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Wilkinson ERA
About Karen
Wrightsville Beach, NC - Surf Report. For Wrightsville Beach tide times, swell info, UV, and wind forecasts, click on respective tab to the right - For live wind scroll up.
Visit Karen Holden's profile on Zillow to find ratings and reviews. Find great Wilmington, NC real estate professionals on Zillow like Karen Holden of Wilkinson ERA. Skip main navigation. I also play poker in local taverns for World Tavern Poker league. Charlotte's #1 Pub Poker League for the past 14 years. Free Pub Poker League in Charlotte, NC. Trivia is on Tuesday, Wednesday is World Tavern Poker, Thursday pool tournaments, karaoke on Fridays and live music outside at the tiki bar on the weekends.
My goal is to match people and property with a level of professionalism, friendliness, knowledge, honesty, and dependability. I taught sales classes for awhile, and the bottom line is follow up, do what you say you are going to do, don't say you can do something you can't do, and return phone calls promptly and with a timeline for information. I believe it is still about customer service and personal attention. I moved here to the Topsail Island and Hampstead area from DeSoto Texas. I have also lived in Vail Colorado, Cincinnati Ohio, Denver Colorado, Rochester New York, and San Diego California. I picked here to live because it is a nice size - not too big, not too small, no expressways,beautiful waterway and boating, uncrowded beaches, good schools, low taxes, and lots of open spaces that still have trees. I have a Pecan tree in my back yard, and can still go take a walk on the beach. The cost of living is good compared to the bounties we receive. After receiving a degree in both psychology and animal health science, a career in selling wine and beer, and then Solo Cup Company in various parts of the country, I moved to North Topsail Beach in 1998, Then I had twins and moved to Pender County to a place called Pecan Grove Plantation. We have two adult dogs and one combo puppy. I also play poker in local taverns for World Tavern Poker league. I have been successful at my own real estate ventures, so I decided to help others be satisfied with theirs and I became a real estate broker. I love to help buyers find what they are looking for that has value, appreciability and livability. I will only take on what I can handle well, so you will get personal service. I have completed the USAA Movers Advantage Program as well and the Affinity Cartus Relocation Programs. Please email me to get started. I look forward to it.
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Surf City, Topsail Beach, North Topsail Beach, Hampstead, Wilmington.
Endorsements
Play real vegas slot games for free download. Karen's most recent endorsements
Karen was AMAZING! I emaied her about a home I saw on homes.com and it was 5 min's later she called me! We set an appointment the next day (she worked great with what worked for me)! When we found the home I wanted she worked her tush off to make sure I got EXACTLY what I wanted: price, items left in the home, etc. She honestly became a friend through the process because of how honest and hardworking she was! I would STRONGLY urge anyone to use her. If you want an EASY buying experience where absolutely NOTHING goes wrong, you have found your gal! From beginning to end the process was a breeze, BECAUSE OF KAREN!– Lacy King
We called Karen simply because her name was on a sign in front of a home we looked at in July -- then didn't get back to her until January. It was lucky we did. She drove us up and down the island looking at houses (occasionally the same ones) and answered countless e-mails and phone calls about the smallest of details. She kept on top of new listings, quickly found buying and selling history, and dug up sales of comparable homes to give us better leverage. She gave us tips on what to look for, on why some houses were better than others (in not-so-obvious respects), on how to make offers and on how to rent the house after we got it (so we could afford it).We always felt she was doing everything she could for us. Along the way, she became our friend, as well. Can't beat that, can you? We gladly recommend Karen and the rest of the Coldwell Banker SeaCoast firm.– Ray and Vicki McAllister
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Karen's experience and certificatons
REALTOR®
Identifies a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS®
Identifies a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS®
Robert Woolley
The three most common venues for poker are casinos, home games, and online. However, there’s a fourth venue that presents its own special set of challenges, but gets little attention in the usual poker media outlets — bar poker, also known as tavern poker.
I moved a few years ago from the center of the poker universe, Las Vegas, to Asheville, North Carolina, which is a poker desert. We do have Harrah’s Cherokee casino about an hour away with its small poker room. But other than that, professionally run live poker requires an all-day drive to places like Maryland, West Virginia, or Mississippi. That means in between trips to Cherokee, I have had to scratch my poker itch with home games that some friends organize.
In the last few months, however, a bar poker club started weekly tournaments in town. I’ve been participating in many of those games, and have noticed ways in which they differ from any other poker I’ve played before.
The fundamental difference setting bar poker apart from other venues is that very little is at stake. Bar poker leagues have to be careful not to violate laws prohibiting unlicensed gambling.
The general legal definition of gambling is a game of chance, with prizes of value, and “consideration,” meaning what you have to pay in order to play. The fact that a measure of skill is required to play well does not remove poker from the realm of games of chance, in the eyes of the law. And if there were no prizes at all, few people would play.
What sets bar poker apart from every other form of poker, then, is the “consideration” element — you don’t have to pay to play. That fact has both direct and indirect consequences. The main indirect effect is that the prize pool is small, made up of just what the sponsoring bar puts up in the hope that the game will attract people who will come and buy drinks while they play.
The most prominent direct effect is that people feel they have nothing to lose. If you’ve ever wondered how poker would look if you had nothing at risk if you lose, and little or nothing to gain if you win, find yourself a local tavern poker game and give it a try. It’s an ongoing embodiment of that very experiment.
To be sure, there are some decent prizes to be had through large organizations like the World Tavern Poker, which is the outfit that runs my local game. If you accumulate enough points in a poker “season” through a combination of frequent attendance and finishing high in the weekly local tournaments, you can earn a seat in a regional tournament. Do well in that, and you might earn a seat in the annual national finals in Vegas, where you can win entries into the following year’s World Series of Poker.
A chance for a free WSOP seat is great, right? But you need to think this through in advance. Will you be able and willing to travel to the regional event if you qualify? And if you do well there, will you be able and willing to take time off of work and spend money on flights, hotels, and food in Las Vegas, all for the chance to win a WSOP seat? If not, then don’t enter the local events fooling yourself that it’s an easy road to the WSOP.
You need to be honest with yourself in advance about whether you are going to take it seriously and commit to a substantial investment of time — and, eventually, money — to get to one of the few big prizes at the end of the rainbow. If not, then you just have to decide if you think playing for grins and the social experience is a worthwhile use of your time. (Some pubs also give token prizes to weekly winners — t-shirts and baseball cap, for example.)
Should you decide to participate, either in an earnest chase for a prize of real value or just for fun, I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Be prepared for the games to be self-dealt
By and large, tavern games are going to be self-dealt. In Las Vegas, I briefly participated in a tavern poker series that had off-duty professional dealers, working for tips only. That’s because Vegas is full of unemployed and under-employed dealers. However, every other bar poker venue that I have heard about has the players taking turns shuffling and dealing. The dealer button actually does mean just that in these settings.
Tavern At 17 Wilmington Nc
2. Be prepared for loose, poor play
In these games you’ll witness some of the worst, loosest, most incomprehensible poker play you’ve ever seen. It’s rather like the play-money side of online poker sites. There are two driving forces behind this. First, these games attract people with the least poker experience — because once you’ve played for real money, it’s hard to find it enjoyable playing for nothing. Second, when there is literally nothing to lose, players are quick to move all in, or call an all-in bet with some of the weakest holdings imaginable.
3. Know that bluffing is generally a bad idea
The obvious implication of the above is that you should turn down your bluffing frequency to nearly zero. If you are heads-up in a pot with a player who has shown himself to have a little discernment about when to call a big bet, then fine — a bluff might be worth trying. But generally, you should expect every bet you make to be called by somebody.
4. Be ready for an incredibly fast structure
My local club runs two games every Tuesday night, with the first tournament at 7:30, and the second at 10:00. That means that there’s time to play out a two-table hold’em tourney in two hours, with a 30-minute break for pizza (which is provided free, one little perk of playing). You can just imagine how fast the blinds have to increase to keep to that schedule. That pace means that you have to be willing to make your all-in moves earlier and with weaker holdings than standard tournament strategy would dictate.
5. Be nice to the novices
People who came to the bar with no idea that there was poker going on will decide to join just for the heck of it, even if they have never played before. Be super nice to them. Get them hooked on how easy and fun it is, and you may get to take cold, hard cash from them when they’re ready to move on to the real games in either the nearest casino or somebody’s living room.
6. Help out the tavern
You can help keep the game viable by being a good customer of the sponsoring establishment. This is a point of advice that’s tricky for me to follow, because I don’t drink, but I at least buy a couple of their bottles of water at roughly 12 billion percent markup.
World Tavern Poker Wilmington Nc Hours
7. Don’t count on strict rule enforcement
In these games you shouldn’t expect strict adherence to the rule book. In keeping with the geared-to-beginners vibe of the whole endeavor, nobody makes too big a deal out of exposed cards, out-of-turn action, string raises, talking about the hand in progress, and other conventions that apply everywhere else. A tavern poker game is absolutely the worst place to be a rules Nazi. Let things slide that you wouldn’t and shouldn’t in other settings.
Whether you decide to tackle the marathon of playing that it will take to work your way up to one of the really substantial prizes, or decide to participate just for some cheap entertainment, I think keeping in mind the above points will help you succeed and have more fun in the unusual world of tavern poker.
Photo (still): “World Tavern Poker.”
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.
World Tavern Poker Info
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tournament strategyno-limit hold’embluffingbeginner strategytavern pokerbar poker