How to fidelize users throughout online games.

Which are the questions every webmaster is asking himself everyday? How can I get new users? How can I make them come back to my site? How can I make them stay longer?

According to the last rumors, time spent on a site will become the real criterion to understand which are successful sites or not. Nilesen/NetRatings will begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites. The move by Nielsen/NetRatings comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful. Very soon "time parameter" will be much more important than page views or unique visitors to award the most popular sites on web.

This new parameter will make necessary users to be entertained as longer as possible on the site. In this article, I'd like to suggest to webmasters one of the most convincing method to increase time spent on a site (and also make them constant users of the site).

The secret lies on contents since content is king: you should give users funny and high quality contents that will be able to involve users on the community of the site, of which he/she will become an important part.

Generally speaking, webmasters should try to give substance to their site: many webmasters take for granted that this is the way to follow, but looking at many online sites, everyone can understand that it is not so clear for everyone. There are thousands of sites without any kind of communicative target or aim, without coherence or essence.

Good webmasters know the great value of community tool used till now: newsletter, chat and forum are the mainly used tools to fidelize users. But now, the same goal can be achieved with less time and in a more effective way using new tools which are having a great develop in the last period.

And what is better than giving users the possibility to play, have fun and challenge many other people directly online?

Online games are extremely good contents to increase widely time spent on a site and, if they are multiplayer games, they are able to create a real community: users play, challenge each other, save their scores and climb charts. Daily online "rendezvous" will become a necessity for them.

There are many and many online games that can be inserted on a site, but today I'd like to suggest to every webmaster a high quality platform with a simple affiliation system, that allows everyone to display many different games on the site.

This affiliation program is offered by the online game site www.popyeah.com. With the program "Popyeah on your site", you could insert easily and freely (...very good!) all the archive of singleplayer and multiplayer games on your site. Popyeah online games are free, extremely funny, involving and easy to play: there are a hundred of online games divided into different categories - from Word Games to Board Games, from Arcade to Billiards.

Popyeah is a very good example of what I'm sayong above: users needs a gaming experience integrated into a wide and vivid community. They want to become part of a real community that plays, talks, has fun and meets throoughout the games.

On Popyeah, users can have their own players profile, they can insert their photos, search for other players, insert them to their friends list to follow on their favourite games, communicate through the chat, the personal blog and even through Skype. These advanced community features make Popyeah platform really suitable to every site that wants to offer real entertainment to users and build a strong community.

Thanks to this affiliation program, everything is available for those site that want to host new contents dedicated to online entertainment.
Browsing this page you can choose between the different available graphical options. Clicking on the link "Code", you will go to a page where you can set up some parameters: language, colours, other plaiyng options and then generate the code to insert into your site.
Such a simple system that allows webmaster to have an additional content with a strong impact to make your site a funny place to come and return and where users can spent their saper time enjoying themselves.

Learn to play Texas Hold'Em in 60 seconds

Texas Hold'Em is a simple game but starting playing it online can be difficult for newbies. You have always to learn some rules just to be sure not to cut a poor figure in fron of the green table and you have also to choose the right virtual place where to play among the thousands and thousands of internet sites that offer online gaming.

I chose to describe the poker room you can find on Popyeah.com, and try to teach you some quick rules that you can apply to become Texas Hold'Em God! Popyeah.com is a very popular multiplayer online game site and it is really well done. You can find there a wide online gaming community and many many opponents to play with in one of the 100 (and more) games with high quality graphics and sound.

You can save your game scores and climb up rankings and charts; you can join tournaments playing against the other players and you can become a part of a great community. What I want to underline is that Popyeah.com is NOT and online casino and you can't win real money. There you can play the real SPORTING POKER for fun and for tasting the challenge. Besides, and I can say this is really a good thing, on Popyeah you can play for free, and you can also insert your personal profile, upload your photos, manage your personal blog, create your friends list and communicate with many other people. All of our games have a built-in chat sub-system that enables real-time communication between players while they play. Players can also talk each other with Skype during gameplay.

And now let's go to the rules...

Texas Hold'Em Poker is a variation of poker in which each player receives two cards and then uses a combination of those two cards and the five community cards to form a hand. The player with the best hand wins.

Below is a ranking from worst to best of the types of poker hands.

ONE PAIR - happens when a player has two figures of the same value in his hand, for example two kings, two tens, two aces etc.

TWO PAIRS - happens when a player has a pair of the same figures twice, for example two kings and two aces, two thirds and two tens etc.

THREE OF A KIND - as the name says, it happens when a player has three cards of the same value, for example three aces.

STRAIGHT - five cards (with different suits) which are grouped one after the other, for example 7,8,9,10,J.

FLUSH - five cards with the same suit, for example A,J,10,7,2.

FULL HOUSE - a set of PAIR and THREE OF A KIND, which means for example K,K,A,A,A.

FOUR OF A KIND - as the name says, it happens when a player has four cards of the same value, for example four kings or four aces and so on.

STRAIGHT FLUSH - the strongest set in game. It is five cards in the same suit which are grouped one after another, for example A,K,D,J,10 of spades.

At the start of the game, two cards are dealt to every player. This is followed by the first round of betting among the players. All bets go into a pot. Next, the dealer reveals three community cards. This is followed by a second round of betting. Then a fourth community card is revealed, followed by another round of betting. Finally, the fifth community card is revealed and there is one final round of betting. After the final round of betting, the player with the best five card set wins the pot.

During each of the four betting phases of the game, players can take a number of actions:

Bet: The first player to wager money and put that money into the pot has placed a bet. In Texas Hold'Em there is no limit on the amount of money players can bet. A bet is only called a bet when the player is the first player to bet. Otherwise, it is called a call or a raise.

Call: When a player is NOT the first player to bet, and he matches the bet of the previous players, his bet is called a call. If a player does not call, then he must either raise or fold.

Raise: When a player is NOT the first player to bet, and he increases the bet of the previous players, his bet is called a raise. When a player raises, he increases the amount of money at stake by increasing the bet. In Texas Hold'Em, there is no limit to how high a player can raise the bet.

Check: Check means to put no money in the pot. If the players before him have checked (put no more money into the pot), then the player can also check. But if the players before him have bet, called or raised, then the player cannot check. He must either call, raise, or fold.

Fold: The player gives up for this round of betting, forfeiting all money that he has put into the pot this round.
The basic rule is that all players must have the same amount of money in the pot. If a player doesn't want to put at least the same amount of money into the pot, that player must fold.

That's it! You're ready to start playing Texas Hold'Em Poker and enjoy yourself!