Ultimately, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker withdrew from the US market, but assured their US players that they could withdraw their money. UB Poker and Absolute Poker, however, continue offering real money poker services to their players, but no longer allow them to fund their account or withdraw cash, which makes poker players wonder if online poker is safe in 2011.

The good news is that online poker is just as safe or unsafe as the rest of the world is, especially in 2011. Full Tilt and PokerStars might have bid goodbye to the American market, but they are still offering online poker services to the rest of the world under the domain names FullTiltPoker.co.uk and PokerStars.eu. US players on these sites had an unpleasant experience, but unpleasant experiences are part of living and one cannot definitely say that Black Friday has made online poker unsafe in 2011. Online poker can very safe provided poker players take a few simple precautions.

The oldest online poker sites are generally the safest poker sites although one cannot say that the new ones are all rogues. Simultaneously, online poker sites that have been around for decades and have attained an excellent reputation in the industry are generally safer than those that have just cropped up on the World Wide Web.

New poker players must take the time to study the reviews of various online poker sites and check if they have excellent track records and histories. Players had better steer clear of poker sites that have plenty of scandals and scams in the pages of their history. If an online poker site’s founder is a person of questionable character who has been arrested several times, one cannot consider the poker site safe.

Players must also test the online poker room’s customer care service before registering at it. Email the customer care service and give up the idea of registering if there is no quick response. All online poker sites offer customer support systems; however, the most trustworthy of them offer 24/7 email, phone and live chat support. The safest online poker sites are those with the promptest customer support systems.

Players should also ascertain if they can safely use the banking methods supported at the site. Nothing is more frustrating for a poker player than registering at a site only to find out that none of the banking methods at the site work in his/her locality. Security is also an important factor to consider, so players should ascertain that the poker room uses the latest in poker gaming security to protect player information and money.

In recent years, the poker variant known as Badugi has attracted the attention of card players looking for a different edge to their traditional poker gaming sessions. One of the sites that this game can be played at is the leading poker room, Full Tilt Poker.

Badugi, a game that can trace its roots to Asia, is a form of draw poker which is similar in rules to Lowball since the lowest hand wins (instead of the traditional highest hand). The hand ranking system differs because the strongest hands have no pairs and four low cards.

Full Tilt Poker’s Badugi sees flushes and pairs count against the player’s hand, while straights do not count against their hand. The Ace is always considered a low card.

Badugi games at this online poker site are traditionally played using a Fixed Limit betting structure, which means that players bet in increments of a pre-determined betting limit that corresponds to the size of their blinds.

In November, 2010, Full Tilt Poker underwent a major software upgrade which saw the addition of several new games, including a wild 10-Game Mix, draw poker and Badugi. Full Tilt recognized the amazing potential there was to be had in this poker variant and it wasn’t long before traffic started picking up at these tables. Play is still considered wildly loose at these tables.

The 10-Game Mix also features Limit Badugi, while the Draw Poker games include Fixed Limit Badugi. Poker players who think they have the poker skills to play Badugi at high stakes level are always impressed with the opportunities offered to them at Full Tilt Poker. This site has the traffic they need to stay in play and they are not forced to sit around waiting for a Badugi table to get started at high stake levels.

High rollers are able to find Badugi poker games for as high as $1,000/$2,000 at Full Tilt Poker, with action hanging at $20/$40.

There have been talks to include Badugi in the World Series of Poker for quite some time now, and this nearly happened in 2010, but the idea was dropped at the last minute. However, many poker fans were made happy by the announcement that it will be included in the 2011 WSOP line up.

It stands to reason that Full Tilt Poker will be offering Badugi tournaments to allow players to hone their skills and perhaps win their way to the WSOP 2011 Badugi events. This is why Full Tilt Poker is on the Badugi poker toplist.

Badugi, which originated in Asia, is a variant of what we know as draw poker. The game shares a number of similarities with Lowball because the lowest hand wins instead of the traditional highest hand. In Badugi, the hand ranking system differs as the strongest hands have no pairs and four low cards (one of each suit).

With the growing popularity of Badugi came the inclusion of this variant in PokerStars’ busy tournament schedule. The game is offered at the site’s multi table tournament schedule, in both fixed limit options and pot-limit Badugi tournaments. Players will be able to find tournaments with low buy ins beginning every few hours at PokerStars – both fixed limit and pot limit. The site also boasts a nightly fixed limit event with a higher buy in fee.

Badugi is not only found as a multi-table option on the tournament circuit. There are also a number of Sit and Go options, either as full ring (eight handed) games or one to one heads up games. PokerStars has made sure that the choice of stakes is wide at these tournaments too; however the largest concentration of players is felt at micro limit games.

PokerStars has been singly responsible for the growth of popularity in Badugi. The site added this variant to the World Championship of Poker for the first time in 2009 and hosted the largest Badugi tournament in September of that year. There were hopes to include Badugi in the 2010 World Series of Poker lineup, especially after Matt Savage added the game to the 2010 LA Poker Classic Event, however this never happened.

Thankfully, the WSOP 2011 lineup shows that Badugi will finally make a well- deserved appearance for the first time and it stands to reason that PokerStars will be offering satellites to the WSOP Badugi event. In the meantime, online poker players can hone their poker skills by entering daily Badugi tournaments at PokerStars and preparing themselves for the game’s debut at WSOP 2011. This is why Pokerstars is the leader of the top badugi poker sites.

Now Full Tilt Poker has updated its software and added a hand full of new poker games including Badugi. If you think you have the poker skills to play Badugi at the high stakes level your best options are Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker because they have the traffic needed to stay in play and not have to sit around for a Badugi poker game to get started at the high stakes level.

Full Tilt Poker has Badugi poker games as high as $1,000/$2,000 with the action hanging at $20/$40. Pokerstars has Badugi poker games as high as $400/$800 with the action hanging at $10/$20. Your best bet would be to play high stakes Badugi at Full Tilt Poker.

Click here to sign up to Pokerstars for a 100% match up to $600 deposit bonus with 2011 marketing code: HPCMAX50 and bonus code: Stars600.

Badugi Cash Game Bankroll Management

Pot limit Badugi poker is the most well known style of Badugi so we will cover this first. Following bankroll management you must have a minimum of 60 buyins. A buyin to a table is 100 times the big blind. For example, if you are playing at the $3/$6 pot limit Badugi table. You must have a minimum of $36,000 in your bankroll. Anytime you fall below this you should move down stakes.

Limit Badugi poker not as play as much as pot limit Badugi is straight forward with bankroll management. You must have 500 times the big bet at any given stakes. For example, if you are playing at the $1/$2 tables you must have a minimum of $1,000 in your bankroll.

Badugi SitnGo Bankroll Management

Badugi sitngo and heads up bankroll management is simple to follow. You must have a minimum of 50 buyins at any given stakes level. For example, if you playing the $1 buyins you must have a minimum of $50 in your bankroll.

Badugi Tournament Bankroll Management

Badugi tournaments can be very hard to cash in so you need a bankroll to play as many tournaments as you can. Following Badugi tournament bankroll management you must have a minimum of 100 buyins at any given level. For example, if you playing the $5 buyin tournaments you must have a minimum of $500 in your bankroll.

The best heads up action is at Pokerstars.

The number of players at the table is a huge factor in Badugi, one that directly impacts strategy. When there are more than 4 players at your table, the chances of someone making a 4-card Badugi are pretty high. With less than 4 players in the game, bluffing becomes much more important because the odds of a 4 Card Badugi plummet. What that means is that bluffing and aggression will be more important in heads-up Badugi than in any other stage of the game.

Heads-up poker in general is about aggression. Assuming that it’s a tournament we’re talking about and that the blinds are high, you don’t have time to bring your A+ TAG game to the table. You need to turn on the heat and you need to keep your opponent under pressure. The only thing is, you need to do it in a calculated manner. There will be people out there who will tell you to try to stick to TAG play heads-up and to slow-play your good starting hands, but I can tell you for a fact, that if you pair up two similarly skilled players in a heads-up match, the more aggressive of the two will win in the long-run.

Starting hand selection (or at least understanding the value of your Badugi starting hand) is almost as important as mastering aggression. Starting hand strength suffers some changes when one goes to heads-up play. Something that you would not consider playing at a full table can be a reasonable hand now. Loosen up your starting hand requirements quite a bit (increasing your aggression will call for this move anyway).

Dealing with your opponent’s aggression is the other essential aspect of heads-up Badugi strategy. Just as you tune your aggression to the circumstances, your opponent will loosen up too and he will try to place you under as much pressure as possible in order to force you to make a mistake. What do you do when your opponent takes control of the match-up by being more aggressive? You have two choices under these conditions: you can either pick up the gauntlet and try to out-aggro him, or you can turn into a calling station.

In order to out-pressure your opponent through aggression, you need to find out if he’s the type of player who’s willing to back down when confronted by someone even more aggressive. Just pushing against him on every hand while knowing that he will never back down takes the strategy out of the game, but sometimes it can be a reasonable solution.

Being a calling station is never good in poker. It’s always the fish who take on the role of the calling station at full tables and it never ends well for them. At a heads-up Badugi table though, becoming a calling station is actually an advanced way of dealing with aggression. I’ll have to put it forth though that it’s not a genuine calling station I’m taking about here, but rather a perceived one. A genuine calling station has no idea what his opponent is holding. You on the other hand, will have to make pretty good reads on your opponent and you’ll have to sell him the calling station image in order for this strategy to work.

If you’re playing heads-up Badugi, don’t forget that the number of hands played per hour will lead to an increased poker rake. Take the poker rake into account to when you try to estimate your profits.

The best heads up action is at Pokerstars.

Badugi tournament on Pokerstars

At the beginning of any badugi poker tournament. Their are players in the tournament that have no idea what they are doing. These are the players you want to keep your eye for. They are going to grow your chip stack early in the tournament. The way you spot these players is fairly easy. First look at the players that play way too many hands. Second you want to look at the players going to show without badugi or with a really high badugi.

Knowing that alone will get you in a tournament of 1,500 players down to around 200 to 300 players left. Now this is where you want to tighten up your game. Once its around 250 players left in the badugi tournament. It’s nothing but real badugi players left in the tournament. So you can’t push hard with your bets holding a 8 high badugi thinking you going to win. It’s just not going to happen.

With 250 players or less left in the tournament. I start to take notes on other players. For example, if I see a player bet hard, nice soild bets, and at the showdown he reveals a 7 high badugi. I write that as the note. Next time I have a 6 high badugi or lower and I am up against him. I will go hard with the bets. He most likely have an 7 high badugi or higher. Sometimes players will surppise you with something lower but most likely they have their cut of limit of what they will go hard with.

For example, I seen one player play hard with any badugi that 8 high badugi or less. He did this a few times before I wrote the note to remind myself. Next time he did those soild big bets. I was holding an 5 high badugi. I knew I had a really great chance of winning this hand. Since he goes hard with any badugi less than 9. By the end of it, he was allin. Cards reveal, I have the 5 high badugi and he had an 7 high badugi. I won all his chips.

Now we there are less than 200 or 100 players left in the tournament. You want to make sure all the hands you go hard with that will most likely result in you allin. That you are holding an 6 high badugi or less. These players are most likely doing the same thing I told you above. Know a players cut off point.

Take your time to use this in your next Badugi tournament on Pokerstars.

Badugi Sit n’ Go action at Pokerstars

Why be content with crumbs though if you can get your hands on the whole loaf? Though Badugi won’t dazzle you with its strategic depth, if will offer a skilled player a valuable edge over those who barely know the rules, and believe me there are more and more such players venturing over to the Badugi tables.

Badugi SNGs work in the exact same way Texas Holdem ones do. You will probably have wait to more for your table to fill up, but when it does and the action gets rolling, you’ll see it’s worth it. Because of its structure (the blinds and the table positions determined by the blinds) is the same as that of Holdem, most of the Strategy elements you know from Holdem will work perfectly here. Your edge will be in the way you play your Badugi hands.

It is a generally healthy Badugi strategy to be tight and you should especially heed that advice in the early stages of SNGs. Protect your finite stack as it’s your weapon and lifeblood in the same time.

When the blinds are small compared to the size of your stack, you should be tight for several reasons. First of all, the pot odds you get fully justify the tight approach. As David Sklansky details in one of his poker books, the smaller the blinds are compared to the size of your stack, the tighter you should play. Tight play fits Badugi just fine, because starting hand selection is just so big in the game anyway. Make sure you do not overplay bad hands, and don’t be afraid to commit your chips on the good hands you pick up.

As the blind go up, the situation precipitates. You’ll be placed under pressure, though if you play right during the early stages, chances are you won’t be under as much pressure as your opponents who didn’t. Stealing the blinds at this stage is usually important, and for that you need two things: a menacingly sized stack (so that your opponents know that tangling with you carries a potential tournament death penalty), and position. Position is the other dominantly important factor in Badugi. Together with starting hand selection, exploiting your position properly is the key to success in this game. Keep stealing blinds in the middle stages of the SNG (to do that optimally, you’ll have to loosen your general starting hand selection criteria a little) and before you know it, you’ll be in the final stretch.

During short-handed and heads-up play keep this in mind: with fewer than 4 people at the table, the chances of a 4-card Badugi become minute. Therefore, bluffing becomes much more efficient. Though some say Badugi is really about making the better hand, in the closing stages of a SNG, bluffing rears its head as a huge factor. Make sure you take full advantage of it. Find some way to alleviate the effects of the poker rake too. Do not want to end up paying way too much in tournament fees, do you?

For the best action in Badugi sit n go’s, put this strategy in action at Pokerstars.

Best Badugi cash games at Pokerstars

Badugi is a draw poker variant and as such, many of the strategy concepts used in 5-card draw can be applied to Badugi as well. For instance, drawing in the third round against an opponent who stands pat is considered a mistake both in Badugi and 5-card draw. It is a desperate measure which carries flimsy odds.

Given that Badugi is a positional game just like Texas Holdem, everything you know about position in Holdem can be transferred to Badugi pretty much unaltered. The button is always the last to act and as such enjoys a huge advantage over the other players as the player in the button can watch the other guys act and thus give out clues regarding their hands, without having to give away such tells himself. Due to its nature, Badugi offers another advantage to players in late position: Through observation, the player in late position can estimate the strength of his own hand more accurately too.

Because Badugi hands are made up of 4 cards and because a valid Badugi hand has to contain cards of different suits, a player holding a Badugi knows exactly how many “outs” his opponent has to beat his Badugi. When a player draws one card, there are exactly 10 cards that will help him improve to a 4-card Badugi. Knowing this, a player holding an 8-high Badugi knows that there are only 5 cards that will help his opponent’s hand (A,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, minus the three cards that will pair up with the three that he already has in his Badugi = 5) to beat his. Using such analytic thinking, you’ll be able to estimate your odds based on pure math and thus you’ll secure a huge advantage over players who barely know the rules (and there will be plenty such players at the online Badugi tables).

Another important aspect of Badugi strategy concerns the number of people around the table. The more people there are involved in the hand, the more likely it is that one of them has a 4-card Badugi. Bluffing on a 3-card Badugi under such circumstances is not generally a good idea. If you’re playing against 2-3 other people though, the odds on your bluff will change radically in your favor.

If you have A,2,3 (rainbow of course) and you see that everyone is drawing, you can be pretty certain that you have the best hand even if it’s only a 3-card one. That means you should raise or bet to optimize your win rate. Bear in mind that the objective is not to make a Badugi, but to make money, and sometimes a 3-card hand is well enough for that.

Starting hand selection is another integral part of Badugi strategy. Much like in Holdem, good starting hand selection will simplify your decisions later in the hand.

As a general idea: if pick up 4 cards under 7, you have a good starting hand. Four cards that are ranked 5 or lower are also good. The best possible Badugi hand is the A,2,3,4 of different suits, so that is the absolute nut, if you pick that up the worst thing that can happen to you is that your opponent ties you.

Cards above 8 are generally considered bad for your starting hand. Other than these peculiarities, the general principles of ABC Tight-Aggressive poker can be applied to Badugi as well. Choose your starting hands wisely, use pre-draw aggression to push people out and thus to improve the odds your hand carries (while securing some dead money which will improve your pot odds) and get as much money into the pot on your good hands as you possibly can.

Put this strategy to good use at Pokerstars.

Best Pot Limit Badugi Action at Carbon Poker

In theory, Pot Limit betting should be somewhere between NL and FL and it is. The only problem is, it’s not in the middle of the spectrum, rather it’s much closer to the NL structure.

In order to understand the PL structure, you need to be the master of both the NL and the FL variants. FL poker is a mathematical odds-based game, while NL poker is based on the implied odds. It‘s easy to see why that’s the case. Here’s an example to make you understand just where PL stands on the scale between FL and NL.

Suppose four players go to the third street of a FL poker game. With only one of them doing the betting and the other 3 guys calling all along, the pot odds on a 3rd street bet will be 5-1. This is not bad at all, though if a raise or two are dropped along the way, the pot odds can climb as high as 10-1and that’s nothing short of excellent. This is why it’s so tough to force a player to fold in FL.

In NL, with the same blinds and considering the maximum buy-in, one can bet all his stack into the pot, which means that the pot odds on the third betting round can be as low as 1-1.

In a PL game, considering the same scenario, players would get around 2-1 pot odds on the third betting round. That comes to show that PL is much closer to NL odds-wise. What this means to you is that you need to place a much bigger stress on your implied odds than on your strictly mathematical odds.

Best Pot Limit Badugi Action at Carbon Poker

Pot control becomes one of the most important strategy elements in PL Badugi. What you need to understand is that a very small early move on your part can have a humongous fallout later in the hand. Very small bets fired out early on can change the entire balance of the hand. If you check on one betting round, you’ll dramatically limit the amount of money your opponent can shove into the pot, and thus you can control his ability to influence the pot odds. If you decide to bet, you give up control and you give your opponent the means to deliver a much bigger bet.

This same thing can work vice-versa too though. When you happen to land a monster hand, you need to maximize the pot size. You can achieve that in a very subtle manner by “opening the door”, that is by firing out a small bet which achieves two things: it tells your opponent that you’re weak, and it offers them the possibility to maximize their bet, thus effectively tightening the noose around their own necks.

Remember though: when you open that door, it’ll open both ways, so make sure you have the goods to face down whatever treads though it. As far as the poker rake is concerned, PL Badugi shouldn’t be any different from FL or NL. You will end up generating about the same amount of rake. Players will probably rack up more in a shorter amount of time than in FL, but in FL most players’ bankrolls will last longer than in NL or PL and that tips the balance the other way in the long-run. At the end of the day, the amount of rake you generate will depend on the blind levels you play at.

Best Pot Limit Badugi Action at Carbon Poker