Bad Pitching
You know who doesn’t get discussed when talking about arguably baseball’s strongest division, the NL East? Yeah, that would be the Orioles. Far from the days of Mussina, Key and Erickson, I’m going to easily make the case that this team has the worst pitching staff in all of baseball this year. And in doing so, hopefully scare you off from even considering placing a dime on them. Because shaky pitchers can be murder on baseball betting lines – Vegas or between gentleman.
Here’s who we’re looking at, and as I said, it ain’t pretty.
Jeremy Guthrie, who despite what some fans might want to believe, has not proven himself as either reliable or a starting pitcher.
Koji Uehera may have only given up one run this spring training against guys who’ll be back with him in the minor leagues come June, but I question his velocity and ability to go deep in the game. He might find a better niche in the Orioles bullpen.
Chris Waters, Rich Hill and Adam Eaton round out, for now, the starting five. What you have in those three is a couple no names and a “he’s got potential” tag in Hill.
When it comes down to it, Guthrie, penciled in right now as the best of the bunch, wouldn’t even make the rotation on most other teams. He’s been almost painful to watch pitch if you’ve seen him recently. The rotation is exceptionally weak.
OK, but Baltimore will have competition at the bottom of the barrel here. The Pirates and Nationals both have terrible pitching, and unlike Baltimore, Pittsburgh seems stuck with what they have – there’s no help on the way in the farm system in terms of quality pitchers. At least the Orioles have Arrieta, Matusz and Tillman to look forward to. The Nats do have Zimmerman, but…
So hope may be on the horizon for the Orioles, but I wouldn’t put any money on this bunch all year long. Every so often you get more than what you pay for in pitching, and as Baltimore fans know they didn’t pay much this off-season, but this isn’t one of those instances. In fact, forget the pitching…after realizing the lineup and given they have to face every other NL east team in their division alone 19 times each, the Orioles might just compete for worst overall record in the league.
How to Play Poker for Real Money for Free
There is one way that poker players are able to play online poker for real money absolutely free without any initial investment. The way you can do this is through freeroll tournaments which are held daily on many of the online poker rooms. With so much competition in the online poker industry many of the top poker rooms offer some amazing freeroll tournaments on a daily basis with thousands available to win.
A lot of freeroll tournaments are only available for new players to a poker room which means if you’re not a new player in the poker room you won’t be able to play in those ones. There are however still some freepoker tournaments for established members as well and you’ll just need to sort through them.
Freeroll tournaments will be found in the tournament lobby of the poker room and you’ll need to find the times by checking here. Most established poker rooms run these tournaments everyday, but smaller poker rooms don’t so you’ll need to check out the lobby for the poker room you play. A lot of young and new poker players spend all there time online playing in freeroll tournaments because they don’t have there own bankroll that they can use.
New players have an excellent chance of building up a bankroll through FullTiltPoker.net freeroll tournaments, and if you play enough of them you might win one. Most of these tournaments draw in a lot of different players so the playing field is massive generally and the tournaments usually take a couple hours to complete. You will need a lot of time and patience in order to finish in a money placing, but if you play good poker then it won’t be difficult.
Most players are very loose in these tournaments since the tournament didn’t cost them any money so you can take advantage of this. Your strategy should be to wait for big hands and capitalize once you receive big hands. Typically every hand will have betting on the tables so all you need to do is act weak when you get a monster hand and allow your opponents to feed you chips. Don’t try bullying in these tournaments if you’re looking to win money because most of the time people will call you with anything.
Many players can’t stand building a bankroll through freeroll tournaments because it can take awhile before placing in the money, but for young new poker players this is a great method. PokerStars Freeroll tournaments can also be great for you if you want to test out a poker room and see how you like it. Instead of depositing in the room you can play a freeroll tournament and if you like the poker room then you can decide if you want to make a deposit into the room or not.
As you can see it’s definitely possible to play pocker for free and win real money, but with a lot of competition you’re going to need some skill and luck to win money. It still is great experience though for new players and you’ll improve your poker game if it’s the only thing you do while playing in the tournaments.
Omaha Poker
Omaha poker is increasingly becoming more popular amongst poker players and it’s a great game to learn while it’s still picking up. There is some easy money to win in this game online due to the large number of new players trying out the game. A lot of players are switching from Texas Holdem to Omaha as well and most of them don’t do good adjusting there style of play. Omaha is another poker game that is simple to learn and we’re going to learn how to play the game now. Start off by getting the latest Poker Stars Download software package and installing it onto your computer. Then open up the tab for Omaha poker, and follow the instructions below.
There is a fifty two card deck used in the game and there is also a dealer button that is passed around the table. The dealer button is used to represent the player who is the dealer that hand. It gets passed around the table in a clockwise motion and never changes direction. The two players who are sitting to the left of the dealer button need to place forced bets into the pot. This guarantees that there will be action in every pot that is played.
Once the blinds have placed there forced bets in the pot the dealer will deal out four cards to each player which triggers the first round of betting. After the PokerStars.com cards are dealt there is a round of betting where you can choose to play the hand or fold. Once every player has made there decision and everyone has folded or called there is three cards turned over. These first three community cards is known as the flop. After the flop there is another round of betting and then the fourth card known as the turn is flipped over. Another round of betting takes place and then the final community card known as the river is flipped over at which point the last round of betting commences.
If there are still players in the pot after the last round of betting then the cards are flipped over to see who wins. The most important thing to remember when you’re looking at your hand is that you can only use two cards from your hand and three cards from the community cards. New players on FullTilt often make the mistake of thinking they can use 3 or 4 of the cards from there hand, but the rules are simple and you can only use two cards from your hand.
In Omaha poker on Full Tilt Poker the action is typically loose so make sure you don’t chase down hands too often as it will hurt your chip stack. You also need to note that most winning hands in this game are full houses, straights and flushes, so if you’re sitting with two pair and someone is betting large be careful. With four cards in your hand players usually have lots of options for making straights and flushes. The game can be played online in most poker rooms although I recommend Poker Stars since they have a lot of Omaha poker players who are active and play everyday. You should always be able to find an Omaha game at Poker Stars no matter what time it is.