with the social aspects of poker, providing recent news briefs relating to gambling and poker. Posts are made 1-2 a week, and there is a great archive section set up for you to review. This is a great blog to follow to learn about the politics behind the U.S. ban on internet gambling, and the efforts to get it overturned.
10. Wicked Chops Poker – The self-proclaimed "Daily Dose of All Things Poker + GIRLS", this blog deals with the social aspects of poker, with daily posts ranging from tournament updates, to mug shots, to centerfold pictures. You are sure to find something here to talk about. This is definitely an entertaining blog with plenty of information to keep you up to date.

This list is by no means comprehensive, and there are some really good blogs left off of this list. But you could spend your life reading through blogs only to waste precious time you could be spending training or playing. Instead, this list will provide you something to do when you are waiting for opponents to join you at the online poker table.

Let’s face it, we could read poker forums all day. There are so many of them now, but some are definitely better than others. All of the forums listed in this article are active and have high quality posts and advice. Our recommendation for poker improvement would be to join one or two of these forums and become an active member. You will gain much more as an active poster than as a contant lurker.

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Fold equity is possibly one of the most misunderstood terms in all of poker.  If you Google “fold equity”, nearly half of the information you get is incorrect.  This is not meant to be a comprehensive discussion of fold equity, it is meant to briefly address the importance of fold equity in NL SitNGo tournaments.
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I want to go even a step farther with this “positive thinking” thing and talk about how even during specific hands, your attitude affects the outcome.

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There is a famous book called “The Power of Positive Thinking”. In it the author (Norman Vincent Peale) suggests that your attitude affects reality around you. Reality does not happen in a vacuum. You actually create reality. In my life experiences, I have come to believe that this is true. And nowhere is it more true than at the poker table.

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How much do Implied Odds apply in NL Holdem poker?
Often you will hear players talk about making a call when the odds don’t seem to add up, claiming that they do it for “implied odds”.  In this weekly tip, I’ll discuss the math behind implied odds calculations, but most importantly I’ll discuss a few considerations you need to make in determining whether they do apply in your situation in NL Holdem.   I’ll conclude with an expert strategy tip. 

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When you have the best possible hand you can have in a given situation, your goal is to extract as much money as possible from your opponents. This is an area where you will often hear tips about how to do this, with greatly contradictory advice. Some will tell you to play it slow to keep your “paying customers”, others will tell you to play it strong because your opponents will expect you to play it slow.

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We remember asking ourselves that in October of 2006.  At the time, it didn’t seem like such a tough task — a month or two of work to design the test, create the analyzer, and finish the web site.  Well, 18 months and about 20,000 hours later, here we are. 

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