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Carmello Anthony scored 41 points and the Denver Nuggets used a second half comeback to give the Portland Trailblazers a rare 97-94 loss at their Rose Garden Arena home venue on Thursday night. The Blazers held a 67-62 lead heading into the final quarter but for the second time in as many games had trouble putting their opponent away. Brandon Roy led Portland with 30 points, and Greg Oden was the high rebounder for the home team with 9 boards. Portland is now 1-1 on the young NBA season, while Denver improved to 2-0.

NBA pointspread players who took Denver as +8 road underdogs enjoyed their outright victory and the ensuing payday. The Nuggets have covered the number in both of their victories this season, while Portland evened their ATS mark at 1-1. The’1 combined points went UNDER the posted total of 200.

After the game, Anthony was happier about the victory than his personal offensive outburst:

“We came out here and stole the win. It wasn’t just an important win. It was a battle.”

Anthony made 7 of 9 shots from the floor and 9 of 10 free throws in the decisive fourth quarter run:

“My shots were going in. I was trying to attack. I got to the rim and the foul line.”

Portland’s Greg Oden was taking the loss hard, as he missed a couple of late game free throws that could have given the Blazers a lead:

“This is a tough one. I definitely stepped up there with confidence thinking I was going to hit both and it didn’t go that way. I put this loss on me. I need to step up and make those.”

Team leader Brandon Roy said that he’d give the Blazers’ big man a pep talk, underscoring the fact that missed shots are just part of the game:

“The biggest thing is to let go. We all miss shots, you’ve got to forget about it.”

Roy also added that the choppy pace of the game with a lot of fouls called benefitted Denver playing in back-to-back games:

“I think it benefited them a bit more coming off a back-to-back. They were tired but anytime you slow the game down that much, it gives them a chance to recover.”

The Blazers will head to Texas for a rematch against the Houston Rockets on Halloween night. Portland beat the Rockets to open their NBA season. They’ll play at Oklahoma City on Sunday before returning home for a game at The Rose Garden against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday. Denver will head back to ‘The Mile High City’ for a game against Memphis on Sunday before an east coast road trip with stops in Indiana and New Jersey early next week.

Ross Everett is a world famous sports writer and an authority on sports betting and thoroughbred horse racing. He contributes NFL football betting free picks for a number of media outlets. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with three dogs and a pot bellied pig.

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Five Card stud goes back a long way in the annals of poker and remains very popular even today. Stud games include many varieties such as spread limit, fixed limit, no limit, pot limit and mixtures of all the above. Do not be misled by its relative simplicity, winning strategies demand more than a surface understanding of betting, positions and card combinations. As with any form of poker, the successful players will vary their strategies and tactics and will calculate odds at each move.

Texas Hold’em is the most popular form of poker played today with 5-card stud also popular in cash and tournament play. Five Card stud is not usually present in major tournaments, however it does show up quite often with traditional and cash players and those tournaments whose sole offering is 5-card stud.

The Way 5-Card Stud is Played

To begin the round, each player is dealt a face-up card and then a card face down. The rules can be such that the player with the lowest visible card antes up and the first betting round takes place. If there is a tie for the lowest card, the player with the largest ante begins the betting. After this betting round is done, another card is dealt face up and the player with the best visible hand starts the next round. Two more rounds of face-up cards are dealt and the best hand of 5 cards wins the game. All 5 cards are made visible at the end to determine the winning hand.

Maximum Winning Strategies for Five Card Stud

Because the game consists of only five cards in a hand, you can pretty much forget about drawing to straights and flushes. This fact may seem to make 5-card stud more straightforward than other poker types, but really all it means is that you need to concentrate on drawing to three of a kind, pairs, high cards or any combination thereof. It is a wise move to restrain your betting toward draw hands with their low odds, but you should bet with less constraint toward dual draws where the odds are far better to draw a straight or a different, stronger hand altogether.

The first rounds of the game will find most players betting towards pair hands, high cards or a mix of the two. Observe closely the hands of your fellow players and go for the pot only if you don’t draw an ace or a pair in your first three draws. Stud is a rather conservative game and does give you many chances to bluff, and revealing your bluffs can add to your ability to create even more effective semi-bluffs and/or aggressive strategies when you do draw into a strong hand.

There are many out there who play stud for its directness allowing them to readily pick up on tells and cues. Ergo, as a player you should carefully heed hands that your opponents fold on to pick up data on them for the upcoming rounds. As in all varieties of poker, observing and gaining insight into opponent’s moves can give you a major advantage.

For more information on how to play other poker games like Royal Holdem or Omaha Holdem please visit Rakeback Solution.

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The Green Bay Packers used 21 second quarter points and three Aaron Rodgers touchdown passes to easily dispatch the punchless Cleveland Browns 31-3 on Sunday. Rodgers threw two of his three touchdowns during the second quarter onslaught, adding a fourth quarter tally for good measure. Ryan Grant added–8 yards of rushing and a touchdown in the victory, in which the Packers dominated the statistical battle.

NFL football betting enthusiasts who laid the -8′ with Green Bay as road favorites cashed their tickets with the lopsided victory. Green Bay improved to 4-2 against the NFL pointspread while the Browns dropped to 3-4 against the number.

The Packers upped their intensity early in the game, after quarterback Aaron Rodgers was punched in the face during a scrum. He recounts what happened next:

“One of the linemen came over and said, ‘Who was it? We got your back. That means a lot to me and that means a lot to our team.”

David Bowens was the perpetrator, though he insisted he was simply playing hard:

“I was just trying to grab anything I had. It wasn’t malicious, I was just trying to get a stop. I apologized to him for it. He can call it what he wants to call it, but the refs didn’t call it. I’d treat him different if he was passing the ball, that’s different. But if he’s running the ball, he’s a running back. It’s called football.”

Browns’ quarterback Derek Anderson lamented his team’s struggles in postgame comments:

“We aren’t good right now. That’s it. Period. We haven’t executed. We haven’t done the right things to win ballgames. We haven’t run the ball effectively, thrown it where we needed to. We haven’t protected up front like we need to and caught it when we need to.”

Head coach Eric Mangini sounded a similar tone:

“It’s a very disappointing performance across the board. I don’t think we played very well. I don’t think we coached very well. I thought we were making progress in a lot of areas. I don’t think we showed that today — at all.”

The Packers now face a big game next Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings which will feature Brett Favre’s first return to Green Bay in a visiting uniform. The Packers are a -3 home favorite with the total set at 48. They’ll face the struggling Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following week before hosting the Dallas Cowboys on November 15. Cleveland will travel to Chicago for a game against the Bears next week, with the Browns installed as a +13′ road underdog and the total set at 40′.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and respected authority on football betting. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Northern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

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Aced Poker is an online poker site that is a real treat. The site has a lot to offer including such useful tidbits as strategy tips, rules and hand rankings of poker games from the most popular to the obscure. For the small space the application occupies, it is pleasantly full of gamete buttons and animated, blinking objects. It is a site that you will really want to plunge yourself into.

It has all the usual features of the standard online poker rooms like blogs, a bad beat jackpot meter, news section, and swagger barometer plus some exhilarating bonus offerings. The application is easy to navigate with its straightforward color coded keys and tabs. Ever in search of ways to rise above the competition, Aced Poker lets a player rabbit hunt, get two-time deals and reveal single cards. There are many other games besides poker that you can play on the site, including Euchre of all things. The site is easy to maneuver about and the transition between games and the level of the games is very smooth, both of which drive many a player to the site for cash and tournament play.

On the Aced Poker site you will find such unusual poker variants as triple draw and badugi. Cash games begin at the $.02/.04 level and go up to $50/100 making it a fine poker room for everyone regardless of where they sit on the risk aversion scale. You can buy into tournament play from as low as $.60 and as high as $415.00. For you extreme sports types, the site offers flipaments where players go all in on every hand until a victor surfaces. Four thousand folks can be found playing at any given time so there is always a game to be found. Mixed games are also a feature of Aced Poker with RASH (razz, draw, stud and holdem) and HAR (holdem, draw, and razz) so you can see that they are not averse to hosting a wide variety of games, making it even more intriguing to more players. Aced Poker is extremely customer oriented so expect to be treated very well every time you visit the site.

True to its name, the bonuses offered at Aced Poker are truly amazing. To begin with there is the extravagant prize of 40 times the big blind for every player who is dealt four aces. That not being enough for this site, there is the awesome Royal Flush promotion that pays 100 times the big blind to the fortunate winner. And we must not forget the ever popular Swagger VIP campaign whereby the points-per-play program allows trade-ins for store merchandise, tournament credits and cash. Aced Poker drops hints that appeal to the detective in the players by offering Aced Junkets to some special players that involves luxurious vacations where there are discussions about how to make online poker an even more enjoyable experience. With all this variety and customer orientation, it is no wonder that Aced Poker as a company is built on a solid base in order to efficiently manage all it has to offer.

Aced Poker is also interactive in its live chats, 24/7 email service and numerous help options to aid in the solution of any players problem whether it be technical with the site or a question of poker technique or method of play or whatever. There is a separate support website that can be accessed from a button on the main site that offers a FAQ section. Aced Poker goes well out of its way to the successful resolution of its clients problems, no matter how big or small.

So, get to this site if you are craving a variety of games played by a large population of happy poker folks and enjoy your visit.

For more poker room reviews like this one please check out reviews like our Power Poker Review, Poker Nordica Review, or any of the other poker room reviews at Rakeback Solution.

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Action poker offers just that, action. With its motto of “Get Some” you know you found a site that will challenge you to perform to your utmost level. Action poker is owned and operated by Ecom Enterprises which is a fully-owned subsidiary of Playsafe Holding AS, which tells you this is a company that knows its stuff.

Action Poker is regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and operates out of Norway (OTC). The company can definitely make the claim that it is a well-informed international poker establishment. Action Poker got its start in 1999 and is licensed by the Action Poker Network (APN). It is a site that has won the blessings of poker players for many years and will do all it can to make the players experience more enjoyable.

The software will only run on a PC platform with a Microsoft Windows environment of 98 or later and downloads in a blink. Don’t look for the software anywhere else as it is exclusive to the Action Poker site. When you log in, you will be instantly notified of the latest bonus which is a fun feature. MAC users are at a disadvantage as they cannot play on Action Poker.

The update tool, found under options at the top bar of the screen, is a dandy feature that lets you download the latest version of the software at anytime that is convenient to you. The software is drop-down and button-based making it intuitive and easy to navigate. You will also get a news ticker and flashing ads to keep you apprised of the latest in poker information and events. There are other nifty features of the application like links to the minutiae of all game rules under the help menu as well as a display of the casino and blackjack games right smack in front of you. The customer is king here.

You will encounter 300 tables with 3,000 players at any time on the site. Going further than just the standard games like limit, fixed limit and pot limit holdem, Omaha, and seven card stud, the ecstatic player will also come across more esoteric offerings. There is Guts poker, Monte Carlo Guts and Survivor Guts, all card games that will challenge even the most skilled player. Then there is a game called Pan which is rummy-based and popularly played by true gamblers in California.

Betting levels begin at $.01/.02 and go up to $50/100 making this site a must for players at every skill and bankroll level. There are not a lot of tournament games on the site, but those that are there offer such things as freerolls and superior formats which makes up for their numbers. Also, you can get in for a dime and make it grow or go for the World Series packages and buy in for $1,400. There is always something going on at Action Poker to give you the opportunity for some extra bonuses in a variety of games.

The Winter Games in Vancouver are a hallmark of the site and include tickets to the 2010 Men’s Hockey Gold Final in Vancouver. Bonuses are largely tournament based but Action Poker gives guarantees to attract more players and keep them satisfied. One of the neatest tournaments is called the Stan and Frieda Tournament and is a bounty tournament played on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. The attraction here is that players earn an extra 30 bucks if they can put Stan and Frieda under. Action Poker has a satellite to the World Series of Poker and you can be assured with that the site intends to be around for a long time.

Longevity fosters security and at Action Poker and with companies like the International Gaming Council, (IGC) and the random number generator tester ITECH Labs Australia, players will feel secure and cared for well into the future. An unusual aspect of the site is that it gives contact information to three gambling help agencies: GamCare, Gamblers Anonymous and The National Council on Problem Gambling. This is a company that cares for its players and wishes them success.

There is a 24 hour a day support group available by email to provide for any needs, questions or comments that a player might have. All are answered promptly and resolved to the satisfaction of the customer. It is an extremely secure platform so players never need to feel their privacy is compromised in any way and can focus on what matters – the poker. Action Poker is a supremely secure site.

Getting some is indeed an enjoyable experience at Action Poker. Don’t make the mistake of not getting any.

For more poker room reviews like this one please check out reviews like our Absolute Poker Review, Virgin Poker Review, or any of the other poker room reviews at Rakeback Solution.

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