The WSOP Europe event is about to begin again. It seems like only yesterday that Annette Obrestad won her first bracelet as an 18-year-old, beating a field of some of the best players in the world to win over $2M. The events start on Sept 19 and end on October 2. Online poker rooms are offering different satellites that could get you there; here’s what Bodog poker has scheduled.

You can qualify for a quarterfinal satellite for as little as $1+$0. You still need to climb the levels to the finals. These cheap satellites run every day at 11:15am. You can get to that same quarterfinal by finishing deep enough in a 100-point tournament. Straight entry into the quarterfinal is $54+$4, or $22+$2 re-buy event. The big one is the $500+$40 semi-final qualifier, with two players winning an all-inclusive package to the main event.

When playing online poker position is very important, but it’s not everything. Position plays an important role in stealing small pots when no one shows aggression in a hand, or when you have a big hand and other players are betting into you. But position isn’t everything in online poker.

It’s more important in no-limit poker than it is in limit or pot limit. Limit poker offers players good pot odds most of the time, so playing hands from any position is more common. In a no-limit game it’s easier to push opponents off of a hand because you can make a large bet into a pot after everyone has passed on it.

Players online tend to be more aggressive than live game players, so position bets are often called. It’s tougher to get away with late position bluffs because everyone expects the late position player to make a bet.

Season One of the Asian Poker Tour was a big success. Big enough that season Two has been planned for this fall, beginning in September in Macau. That event will be from the 1st to the 19th. The other events will be in Korea, New Zealand, The Philippines, and Australia.

The Korean event will be held on September 26-28 in Seoul. It will be at the Paradise Walker-Hill Casino with a buy-in of $2870, with a maximum of 250 players. The New Zealand event will take place on October 9-12 at the Skycity Casino in Auckland. Buy-in will be $2400.

Manila’s Hyatt Hotel & Casino will host the Philippines APT event. Dates for the event are being determined, but the cost of the main event will be $2350. The last event in Australia will be on December 2-7. They will host it in Sydney, and it will cost $5,930.

In Chinese poker you are dealt 13 cards that must be arranged into three poker hands, two hands of five cards and one hand of three cards. They are called the back hand, the middle hand, and the front hand. The back must be worth more than the middle, and the middle must be worth more than the front.

When everyone is ready the hands will be shown and compared to other corresponding hands. If your hand is better, you win one betting unit for each better hand, and lose one for every hand that is beat. Equal hands result in a tie, and no bets are exchanged.

Depending on how the rules are laid out, you can win more with certain card combinations, called royalties. If a player mis-sets his hand he must pay everyone still in the hand an amount equal to being scooped all three hands.

No, this is not an example of short table poker.

Stealing the blinds at a short table is something you’ll need to do if you hope to make any money. Short table settings are usually dominated by the most aggressive player, and blind stealing is the first aggressive move you can make in a hand. The shorter the table, the lower the chances of your opponents having a premium hand. Raising when you have position will often lead to the blind positions folding and giving them to you.

Some players will defend their blinds with inferior cards and others won’t. Figure out who’s who and try and take advantage every time an opportunity presents itself. Blind stealing works best from the late positions, but if the table is tight and you’ve established a good table presence it can be done successfully from any position. And the bigger the blinds, the more important it is to try and steal them.

A fine example of poker art…

Playing winning poker is not a consistent thing where you win all the time. Poker has its ups and downs for any player; no one wins all the time. Being a winning poker player means that you play a sound consistent game; never tilting off money when things turn sour for awhile. Poker pays in the long run. If you maintain good play the numbers will eventually make you a winner. Winning poker requires skills and experience, new players may win at times, but few know how to play properly.

Besides playing decisions during a hand, winning players know how to select good games to play in, and when they should stop playing. Winning also includes proper bankroll management. You should be playing in games that your bankroll can support, and in tournaments that won’t use up too much of your cash. Otherwise you’ll eventually go broke when you’re losing.

HORSE tournaments are mixed poker variation events. After every rotation of the button, the game switches to a different variation. There are a few different mixed poker tournaments, with HORSE being the one with the most variations played. The games are Holdem, Omaha, Razz, Seven-card-stud, and Seven-card-stud eight or better.

The best general strategy is to wait for the variations where you feel the strongest, and stay out of the action in ones that you’re still learning to play, unless you have a monster hand. And don’t forget which variation it is, if you forget which one you’re playing it can be very costly.

Playing HORSE will make you a stronger player. There’s lots of action online for HORSE, but unless you’re in Vegas or Atlantic City, they tend to be rare in live casinos.

You should know how to play each variation before trying out one of these tournaments.

Over betting your hand is rarely the right move in poker. Many novice players will use the all-in bet as a defensive move, hoping to get their opponent to fold. This maneuver might be successful a couple of times, but you’ll eventually run into a hand and get busted up. Even betting too much with a hand that you think is in the lead, but not the nut hand, is not recommended. Any action you’ll get on this bet will most likely beat you. That’s where value betting comes into the game.

The only time it’s a good move to over bet a hand is when you’re trying to represent the situations I talked about previously. If you have a big hand, sometimes an over bet can look like a bluff, and if your opponent has something that qualifies as a hand, they may try and make a big call on you.

The last time professional golfer Rocco Mediate made a run at the U.S. Open he also played in the Main Event at the WSOP. Mediate finished tied for sixth in 2005, not quite as heartbreaking as his runner-up finish to Tiger Woods this year. His golfing stats include five PGA Tour wins, and another four wins in high-profile invitational events.

Rocco compares poker to golf in the way he feels his way through the game – not being robotic, using his instincts to guide him to decisions. He and Greg Raymer have golfed and played poker together, sharing tips and strategies for each. Maybe Rocco will take some of that second-place U.S. Open prize money and take a run at the WSOP Main Event this year. He has no major cashes on the felt to date, but maybe we’ll still see him on the poker tours after he retires from golf.

Season 5 of the European Poker Tour kicks off in September 2008 in Barcelona with nine events scheduled, including the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo and a welcome return to Deauville, France, in January.

“The new EPT season includes all the events which have made the past four seasons such a triumph with record fields across Europe and record prize pools,” said EPT Chief Executive John Duthie. “We have set very high standards and aim to improve on this still further in Season 5.”

“This year’s EPT kicks off in the magnificent city of Barcelona at the beginning of September. The tour will take in nine countries including the return of the ever popular Deauville event in France and we are expecting to add new venues to the tour. Last year’s EPT proved a massive success, generating a total prize pool of almost Euros 40,000,000 ($62,000,000), 5,902 players and the biggest single prize pool ever generated outside Las Vegas at the Monte Carlo Grand Final. We anticipate the EPT making an even bigger impact in Season 5, attracting more players from all around the world and even larger prize pools.”