Miami

Miami is a global city in southeastern Florida, in the United States. Miami is the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida. With a population of more than 409,719, Miami is the largest city within the Miami metropolitan area, which is the seventh-largest metro area in the United States with over 5.4 million residents. The Miami Urbanized Area was the fifth most populous urbanized area in the U.S. in the 2000 census with a population of 4,919,036. The United Nations estimated that in 2007, Miami had become the fourth largest urbanized area in the country, behind New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Miami is ranked as a global city for its importance in finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts and international trade. The city is home to many company headquarters, banks, and television studios. It is an international center for popular entertainment in television, music, fashion, film, and the performing arts. The city's Port of Miami is known for accommodating the largest volume of cruise ships in the world and is home to many cruise line headquarters. Miami is also home to the largest concentration of international banks in the United States.

Duplicate Poker

Duplicate poker is a variant of the popular card game poker. Duplicate poker is based on the principles of Duplicate Bridge but also involves some of the rules used for playing pot limit and no limit Texas hold'em.

Duplicate poker is a skill-based game in which there are two or more tables consisting of the same number of players. Each table is dealt with an identically shuffled deck of cards. Every player holds the same hand as the person seated in identical seats at other tables.

All players begin each hand with the ability to bet the same number of playing chips, regardless of prior performance in the previous rounds.

The object of Duplicate poker is to win more chips than your opponents sitting in corresponding seats at other tables. Ultimately, the winner is decided based on the total number of chips accumulated up until the end of the game, as compared with those held by all players in the same seats at the other tables. Conceivably, even a player who loses chips overall can win at the game if that player loses fewer chips than his opponents.

Duplicatepoker.com, the first poker room to use the format, closed down on October 5th 2008, citing the global financial crisis as the reason for the removal of services. It had previously been popular due to the fact that as a skill-based game it was legal in the U.S. While the game is more conducive to an automated online format because of pre-set decks and the need to record accurate scoring, Duplicate poker has also been played in a live format. The first-ever Duplicate poker tournament was held in April 2007 at the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Poker Blinds

A blind or blind bet is a forced bet placed into the pot by one or more players before the deal begins, in a way that simulates bets made during play. The most common use of blinds as a betting structure calls for two blinds: the player after the dealer blinds about half of what would be a normal bet, and the next player blinds what would be a whole bet. This two-blind structure, sometimes with antes, is the dominating structure of play for community card poker games such as Texas hold-em. Sometimes only one blind is used often informally as a "price of winning" the previous hand, and sometimes three are used this is sometimes seen in Omaha. In the case of three blinds usually one quarter, one quarter, and half a normal bet amount, the first blind goes "on the button", that is, is paid by the dealer.

    For example, in a $2–4 limit game, the first player to the dealer's left who, if not for the blinds, would be the first to act posts a small blind of $1, and the next player in turn posts a big blind of $2. After the cards are dealt, play begins with the next player in turn third from the dealer, who must either call $2, raise, or fold. When the betting returns to the player who blinded $1, he must equal the bet facing him toward which he may count his $1, raise, or fold. If there have been no raises when action first gets to the big blind that is, the bet amount facing him is just the amount of the big blind he posted, the big blind has the ability to raise or check. This right to raise called the option occurs only once: if his raise is now called by every player, the first betting round closes as usual.

Similarly to a missed ante, a missed blind due to the player's temporary absence i.e. for drinks or a restroom break can be denoted by use of a special button. Upon the player's return, they must pay the applicable blind to the pot for the next hand they will participate in. The need for this rule is eliminated in casinos that deal in absent players as described above. Also the rule is for temporary absences only; if a player leaves the table permanently, special rules govern the assigning of blinds and button see next subsection.

In some fixed-limit and spread-limit games, especially if three blinds are used, the big blind amount may be less than the normal betting minimum. Players acting after a sub-minimum blind have the right to call the blind as it is, even though it is less than the amount they would be required to bet, or they may raise the amount needed to bring the current bet up to the normal minimum, called completing the bet. For example, a limit game with a $5 minimum bet on the first round might have blinds of $1 and $2. Players acting after the blind may either call the $2, or raise to $5. After the bet is raised to $5, the next raise must be to $10 in accordance with the normal limits.

Brick and Mortar

Brick and mortar bricks and mortar or B&M in its simplest usage is used to describe the physical presence of a buildings or other structure. It's a concept usually referred to in business, which applies to the physical location for a business or organization.

The term brick and mortar business bricks and mortar business or B&M business is often used to refer to a company that possesses a building or store for operations. The name is a metonym derived from the traditional building materials associated with physical buildings — bricks and mortar. Its first use was in 1992.

More specifically, in the jargon of online ecommerce businesses, brick and mortar businesses are companies that have a physical presence and offer face-to-face customer experiences. This term is usually used to contrast with a transitory business or an internet-only presence, such as an online shop, which have no physical presence for shoppers to visit and buy from directly, though such online businesses normally have non-public physical facilities from which they either run business operations from, and/or warehousing for mass physical product storage and distribution.

An example would be the movie-rental shop Blockbuster Video, which has physical stores and is in competition with the newer online rental services offered by Netflix. In this sense, the term is also a retronym in that all stores had a physical presence before the advent of the Internet, making such a term unnecessary.

A comparable term in the United Kingdom is High Street shops, although the phrase bricks and mortar business is also commonly used.