Halloween Party Ideas for a Spooky Holiday

August 30th, 2010

What better night to be postively devilish than Halloween? Halloween is a time to let go of your inhibitions, forget about the humdrum nine to 5, get a little mad and be someone else - just for one night. If you are throwing a dress up celebration this Halloween, gather great halloween party ideas, cocktails, treats and friends together for a spooktacular night with a frightful theme like a 7 Deadly Sins Celebration! Pride, lust, greed, envy, sloth, wrath and gluttony will all play a part in making your party a wicked winner. Make “sin stations” for your guests and have an awards ceremony at the end.

Get imaginative with your decorations and transform your house into a haunted mansion. String Up cobwebs, orange and black streamers, ghouls, witches, spooks, and autumn pumpkins all throughout your home so that your guests can enjoy this spooky occasion! Ask your DJ to set the mood of the celebration by playing basic Halloween songs, such as “The Monster Mash” and “Thriller.” This will get your friends excited about the celebration and encourage them to break out some moves on the dance floor!

Costumes, costumes, costumes! Make it obligatory for all of your invitees to come dressed in their favored Halloween costumes. Dress up your pets and embellish the space in creepy orange and black motif decor and spook your guests with a creeptastic menu and colorfully frightful beverages. There are plenty of standard costumes, costumes for pairs, unique costumes and fun kids costumes to pick from!

Halloween Party Food, Cocktails, Anad Decorations for Your Party Wicked Treats: Halloween Party Food Ideas Spooktacular Halloween Party Food Recipes

August 7th, 2010

Make Halloween an extra special affair this year. Drop the stress, and enjoy it. We have some decadent recipes and quick, effortless hints to make a effortless Halloween party complete with halloween party food thoughts, decorations, cocktails and more for a frightful evening to frighten up your taste buds and indulge in some delightful decadence. Nothing like frightful food and a mysterious menu to treat guests to a creepy celebration.

One of the most delightful hostess gifts to give this Halloween treats is Do-it-yourself baskets. Create an amazing variety of presents with blossoms, produce and halloween decor, to thank your host or hostess for a wicked good time. Repurpose everyday items like mason jars and wooden cartons, and fill with dried stalks of corn, gourds or autumn pumpkins for a festive centerpiece. Blend multiple kinds of candy in bulk and add to a mixture of vases, jars and containers to create the ultimate halloween candy bar for friends to enjoy.

Buy ‘creepy cloth’ in black and gray and use it to drape over furniture, pictures, mantels, chandeliers, etc. to create a feeling of a haunted house! It is simply cheesecloth specially colored and shredded, and you could probably create it yourself if you have the time and energy! Visit a Halloween shop or online retailer to buy some effects like body parts, creatures, “Goretraits” (pictures that move when you walk past) and other fun Halloween items. Remove everyday knick-knacks and substitute with creepier decor, like a huge rubber rat peeking out from a pile of books, or a jar filled with eyeballs and green goo.

Spec Hands

June 30th, 2010

Speculative hands are pocket cards that don’t have a high percentage chance of winning in online poker games, but when they do hit, they generally hit big. A good example of a spec hand would be something like Ace-5 suited. If you’re dealt an Ace-5 of Hearts, you’re right to be a bit disappointed. Even if you do hit your Ace on the flop, your kicker is nothing to get excited about, and pairing a 5 probably won’t win you the poker online game. On the other hand, if three more Hearts make it to the table, you’ve got a nut flush on your hands and you’re almost guaranteed to rake in the pot. This is a pretty obvious example, but a spec hand is any less than premium hand that you’re willing to bet on. Even a 7-2 offsuit can find its way into a full house with a 7-7-2 flop.

Spec hands are risky, but they come with huge payoffs when they hit. If the flop comes out 7-7-2 and you made a full house with the worst hand in poker games, nobody at the table is going to suspect that you’ve got it, so you shouldn’t have any trouble fattening up the pot. Just remember-they usually don’t pay off, so don’t play too many of them or the costs will outweigh the benefits. Only play them when you can afford to lose a big blind or two.

Jamie Gold: Telling the Truth

March 1st, 2010

Historically, online poker is a game of deception. Poker players are known as liars at the table, as you never want to let on what you are holding. When you do, it is often equitable to death.

With that in mind, sometimes telling the truth under the expectation of lying can be even more deceptive than straight ahead lying. Because players now are so expecting that you are trying to deceive them, they might find it difficult to believe that you are actually telling the truth. It’s a whirlwind circle, but no matter how deep you are, it’s just really hard to believe someone would actually be honest in a game of thieves.

No one has exhibited the value of being honest in online poker more than Jamie Gold. In his World Series of Poker main event win, Gold baffled his opponents time and time again by often telling them exactly what he had. If he had a monster, he would say he had a monster. His opponents were so indignant that he would be so forthcoming, that in effect it seemed like lying, and they tended to pay him off every time just to see it. The effect was brilliant, and won him the title.

The more you can throw kinks in your game, and offset expectations, the more you are going to get paid when you want to, and avoided when you don’t. Remember these things when you play poker online.

Do Poker Celebrities Ruin Our Dreams?

February 9th, 2010

There was a time not so very long ago, when we all believed that we could be the next great poker thing. Just at the moment when it became possible for someone to make a living off of their celebrity status as a online poker player, the online poker was flush with optimism that such rankings were based on merit. We were told, as players, that if we were good enough, if we studied hard enough, and if we practiced enough, we too could get our fifteen minutes of fame. Well, fifteen minutes have now passed, and many of us have been left on the shadier side of the street. We are not bathed in the light like the poker celebrities. We are the amateurs.

The problem with this development is that we no longer root for our own. Instead of championing the geniuses of our rank, we turn to those that are already established. We turn to the poker celebrities because they had the skill to succeed when we could not. They are the celebrities, and we are the adoring masses. We have found new poker gods, however, but lost our dreams. Maybe it’s time we realize that the poker celebrities are not everything they are supposed to be. We need to find new idols.

Smart Steals

December 21st, 2009

Texas Hold ‘Em poker online tournaments are formatted to facilitate elimination of players through escalating blinds. For those poker online players who have survived down to the last 25 percent or so of players, it becomes imperative to build up your chip stack to prevent erosion by the blinds.

Unless you get very lucky, you will have to attempt to steal the blinds sometimes. Being able to win some pots uncontested is a must. There are few things to consider when looking for the best opportunities for stealing the blinds.

Position is everything in blind stealing, and the optimal position to do it is when you are first to enter the pot after the blinds. You want to represent strength right away. The only disadvantage to this poker strategy is the chance you may get called by a bettor behind you. You must take notice of the stacks between yourself and blinds. If there are medium stacks behind you, then the raise is a good strategy. With an exceedingly large stack or desperate short stack behind you and in front of the blinds, then you risk your raise being called. Against the short stack, it could still be a good tactic with any live cards.

The biggest threat of a call is from the blinds themselves, who are already invested in the pot. How big are their stacks and how tight or loose have they played? When attempting to steal blinds, stack size and player styles are the most important factors in your decision.

Exploiting Position

December 2nd, 2009

In the manner of thinking about playing your position in online poker, the general idea is that you want to get more money in the pot when you have a positional advantage, often regardless of the cards that you have. Playing in position bestows the player with a situational advantage in that he gets to ask after everyone else, and is therefore more likely to win the pot based on presence alone.

The popularity of position raising, then, is based on the fact that most of the time, your online poker opponents are not going to pick up a hand, and even if they do, they will be scared off by the flop, when they miss or scare cards come. Though obviously this is not always the case, as sometimes players do genuinely make hands, the odds of them making the hand versus not are extremely in favor of notthus giving more value to the player that is more aggressive. And because it is easier to be aggressive when your opponent has already shown weakness, you want to play more pots in position for more money.

In a way, online poker is about exploiting the best times to get your money into a pot while putting pressure on your opponents to make a mistake. Imagine watching a roulette wheel and seeing the odds on your bet change (as the odds of your hand winning, and the odds of your opponent folding change) as the wheel spins to let you enter where you will.

Play Your Position

November 2nd, 2009

Whatever variation of the online poker you are playing, one rule is constant-play your position. In poker, the betting order rotates around the table, and the closer you are to being the last to act, the more of an advantage you will have.

Players in an earlier betting position are forced to act (check, bet, or fold) without having any idea of what the players who bet after them are going to do, while the player who is last to act (or “on the button”) gets to see how everyone else has bet, and can act accordingly.

If you are first to act and you make a raise with a moderate hand like 10-J suited, it’s entirely possible that you may be re-raised by an opponent holding a hand like pocket Queens. On the other hand, if you’ve got a risky hand on the button, you can see what the other players will do, and decide whether or not your hand is worth playing when you play poker online. Also, players who are last to act are in a much better position to buy an uncontested pot with a big raise. For example, if the entire table checks after the flop, it can mean that nobody saw what they liked, and the button player can usually buy the pot with a good raise. Since your advantage varies in relation to your position, it makes sense that the value of your starting hands will also depend on your position.

"when I Was Alone": Thoughts on the Transition to Table Poker

July 29th, 2009

One of the most difficult conundrums facing the modern poker player is how to effectively move from poker en ligne to actual table play. There may be a future on the horizon where table play itself is a thing of the past, but that day is not today. We still live in an age where out top skill poker tournaments are held in person. You can earn your entry online through a satellite online poker tournament if you are lucky, but at the end of the day you need to put down the keyboard and pick up the cards. The lure of online poker is its ease and the ability to do it when completely alone. It is one of the most suggested ways to learn poker because it allows you to focus without the distraction of other players. You learn alone, you practice alone, and in the end you play alone. It is a solitary sport. Playing in person, however, is not so solitary. Even those among us who love the blissful solitude of online poker are thrown into the harsh glare of social interaction when we take our place at the felt. It is a shocking change, often underestimated by new players. I cannot stress enough that you need to prepare yourself for social poker. You are going to lose your solitude in order to play. Don’t be disheartened though- you can always go back to online poker after you win the championship.

The Joys of Aerogarden

February 26th, 2009

It would be great if we all had beautiful, leafy gardens in our back yards, but the thing about living in a densely populated city, is that you have to sacrifice things like gardens for the sake of living in the thick of it. Thankfully, not owning a garden doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice the joy of growing your own seeds, herbs and fruits. You can now have your very own indoor garden which uses unique hydroponic technology so that your seeds grow in water and air rather than soil. This not only produces the very best results, it also gets rid of all the aches and pains of fully throttle hands-on gardening. There’s no messy soil to worry about, you don’t get your fingers dirty, but you do get the same pleasure of nurturing your own produce, and watching it spring to full and vibrant life before your very eyes. Now everyone; the old, the less-abled, the hay-fever sufferer, the agoraphobe, even those with garden phobias, can have the satisfaction of gardening without the added exertion. There’s nothing like the joy of having watched a seed develop and then reaping the rewards. Most of aerogarden’s products, which include chilli, cherry tomato, edible flowers and herbs, are edible. So, you can use them in your cooking. Watch how your guests gush and gawp at the added freshness and home-grown feel of all your culinary concoctions.

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