Tag Archive for ‘texas’
By Cyman Harrison
Knowing the hands of Texas Hold’em is so important you shouldn’t play it if you don’t. If you have to ask questions about hands during the game, you’ll give your hand away. It’s as simple as that.
To avoid embarrassment and begin to understand the game and the reasons you want the cards you do, check out the following hand rankings:
The Royal Straight Flush is a rare and beautiful creature in poker. It is the unicorn of poker. Even if you played every day of your life, you will rarely see one and even more rarely actually get one yourself. It is like the hole in one in golf. It is a straight. It is a flush. And it is made up of the highest cards in the deck. Look for an ace, king, queen, jack and ten of the same suit.
The Straight Flush is slightly less lackluster than it’s more royal counterpart, but exciting and wonderful nonetheless. This hand is still rare and made up of five cards of the same suit, ranked in succession. An example would be the six, seven, eight, nine, ten of clubs in one hand.
Next, you’ll be wanting the four of a kind. This is pretty obvious. You have a four of a kind when get four cards of the same number. Look for four kings, four tens, or four fives for instance.
The Full House is also a pretty good hand. It happens when you have three cards of one type and two cards of another type. To determine whether or not one full house ranks higher than another, look at the set of three cards first. The one that is larger wins. For instance three jacks and two tens beats three tens and two jacks.
A flush is something special, too. If you have five cards of the same suit, you’re laughing, but be careful to hide your glee. You don’t want to give your opponents an advantage. If there are multiple flushes, look for the hand with the highest card in the flush. An example of a flush would be a three, seven, ten, queen, and ace of diamonds.
After a flush, you’re looking for a straight. This is when there are five cards in your hand that rank in succession. The ace can be played as either a high card or low card. Straights are very common in Texas Hold’em. Look for an eight of hearts, ten of spades, jack of diamonds, queen of hearts, and king of clubs for example.
The three of a kind is a more lowly creature, but it wins its fair share of hands. If you hit one of these with a pocket pair and one in the community cards, it’s called “a set.” If you have two cards in the flop and one in your hand, it’s called a “three of a kind.” Look for three fours, three queens, or three aces for example.
Two pair comes next. This is when your best five poker cards create a pair twice. Look for two aces and two queens or two fives and two threes for instance.
One pair is next. It’s pretty self explanatory. Look for one pair in your hand. For instance, two threes or two jacks.
High card is the next hand in the ranking. This happens when you don’t get anything and your hand only counts for the high card. Even if you had an ace, a pair of twos could beat you.
About the Author: Cyman Harrison writes for several Texas Holdem websites including http://www.PokerTipsandStrategies.com which provides resources to help poker players improve their skills. Do you want to WIN more at Texas Holdem? Get your FREE Poker Guide at: http://www.holdemadvancedstrategy.com/texas-holdem.html
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Tags: ace, card, don, flush, hand, high, highest, kind, pair, queen, straight, ten, texas
By Cyman Harrison
Texas Hold’em can be a pretty mysterious game. Although the community cards allow all the players an insight into each other’s hands, they won’t tell the whole truth. Players who can use this to their advantage while bluffing, will find winning easier than not. And players who can ascertain when others are bluffing, will find winning is the name of the game.
Here’s what you need to know:
First, the two cards in your hand are the only two cards that can help you to win. They are the only cards that set you apart from your opponents. And, they are the only two cards that you have that the other players aren’t aware of.
And second, the community cards are there for everybody. So, if there are four spades showing, chances are that your flush isn’t the only one.
The reason you need to know this is so that you can focus not only on what those cards mean to you, but on what those cards mean to everyone else. The most important two hands to watch your opponents for are their straight and flush possibilities.
In order to bluff successfully, you need to be careful not to let on anything that you don’t want the others to know. For instance, this can mean holding out on betting until a later round, or betting smaller or larger than you think your hand warrants. It also means controlling your body physically. For instance, sharp intakes of breath, sweating, flushed cheeks, tapping fingers, fidgeting, eye movements, facial expressions, lip biting and many other movements can indicate to others whether your hand is good or bad. This is especially true if you are consistently repetitive with these gestures.
Checking is one way to prevent your opponents from understanding your hand. They may think your hand is weaker than it is and it protects you from betting too early.
Another way to bluff is to consistently raise and to push your opponents to the point that they believe you have an excellent hand. The strategy behind this type of bluffing is to get your opponents to bet early on at reasonable or high amounts and then fold later in the hand as you increase your bets considerably.
To see if your opponents are bluffing against you, simply read the cards. If the community cards look good, their hand could be the real thing. However, good community cards are good for everybody and they may not be the only one with a good hand. If the community cards are bad, raises could signal a high pocket pair or a straight or flush possibility. By reading the cards, watching for tell-tale signs from your opponents and monitoring betting behavior, you should be able to tell when your opponents are for real and when it’s a bluffing game.
About the Author: Cyman Harrison writes for several Texas Holdem websites including http://www.PokerTipsandStrategies.com which provides resources to help poker players improve their skills. Do you want to WIN more at Texas Holdem? Get your FREE Poker Guide at: http://www.holdemadvancedstrategy.com/texas-holdem.html
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Tags: bad, bet, bluff, bluffing, cards, consistently, game, good, hand, holdem, instance, opponents, players, texas
By Dan Ford
Defensive driving refers to a state of knowledge. This state of knowledge involves the intricate knowledge of the road and mechanics of driving. The goal is to help drivers not only drive well, but drive safely when others around them make driving conditions poor. Texas offers several different defensive driving schools. Defensive driving schools in Texas are often available online. Four of these include Online Defensive Driving, a Sense of Humor Driving, Get Defensive, and Texas Defensive Driving Online.
Online Defensive Driving
One school that is based in Texas that is meant to help the Texan driver handle him or herself defensively is Interactive Online Defensive Driving. The program is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The course is segmented into six different sections. Then there is a test at the end. The computer will be the grader of the test and you will have the certificate sent to you.
A Sense of Humor Driving
One program that is centered in the state of Texas is A Sense of Humor Driving School. The sections include an introduction, the traffic safety problem, the student profile, the top 5 moving violation causing crashes, attitude, feelings, habits and emotions, driving challenges, traffic laws, procedures and driving emergencies, protective equipment, organ donation. There are also sections on seat belts, road signs, defensive driving strategies, road rage, DWI, and jeopardy.
Get Defensive
Get Defensive.Com offers another option for Texas drivers. The course is easy and can be done online. The site keeps track of the progress and offers help for course takers.
The course itself is based on defensive driving. There are statistics, animations, driving examples, videos showing the difference in signs, traffic lights and more.
The course is complete when the final exam is taken.
Texas Defensive Driving Online
Finally, there is the Texas Defensive Driving Online. The course is self paced. In other words, you can take the course in how ever much time it takes you to take it. You can retake the final exam. The defensive driving course is a six hour course and covers 12 chapters, with quizzes available after each chapter.
About the Author: John Mancini has been writing about defensive driving online and offline for a long time. Visit http://best-driving-schools.info or http://www.defensivedrivingschools.net to read more about matters like online traffic schools and Texas defensive driving schools.
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Read the original here: Defensive Driving Schools In Texas: The Four Texas Online Sites You Need To Know!
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Tags: chapter, day, driving, exam, final, humor, road, sense, texas, traffic
By Bounce Energy
TDSP stands for Transmission/Distribution Service Provider. That probably doesn’t mean all that much to the average Texan, although I’d wager it’s only the term that is unfamiliar, and not actually the companies themselves. But first, let’s take a quick look at what a TDSP is exactly, and what their role is in energy service after Texas became deregulated.
History of the TDSP in Texas Electricity
When the state of Texas deregulated, it forced the incumbent companies (like Reliant, TXU, etc) to break up into different pieces. Before the electric companies provided full scale electricity service, which included maintenance of the electricity infrastructure and getting electricity from the plants to the customers, from start to finish (with a few exceptions). When the state of Texas deregulated, that practice made way for individual Retail Electricity Providers (REPs). At this point, it became a conflict of interest for the already existing former Incumbents to retain ownership of their own Transmission and Distribution systems, as it would create an obvious competitive advantage for the bigger and already established companies.
At the same time, it was also illogical and unreasonable to expect smaller and newly created REP’s to have to build and create their own infrastructure for delivering electricity to their customers. One, it would create excessive redundancy that would be expensive and serve no purpose, and two, the amount of money it would take to construct an infrastructure from scratch would act as immediate barriers of entry for new companies, defeating the entire purpose of deregulation in the first place.
The Difference between a TDSP and the REP
The TDSP, as already mentioned, maintain the infrastructure for electricity transmission or distribution. The names you probably recognize include Centerpoint (split from Reliant), Oncor (Splint from TXU) Texas New Mexico Power Company, AEP North, and AEP Central. These are the TDSPs who own the power lines and come out to repair them when they go down. They’re also responsible for transmitting the electricity over those lines from the power generators and into a customer’s home. The electricity they own they sell to the REPs wholesale, and they also charge the REP’s monthly charges for the upkeep of the infrastructure.
So that is a quick overview of how the TDSPs work in the state of Texas. To use a metaphor that helps make the understanding easier, the TDSPs are like the guys who ship in all the popcorn, hot dogs, sodas and pretzels to the ballparks, which customers then walk up to counters and purchase at the concession stands. They essentially “stock the shelves” for the customers.
Power Generators in Texas Electricity
Being the leading crude-oil producing state in the U.S., Texas plays a vital role in the country’s overall energy capacity. Texas not only provides a quarter of the nation’s refining capacity with nearly 5 million barrels of oil processed per day, but also accounts for a quarter of total natural gas production as the nation’s leading producer.
So it goes without saying that power generation companies are not few and far between in the Lone Star State.
What is a Texas Power Generator?
Power generators or power generation companies use natural gas, coal, wind, nuclear, biomass and hydro to produce the power that Texas businesses, residents and commercial facilities count on. Power generation companies own and operate the power plants responsible for producing energy sold on the wholesale market to Retail Electric Providers in Texas, who of course turn around and package it for the consumer.
Texas power generation companies are responsible for a vast portion of the country’s energy capacity, with Texas specifically the leader in wind energy development throughout the entire U.S.
Major Texas Power Generators
There are of course numerous power generators in Texas and several subsidiaries that are responsible for generating the power placed on the grid and transmitted to homes and businesses across the state.
Here are the major players in Texas power generation:
“Luminant”:http://www.luminant.com/about/default.aspx
Luminant is a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings (EFH), formerly TXU Corp., and generates more than 16,100 megawatts (MW) of energy in Texas, including 2,300 MW of nuclear and 5,800 MW of capacity generated from coal. Luminant also happens to be the largest purchaser of clean electricity generated from wind in Texas and fifth largest in the United States.
“NRG Energy, Inc.”:http://www.nrgenergy.com/index.htm
Founded in 1989, NRG currently has a capacity of more than 24,000 MW across the globe, including nearly 11,000 MW in Texas. NRG also has full or part ownership in 44 power generation plants.
“Suez Energy”:http://www.suezenergyna.com/ourcompanies/energygen.shtml
Suez Energy Generation is located in the heart of energy land in Houston, Texas. Suez owns and operates 72 power, cogeneration, steam, and chilled-water facilities, with a total power capacity of more than 7,750 MW. Suez power generation facilities use various fuels to produce electricity, including renewable resources.
“Shell”:http://www.shell.com/
Providing the world’s first commercial gas liquification plant in 1964, Shell is one of the largest energy producers in the world, active in everything from gas-to-liquids, wind and solar energy to coal gasification technology. In addition to providing gasoline for automobiles across the country, Shell is also heavily involved in building and operating natural gas pipelines, and developing wind and solar technology.
Power generation companies are essentially the first line of a long conveyor belt that serves the Texas electricity market from generation to home and business. As the means to improve infrastructure and add additional power plants becomes available, Texas is generally at the front of the pack when it comes to producing energy in new, more ecological, efficient and abundant ways.
The Role of ERCOT in Texas
ERCOT is otherwise known as The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT may not affect you directly, but through its actions helps insure you safe reliable electricity for your home.
What is ERCOT?
The Electricity Council of Texas (ERCOT) is a nonprofit corporation entity under NERC/FERC, which manages the flow of electricity and power to over 22 million Texas electricity consumers. ERCOT schedules power to an electric grid that covers over 38,000 miles of Texas Electricity Transmission, equivalent to 85% of the state’s electric load. ERCOT manages 75% of the deregulated electricity market in the state. ERCOT also oversees financial settlements for the wholesale bulk-power market in Texas as well as customer switching for more than 6.5 million Texans in deregulated areas.
What Role does ERCOT play in Texas Electricity Market?
The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is overseen and regulated by The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). The PUCT aids in ERCOT performing its role in the Texas electricity market by helping manage the power grid and ensuring that market rules are in place to protect consumers.
One of ERCOT’s major roles in the Texas Electricity Market is to ensure that consumers have reliable electric service. ERCOT performs this role by constantly monitoring and analyzing all power grid components every 2-4 seconds for status updates. ERCOT also directs the flow of electricity in conjunction with your local Transmission and Distribution Service Provider (TDSP) so you can have safe and reliable energy.
ERCOT also plays a huge role in the deregulated Texas Electricity Market. Now that people in Texas have the power to choose their own Retail Electric Provider (REP), ERCOT’s role is to help facilitate retail registration of energy and also help the switching process fpr Texas electricity companies and their customers.
Market Process and Participants
Although ERCOT is managed and regulated by the PUCT, it is not the key reason why ERCOT is able to fulfill its roles in the Texas Electricity Market. There are four major entities that help ERCOT perform its three processes in Texas: Qualified Scheduling Entities (QSE), Resource Entities (REs), Load Serving Entities (LSE), and the Transmission and Distribution Service Providers (TDSPs).
Market Operations:
Qualified Scheduling Entities (QSE) is the key part of the market operations of ERCOTs process. QSE submits daily schedules for their bilateral transactions with total generations and demand. QSEs also place bids for ancillary service and settle financial payments with ERCOT.
Power Operations:
Resource Entities are facilities that are represented by a QSE that has been approved and capable of providing energy. Resource Entities either own or manage a generation resource or has the option to act as a Load Acting as a Resource (LaaR) that correlates with ERCOT instructions to lower electricity usage or provide ancillary service.
The Transmission and Distribution Service Providers (TDSPs) transmit and delivers the electricity to a customer’s home or business along the poles and wires. This company is responsible for maintenance and repair of these poles wires.
Commercial Operations:
Load Serving Entities (LSE) provides electrical service to retail and wholesale customers. LSE includes competitive retailers that sell electricity in Texas in a competitive market.
The Texas Electricity Market in 2009
Deregulation provides not only unique benefits to the Texas electricity consumer, but also unique structural and logistical needs in order to ensure that electricity service across the state remains safe and reliable. Moving forward into 2009, the continued growth of deregulation in the Texas electricity market only serves to increase competition and foster more opportunity for affordable and reliable electric service.
Each of the players in the Texas electricity market detailed above are essential cogs in the wheel that ensure energy is generated in an efficient and cost-effective manner, that the wholesale and retail markets are maintained with consumer protection and good business practice in mind, and that ultimately the electricity reaches its final destination in a safe and ongoing, reliable manner.
About the Author: Bounce Energy is a Texas Electric Company based in Houston. Bounce Energy’s goal is provide more than low Texas Electric Rates to our customers. With innovative and flexible plans, excellent customer service, and superior customer rewards, Bounce Energy offers a unique approach to Texas electricity.
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Follow this link: Who’s Who in the Texas Electricity Market Pt. 2
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Tags: consumer, customer, electric, electricity, entities, ercot, generation, generator, infrastructure, market, power, provider, resource, service, texas
By Bounce Energy
Since deregulation began within the state of Texas at the turn of the millennium, Texans have learned as much or more about how electricity works than people in any other place in the world. Some of the lessons learned were great for the foundation of understanding how the market would affect customers in principle. Some of the lessons learned could be considered more symptomatic of the times than as part of the bedrock of how the market will always function.
One of the lessons that we’ve all learned and been taught to expect is that electricity rates will always go up, sometimes way up, during the summer heat season. The notion of the rate increasing and the bills increasing seems almost intuitive. And frankly, why wouldn’t it? Since the days before deregulation, Reliant’s rates jumped each summer from May – November.
Was the seasonal rate increase a product of additional expenses during that period? Greed? State mandate?
The reality of it is that it was almost exclusively a product of the companies incurring additional expenses in the summer time. But shouldn’t the cost of generating electricity more or less remain constant between the winter and the summer? The simple answer is usually “no”.
Why?
Given that it is much hotter in the summer within the state of Texas, more air conditioners are run, for both homes and businesses. It takes more A/C power to heat the same room at the same temperature as the outside heats up, too. The A/Cs have to run longer and later to keep homes and businesses cooled off. As more electricity is needed on a household by household basis, and a business by business basis, more electricity has to be generated and placed onto the state’s electricity grid. As that happens, more electricity generators need to be run to keep up with demand than in other times of the year. The generators that are forced to come on line during this period are usually more expensive to run for the provider – which is why they’re not the first generators online each day. When the generation becomes more expensive, the price increase is spread down the supply chain. The Retail Electricity Provider has to pay more and the customer, ultimately, has to pay more as well.
That makes it seem as though electricity rate increases really should be part and parcel to each year’s heat season. But should this always be the case? Perhaps not.
Often times, experts will speak about this cause and effect relationship and then divert on a tangent in regard to natural gas prices. Natural gas prices affect the price of electricity in a place like Texas because many of the less-used generators run on natural gas as fuel for generating the electricity. Natural gas, as opposed to coal, nuclear, or various other products also used to generate electricity within the grid, is a much more expensive and volatile product on the price side. As a for instance, last summer saw record electricity prices that correlated almost symmetrically with record natural gas prices. Heading into this summer, however, we find that as a market, natural gas prices have basically collapsed to points that we haven’t seen in more than half a decade. With that as a given, can’t we basically assume that prices won’t rise significantly? Yes, as part of the equation, as long as natural gas prices are lower, electricity prices will be lower. This is a foundational principle to how the market functions.
But that’s not the entirety of the story. Another variable within the equation is often ignored and typically, by the average trader and forecaster within the Texas market, dismissed as relevant because it is assumed to be a relative constant, is market demand for electricity. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s always a hot summer in Texas, right? Homes will always need to be cooled, right? Businesses will always be booming and consuming more and more energy to create more products, right?
Well, the truth to one of those questions is, it’s often a hot summer in Texas, so that assumption is ok.
On the question about home being cooled, well, homes always do need to be cooled, too. And so do apartments. But what happens if the mix of homes using electricity versus apartments using electricity ever dramatically shifts? Can less people living in homes drive the overall demand for electricity within the market down? Let’s think about it.
On average, home dwellers use about 1.5 times the amount of energy that is used by apartment dwellers. Overall, the residential demand within the Texas grid, in aggregate, is roughly 40% of the total electricity used. If the mix of home dwellers to apartment dwellers is historically 55% to 45% of the population within Texas, this would indicate that almost 70% of the residential electricity demand traditionally comes from home dwellers. That also means that home dwellers generally impact about 27-30% of the total demand within the Texas electricity market as whole. Let’s assume the 27-30% consumed by home dwellers within the market works for the summer, which is the most likely.
Now consider the possibility that a migration within the marketplace occurs from people living in homes to people living in apartments. In recessionary times, this is usually a reality and this recession is no different. Apartment communities are nearing capacity throughout Houston and Dallas, just as foreclosures rise and people move out of homes after layoffs and payroll decreases as an act of reducing expenses. Publicly available data on this is scarce, but we can use some of the information provided recently by http://HAR.com, which covers Houston real estate sales. This shows that more than 30% less new homes were sold in the Houston area over the first quarter this year and last. They’ve also released data disclosing that roughly 25% less existing homes were sold in the same time period. Meanwhile, foreclosure rates continue to increase, as do apartment occupancy rate. Extrapolate that across to Dallas as well and the numbers and demand within the overall market starts to look considerably different than years past. Specifically, a shift of that nature on the residential side of electricity usage translates into a relevant decrease in overall market demand for usage. The market clearing price for electricity within the market is based on what the last electricity generator selling electricity to the market has to charge to cover its costs. If the more expensive generators are impacted by that “demand destruction”, and given that since those generators are the last to be used, they are impacted, the prices are not going to see the potential exponential increase that those generators would create.
That portrays what role something as simple as a shift in dwelling type for Texas residents could do to the market.
What happens if demand destruction also exists on the business side of the market? Are businesses using less electricity today than they were a year ago in Texas?
The answer is that if demand destruction occurs on the business side, the need for excess, more expensive electricity capacity within the market would see an even sharper decrease than what we looked at on the residential end. Business usage is demonstrably higher than residential usage within the Texas market, as whole.
So are businesses using less electricity today than this time last year? Well, yes. For one, any business that has gone out of business is using less, to be sure. It is a simple fact that the market is contracting right now, which means we’re experiencing negative growth today. A classic and directly related example of this situation is what’s occurring on the Houston Ship Channel. As a group, this set of businesses uses more electricity than any other specific group of businesses within the state. They have to use enormous amounts of electricity to create the products, such as plastics and tires for automobiles, that they ship throughout the rest of the world. When orders for new products weaken or dry up, these businesses are forced to take action, such as extended shut downs or flat out closures of production lines or the businesses themselves. These events have occurred within the last 12 months, and they’ve happened across multiple plants with few plants being unscathed.
With business usage for electricity on the whole representing a net decline within the market, coupled with less residential usage for the same reasons, demand destruction is a very real part of the overall prices reflected within the market at the beginning of this summer. If the demand remains depressed compared to the past 7+ years, this often dismissed potential variable within the equation for electricity prices to the public will continue to play a big role. The end result may be so significant that prices throughout the summer don’t actually rise much at all, and could ultimately wind up lower at the end of the summer than when the heat season began. With that as a possibility, if not a probability, Texans can count on continuing to see some of the lowest electricity prices within the entire country for the duration of 2009. For every Texas resident within these recessionary times, that should be considered good news.
from May 24, 2009
About the Author: Bounce Energy is a Texas Electric Company based in Houston. Bounce Energy’s goal is provide more than low Texas Electric Rates to our customers. With innovative and flexible plans, excellent customer service, and superior customer rewards, Bounce Energy offers a unique approach to Texas electricity.
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Go here to read the rest: What’s Up (or Down) With Texas Electricity Rates?
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Tags: apartment, businesses, demand, dwellers, energy, gas, generator, natural, rate, residential, texas, time, usage
