Regardless of the select game type, only play money games are supported by PokerTH. When it comes to local poker games against the computer, users can select the total number of players for the poker table, the starting cash, blind progression settings and a game speed.

There is no difficulty setting available, at least none that is configurable on the front end. Network games use the same configuration settings with the difference that timeouts for player actions and delays between hands can be configured as well.

There is no option to create a tournament online or change the game mode from Texas Holdem to another poker variant. A click on Internet game opens a log in screen where users can log in with their account or as guests.

The lobby displays all players and games. A click on Join any game joins one of the available games. It is possible to create games, even as a guest. Games can be protected with a password which is nice if you only want to play with your friends. The remaining settings are exactly the same as the local area network poker game settings. Game Type is listed but not selectable, at least not as a guest.

One of the issues in play money games are users who go all in all the time. This makes some games unplayable. It is usually a better idea to play against the computer or friends who take poker seriously.

Registered users are automatically added to an online leaderboard where scores, win and loss, percentages, trends and other stats are displayed.

A couple hundred players are usually online at any time of the day. That’s a small number compared to the big poker rooms with tens of thousands of players.

Still, poker players who prefer to play offline or in a lan may find that PokerTH is a very suitable program for that purpose. The latest version of the program and its source code can be downloaded at the developer website.

Clicking on the Partypoker icon would load something from the hard drive but the Partypoker interface would not appear. I took a quick look at the taskmanager and saw that the partygaming executable was indeed running. The question remained, why was the Partypoker application not appearing in Windows Vista ?

I first thought it was a problem with some of the new security applications that were running by default in Windows Vista. Disabling them did not help me at all though. The next idea was to start Partypoker as an administrator and guess what: The Partypoker application appeared and I was able to login and play my games again.

So, if you run into the same problem try running Partypoker as an administrator.

Winning money in those online tournaments is not that difficulty as it sounds, I was able to win a shootout tournament 2 weeks after I started playing poker winning more than 1000$. I started at the play money tables getting an understanding of the game. As I said I never played Poker before in my life and I did not want to loose real money in the learning process.

Play money games were nice, I understood the rules, had some nice games and decided to move on and play with some real money. I used one of partypokers incentives to get 75$ out of the 50$ I paid into my account. (i listed all coupons in the menu of the site). Partypoker has some nice options to gain more money that you can play with than you pay them.

I did not want to add more money because I was not really sure if I would be able to compete with the real money players. I tried a lot of tournaments and games in this time, all with relativly low limits (like a tournament buy in of 6$, some free tournaments for new players) and was able to cash in some additional money.

After that I found out about a tournament that I’am really good in, called shootouts. They are not your usual tournaments where you need to make it under the best 180 players of 1000 to win some money. You play with 9 other players on the table and have to make it under the last three to win money.

The tournament has four rounds and you have to make it to the last three in the first three rounds. The last round is elimination with all the players left. (Usually between 9 and 27).

That’s were I won the 1000$ and that’s were I tend to play when I have time for it.

Oh, my name is Mab74 at partypoker, maybe we see each other in those tournaments one evening, would love to, they have a chat so let me know if you are a visitor of ghacks..

The second announcement is about my holidays – I will be visiting Prague this week for 5 days which means I probably won’t have time to update ghacks at this time. I thought about writing articles before and publish them successively on the days that I’am away. Oh, if you have tips like nice places to visit let me know, always looking for that kind of things.