World Blogger Championship of Online Poker 2005

Introduction to Poker and PokerStars

Over the years, we at PokerStars have greeted thousands of people who were new to the game. We know a lot of the participants in this tournament will be familiar with poker, but we don't assume that everyone will know everything.

A Safe Online Experience

PokerStars is proud of everything we've done to make your poker-playing experience as safe and enjoyable as possible. That means assembling the best team possible in every department, whether it's software and development, customer service or integrity assurance. We are proud to say that we have the most secure software in the business.

We Value Your Privacy

We do not share any personal information needed to register with our software with outside companies and we have made a substantial investment in our server, database, backup, firewall and encryption technologies to protect the information we store. (View our entire privacy policy by clicking on the link.)

How to play at PokerStars

In order to play poker at PokerStars, all you need to do is download our free software. It is a very easy process and will take no more than a few minutes to download and install. Our poker download is absolutely free and we offer both real money and free money tables for you to play at in our poker room.

Learning Poker and Texas Hold'em

Texas Hold'em is the most explosive poker game all over the world today. You have most likely seen the game played on the World Series of Poker, the World Poker Tour and other major events on TV. If you are not familiar with how to play hold'em, you can learn more about the game and rules on our Texas Hold'empage.

After you have brushed up on the rules, join one of our play money games to get some real world practice before the event. Even without depositing, you can still participate in one of the many poker freerolls (free tournaments), courtesy of PokerStars, where you can win real prize money and gain poker tournament experience. PokerStars runs freeroll tournaments everyday and is the best online poker site in the scope of poker tournaments that we offer.

Poker Tournament Tips

In anticipation of a large tournament, you will likely have to square off against quite a few of your fellow bloggers to achieve the fame and prizes you deserve. Of course, it helps to be a poker shark, but anyone can learn the fundamentals for playing well in tournaments. Here are some good tournament tips to live by:

- Don't play too many hands. Most of the poker greats can get by playing any two cards, but as a poker mortal, you will have the best luck playing 'premium' hands. Premium hands are hands like Ace/King, Ace/Queen, and high pocket pairs.

- Don't be afraid to be aggressive. Many players, especially new players, are afraid to bet or raise when they have a good hand. If you know that you have a winning hand, that means you'll want to win the pot by betting into it. Sometimes, just being the first to bet will be enough to make your opponents fold!

- Don't play TOO aggressive! The other biggest problem is getting carried away with the card shark attitude and trying to bully everyone out of the pot. Aggression is good, but can backfire quite fast if you don't keep it in check. Knowing when to fold is a skill of all top poker players.

- Observe your opponents. Just by watching your opponents play, you can figure out a whole lot about their style of play. Many poker tells are given off through betting patterns, so if you can pick up your opponents' patterns, you'll be a leg up on the competition.

- Practice! Like everything else in life, the more you pratice at something, the better you become at it. We encourage you to play in our free play money tables in our poker room, where we offer daily tournaments and freerolls for you to sharpen your skills.

Support Questions

If you have a question we haven't covered about how to play or about our software, our customer service team is standing by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. E-mail us at support@pokerstars.com if you have any questions or comments about our site.

If you have any questions specifically about the PokerStars Blogger Championship, please email us at bloggertournament@pokerstars.com.