About Tight Poker

First off, we just want to say "Thanks!" for dropping by and we hope you enjoy the site!

What is the purpose of this site?

The goal of Tight Poker is to bring together poker players namely those who like to play at Party Poker. We provide a place where people can gather up and talk poker strategy in our forum. On the side, because the site is also run and operated by a serious player, we have a focus on providing our visitors with the best possible incentives and promotions. This is our way of saying "Thanks!" for your continued support of our site.

In the future, our goal is to simply grow and become an all-around site for everything poker related. Poker news, promotions, reviews of online poker sites, strategy articles and an active forum. Some would say we're already there, given that Tight Poker is one of the larger poker portals out there, but we like to keep ourselves a little modest.

What is the history of Tight Poker?

Tight Poker has been around for quite some time and was among the first group of poker portals to pop up during the rise of poker during 2002 to 2003. Back then, we were first known as the "Party Poker Playing Guide" and located on a free hosting site with a funny name.

For better or for worse, the funny name stuck quite some time, until the site was moved over to a new domain, TightPoker.com in August of 2002. At that point, we officially started calling the site Tight Poker, although it is still known as the Party Poker Strategy Guide.

What is the Party Poker Hand History Replayer?

The hand history replayer is an web-based application that takes the original Party Poker hand histories (the one that they send via email after you win a single-table tournament) and plays it back in real-time. This is very valuable as a tool that can be used to learn interactively from your own mistakes, as well as watching posted histories of professional players.

While shows like the World Poker Tour will show you how the pros play, a full replay of an entire tournament will show how they play every hand, rather than just the big ones that are good for TV. This is a major element that is missing from televised poker, which leads to misconceptions on proper strategy from new players trying to learn from TV.

Why doesn't the replayer work with my hand histories?

The replayer used to work with all hand histories, but Party Poker changed their hand history format back in early 2005, which subsequently broke the replayer. At that time, development of version 2.0 of the replayer was already underway, although that had been delayed for over a year due to a number of reasons.

As of this writing (April 2006), version 2.0 of the replayer is almost complete and in beta testing right now. It will support all hand histories from Party Poker as well as PokerStars. Keep coming back to the site however, as the official release of the replayer will be mentioned shortly!

Who is in charge of running this site?

The main operator of Tight Poker goes by the name of MJ. Specializing in no-limit poker tournaments (especially single table tournaments) as well as limit hold'em, MJ has been the primary author of most of the articles and replays on this site.

MJ started playing dime and nickle poker in college, shortly after his departure from competetive online gaming. Studying up and reading as much on the game as possible, MJ begain playing online poker at one of the first internet poker sites available at the time.

After one year of playing at the site and a one year hiatus of poker, MJ got serious into poker, which is the same time that the Party Poker Strategy Guide was formed. At this time, texas hold'em limit poker was the biggest and most popular game to play, whereas no limit games were rarely found. This is why most of articles on this site are geared toward limit play and poker tournaments, although there has been a large emergence of no-limit cash games over the years.

Is this site free or something? Why do you run it?

Good question. This site was started primarily as a place to put my thoughts together on poker and also publicly release my hand history replayer. After that, it's grown on it's own, with content added here and there to round things out.

The site is completely supported by visitors like yourself and the members of this site. Tight Poker works with a number of advertisers, where we try to negotiate the best deals for our visitors in the form of promotions and bonuses. When our visitors sign up for these promotions, it makes our advertisers happy, which in turn helps us continue to keep the site going.

So, that's why this site is free. We don't believe in the subscription model or trying to push something in your face. If you like Tight Poker and end up becoming a winning player because of us, you can express your loyalty by simply by participating in our promotions. These can be via our bonus codes, site links or various promotions that we run.

If not, no worries. If we couldn't help you out, then you shouldn't be woried about helping us out either.

Anyhow, I hope that gives you an idea of this site and what we're all about. If you are looking for more answers or have questions, please check the forum or visit our contact us page.

Really, MJ isn't a paranoid person.