According to Google, most searches using the search term poker, have been made from France in the last 12 months. Especially Marseille seems to be a real poker city.
Google Trends shows that the most searches with poker search term are made in the following countries:
1. France
2. Hungary
3. Netherlands
4. Belgium
5. Austria
6. Switzerland
7. Germany
8. Denmark
9. Canada
10. Finland
Source: Google Trends
At December I wrote about customized playing cards with Poker Evolver logo. The decks arrived couple of weeks ago so the delivery time was not very long. Here’s some thoughts about the cards.
It was a nice surprise when opening the package that the card cases had also custom image printed on them. You can see this from the photo above. (I’m sorry about the bad quality of the images, it was not my fault 
).
The cards itself are coated paper cards ( I didn’t even expect plastic cards ). The quality of them is pretty standard. The cards are fine when you are playing home games with your friends. For more serious live games you should consider 100% plastic playing cards.
There is actually nothing very surprising about the cards. The quality is ok and so is delivery time (even to Europe). I think that customized playing cards would be probably a great gift to almost anyone since you can use whatever image or photo you like.
Customized playing cards can be designed at Custom Poker Cards
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Matti
Poker Evolver - Poker Tracking Tool
Poker Evolver is now able to calculate your risk of ruin. With this value you see what is the probability that you will lose all your poker bankroll with your current playing style and stakes. You are also able to conclude whether you are playing at too high levels.
Risk of Ruin is calculated from our test data where it is not very high 
Risk of ruin shows the probability of loosing your entire bankroll. If you are interested about maths, Risk of Ruin is calculated at Poker Evolver using the following equation:
Angel Largay has an article about Bankroll Management using this equation. Mason Malmuth has also comprehensive explanation at his book Gambling Theory and other topic. Information about calculating hourly win rate and hourly standard deviation can be found from Poker Evolver User’s Manual.
This equation is not 100% accurate in the real world because it assumes that your win rate and hourly standard deviation are constant. In reality these both change all the time. It also takes many thousand hands before the equation gives good results but that’s not a problem to us, is it?
It depends how big risk you are willing to take. I would say however that if your risk of ruin is bigger than 1%, you should consider playing at lower stakes. If you can’t continue playing after losing your current roll, you can’t take very big risks.
If you want to move up fast and are not so worried going broke, your risk of ruin can be higher. In this case remember that scary money does not win.
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Matti
Poker Evolver - Poker Statistics Software
I was testing some Party Poker hand histories that were sent to us because Poker Evolver was not able to import them correctly. I noticed that those were all heads up hands which had problems.
The reason why Poker Evolver had problems interpreting the hands, is that in the heads up situation the player on the button gets Big Blind! Yes, that’s true, at least on the cash games. And it is definitely wrong. It is said in the Bob Ciaffone’s Rules Of Poker: “In heads-up play with two blinds, the small blind is on the button.” I haven’t played much at Party so I haven’t ever realized this before.
These rules gives a huge edge for the player on the button because he/she can act last on the pre-flop as well as on the flop. Having position is very important at heads up so you should play more hands than usual from the button and less hands when you don’t have the button.
A screenshot of a heads up situation at Party Poker above.
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Matti
Poker Evolver Team
I found that it’s possible to order customized playing cards without ordering hundreds of decks. Of course I had to try it out and I ordered couple of Poker Evolver decks The result can be seen in the video below.
I will report about the quality of cards after I get the decks.
Cards can be designed at: Custom Poker Cards
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Matti
Poker Evolver Team
Poker was the most famous search term at Lycos in year 2007. It seems that poker is not going anywhere altough this has been a tough year for poker. This result shows that poker boom still continues which is good news for all poker players.
Other top search terms were MySpace, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Source: Lycos
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