The reason is simple: there are only ten spots available for natural free rankings on page one (which gets most of the traffic), but the number of competitors keeps on increasing. Market participants are getting more and more knowledgeable about SEO, so what was enough two years ago to land on the prime page one will not make the cut today and even less tomorrow. As webmasters have more content, more links, more know-how and more experience, and more SEO companies offer such services to the online gambling community, this is only going to get tougher.

So the only way to maintain or gain top rankings is by using top gambling SEO methods and by working harder and smarter then the competition. SEO is an art and a science. An art because it is based on a lot of empirical evidence and creativity is often what makes the difference between page one and page two. A science because the people with a scientific mind and scientific tools have an advantage over other folks who lack them. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Absolutety. Because search engines do not reveal the secrets of their algorithms, no one knows for sure the best way to rank at the top of the SERPs. Even within Google, only a handful of people have access to the entire code, and it is so complex anyway that they cannot know everything about it at one single point. So almost everyone is blind to how the page one results are produced, but the best SEO practitioners are the ones who can see enough to reap the fortunes available to savvy poker or casino webmasters.

The beauty of poker SEO is that there are so many misconceptions and myths which do not seem to disappear. The good news for some is that the webmasters who have such flawed understanding of SEO are doing something wrong, which gives others a competitive advantage. As in Davis Sklansky’s ‘Theory of Poker’, the fundamental theorem of poker says that each time you could play with more knowledge than your opponents, you have positive expected value. This is true in poker SEO as well. Each time you know more or better than other webmasters, you have gained.

Five operators were banned at the time (pokerstars, full tilt poker, absolute poker, UB Poker and Doyle’s Room), but smaller ones such as Carbon Poker were not accused of any wrong doing. One question is why.

Is it because the DOJ chose to focus on the bigger players and did not build a case against Carbon? Is it because Carbon Poker did not break the law (this seems hard to believe as the law practically forbids any form of gambling related fund transfer through the banking system). Or is it because they cannot at this time find any evidence proving their point (as the April indictment were possible thanks to an insider’s revelations).

Is it hard to tell, but if Carbon Poker has decided to come back, they must strongly believe that it is safe for them. Anyway this is a great news for American online poker players who now have one more option to play their favorite card game on the Web.

Unfortunately all current poker rooms participating in the US market are rather small, compared to the rooms that were shut down such as Pokerstars. These rooms offer good micro-limit or low-limit games, but high stake games have totally disappeared in America as well as large tournaments. So all pros for the most part cannot do much at this time, and their only choice if they want to continue their profession is to move to another country. And some do, to Canada, Costa Rica or Europe.

When will US online poker get finally properly regulated, that is the one million dollar question. And it is not expected to be happening until next year or maybe 2012. Congress should move a bit faster as the major benefit of such a new law would be to raise well needed taxes in a time of double dip recession. This will also create new jobs. So if France or Italy can regulate their own online gambling markets, it is time for the USA to do the same, is it not?

So if you like to play blackjack online or online roulette or many other fun games, then now you can play them almost anywhere as long as you get a signal to your iphone or mobile device. In other words in most urban areas in the developed world and in some in developing countries too. Most airports have free wifi, so even if you are traveling in some remote areas of the world such as the Tonga Islands for example (recommended by the way), then chances are you will be able to play a few hands against the blackjack dealer at some point during your trip and hit a few twenty-ones.

This is still a revolution in progress so do not expect to get all the convenience for playing games that you are used to from your computer. First of all there are less games available. Most online casinos offer ten to twenty games for now as they are working on developing these applications. Roulette, Blackjack as well as some slot machines are the games first offered. Also note that UK online casinos are ahead of the game compared to US online casinos as the latter are struggling with the difficulties of running their business stemming from the infamous UIGEA anti-gambling law.

Online poker rooms also offer a mobile format, but if you are serious about the game of Texas Hold’em, use this sparingly for the entertainment value only. First of all you cannot multi-table and most serious players do. Also you will probably get distracted when you are using your smart phone on the road, and poker requires concentration. But for all other casino games, this will be a lot of fun. So try mobile gambling today.

One typical scenario goes as follows:

I am losing slowly. I am sitting at pokerstars playing four tables of NL100. It seems not much is going on. I am not getting good cards pre or post flop. So my stacks all decrease slowly like under the influence of a fast paced erosion. This obviously does not put me in a great mood already.

In addition it seems that I miss all my draws. This adds to the fire of my rising anger. If this was not enough, I try a few continuation bet bluffs and I face a monster once, losing a good chunk of my stack. I get raised a lot pre and post flop, and this annoys me and makes it even worse. Because it feels like the other players at the table are able to play me like a puppet.

So I fold most of the times to these raises, but when I decide to take a stand and to defend my hand, I am against a big hand. Then I pre flop raise AK, miss the flop but got donk bet. This is aggravating as this is the case of a donk calling station making a donk bet, and if I had not missed this would have been the opportunity to take a big pot, but instead this makes me feel even lower.

Finally I cannot take the aggression anymore. A few hands later I reraised at the flop when I have two pairs but got 3-bet. This normally signals a very strong hand in this type of game and the prudent route is to fold as I have no strong draw to back me up. But given how pissed off I am already, I call and end up losing my entire stack to a set.

I could feel it when I got 3-bet, but it was stronger than me, I could not resist calling, as if to say “Ok, you want my stack so much, just take it”, in great desperation.

And that is it I have reached the climax of my tilt and I cannot take it anymore. I am not reloading as I know I have totally lost it and cannot play poker anymore. Only one option for me at this stage: leave the tables and go hit my head on the wall…

So after this self-analysis, the point is: tilting is when I am losing and I lose even more; I cannot stand losing and I lose my self-control in this situations.

Remedy: I need to read about self-control (blogs and books) and be systematic about learning to control myself. Self-awareness first, self-control next. The great players control their tilt, so this must be my goal as well.