Bricks and mortar poker

It would be remiss of Cash Ninja to discuss poker without mentioning live poker, or face to face poker (or whatever you wish to call it) where you sit down, at someone's house, in the pub, a club or a full blown casino to play cards for real.

For years poker was seen as the reserve of hard core gamblers, either playing in big shiny Vegas casinos or in seedy back room games with shifty characters, where taking the wrong guy's money could end up with you getting beaten/shot/stabbed for your troubles.

However this is no longer the case, or at least, thanks to the massive success of online poker, not the only option. The success of internet poker has lead to a growth in face to face poker to the extent where here in Cambridge, UK you could play a different live game every night of the week, for varying stakes.

Australian poker

In Australia the Australian Poker League and National Poker League run country wide tournaments and leagues generally hosted in pubs and bars that attract high numbers of players.

UK poker

In the UK there are numerous casino chains such as Grosvenor running daily tournaments and offering cash games as well.

Cambridge poker

Here in Cambridge it is possible to play poker every single night of the week with members clubs running regular tournaments and lots games springing up in pubs and other venues.

• WT's snooker club run tournaments from Tuesdays to Saturdays every week and a freeroll every Sunday
• Cambridge Poker run regular tournaments on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays as well as the occasional Tuesday and Saturday. Including rebuy and deep stack tournaments
• Mickey Flynns run tournaments on Sunday and Monday evenings

US poker

In the US, to our knowledge you still need to make a trip to a casino but it need not be as scary or intimidating as it might first appear if you've never been before.

Poker satellites

With many internet poker rooms offering satellites to big tournaments the number of new players getting into big tournaments is growing all the time and the rise of European poker players is accelerating.

Time to think

The same principles that apply to playing online apply to playing poker face to face. If you're used to playing online you need to make fairly rapid decisions in that environment. However, with face to face poker you have more information available to you and more time to make your decisions. Use this to your advantage. You can read other people's body language, try to figure out whether they look nervous or confident, try to figure out who's a shark and who's a fish (if you can't tell who's the fish, then it's you). Bear in mind of course that the other players are probably doing exactly the same to you...

Keeping track

A useful site to keep track of your wins/losses etc is check your bets. It's free to use and you can record all the games you play so you can see how you're getting on. At Cash Ninja we have been tracking our last 8 months worth of face to face games using this and have logged nearly 130 hours worth of hands. The good news is that we were up initially but then there was a downward trend. However that has been overcome in recent weeks and the graph is heading in the right direction. We will add this data to the site soon so you can follow our attempts to make money from playing poker.