Free Poker Tools  Online Poker Forums: rec.gambling.poker and 2 2 forum The best thing about each of these forums is that they represent the wide variety that can be found in the poker community: everyone from beginners to experts and professional poker players, for all variations of the game, whether that game is homepoker, IRC, online, or at the real casinos. The advice and feedback is free- and often, fairly helpful. Now that Google has access to the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup and its archive, it's also easy to search on a particular topic of your choice. We wish the valuable 2 2 forum had an Archive that was as easy to search (in its entirety)!  Software Analysis: Pokenum - Poker Hand Analyzer This is an excellent tool for determining hand strength for Holdem, Stud, and Lowball. This program simulates many hands so that you can determine the win% of your hand vs. other hands. A cool feature is you can add cards to the board, and see how your hand strength changes relative to others, as the board progresses. Very Cool. Plus, it's open source code so you can help make it better should you have the skills to do so.  Tools to Design Your Own Poker Program: Evergreen Poker Club , University of Alberta's Computer Poker Research Group, and PokerSource
If you're a C programmer or comfortable learning a computer language in order to design your own poker simulation, these are great resources with downloadable code. The mathematically-inclined will also find much of value here, particularly among the online publications available from the University of Alberta's Computer Poker Research Group.  Best Info for Hold 'em Poker (Beginners): ChessandPokerdotcom James Yates of ChessandPokerdotcom offers up a wonderful limit Hold'em strategy guide for players who are aware of the basics of the game and are ready to improve.
 IRC Poker To get started, read the FAQ (frequently-asked-questions) for rec.gambling.poker which explains the concept of IRC as a real-time network poker game that is played for free.  Best Feedback for Advanced Players: Forum at Pokernews.com This section of the Pokernews.com Forum specifically targets questions from experienced players. Answers are often provided by pro players with the experience to offer sound advice.  Poker News Site: ChipNews.org This site is a terrific source of poker related news, including regularly updated items from an unbiased pair of poker enthusiasts. The reader can find book reviews, interviews and answers to many questions. We also really appreciate their efforts to keep the banner ads to a minimum.
 Tournament Schedules and General Info We like PokerPages best (although CardPlayer has an easy-to-follow format) with European coverage going to European-Poker.  Protection from Cheating: Top-10 Resources to Avoid Poker Cheats In addition to being aware about the information you and others provide, often unconsciously, during a game (via body language), it also pays to be aware of a separate behavior- cheating. Knowledge and awareness, as usual, is your best protection and the above link contains the best collection of information that we could find on the Net to address issues of cheats in brick & mortar casinos, home games, and online poker rooms.
On a totally separate note, if you want the best book available on body language, check out the most recent edition of Mike Caro's Book of Tells (you can find out more about this in our Top-10 Books list), which he's updated in response to the reverse-tells that often occur these days (deliberate use of a particular body language to fool other players into thinking what you want them to think).  Best Collection of Strategies, Rules, & Stats:
GoCee.com's Poker Center Our favorite section here is titled "Chance & Probability in Poker" and contains a plethora of good links. Perhaps the only major link missing in any section on probabilities is mention of the book "Percentage Hold 'em" by Justin Case (aka Will Hyde), which narrowly missed a place on our Top-10 Poker Books. Check out Nick Christenson's review to understand why we believe it merits a mention, but not a spot of its own.
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