Basic Online Poker Tips
Poker is a game of strategy and proper decision-making; your skill is essentially based off of the decisions you make and how often you make them. The more you make good choices, the more money you will eventually make and the longer you will stay around in games. Some choices are harder to make than others; requiring you to consider pot odds and make complex calculations in your head; these are for more advanced players (all in good time). Other decisions are as simple as knowing what limit to play at. Below are just a few basic online poker tips that will put you light-years ahead of other beginners.
The first and most important decision you will make when playing online poker is what site you choose to play at. Research every site youre interested in, look for past customer reviews on customer service, game play, and payout times. Look for a site thats been around long enough with a good reputation; the last thing you want is a shady online poker site handling your money
Once youve found a good online poker site you now have to pick what poker game you want to play and at what limit. Dont ever put your money on the line in a poker game that you have no idea about. Every beginner should hop into a play money game before putting their real money on the table. Once youve gotten comfortable with the game you can go ahead and play with some real cash. There are many different games stakes, some range from a 1-dollar buy in all the way up to 1,000 dollars. This is the first crucial decision you will make; with each different stake you play at there are different players you will encounter. At the lower stakes youll find a lot of beginners who have no idea what theyre doing; youll probably see more than half the players go all in within 5 minutes of the first hand. These players are very aggressive and will play some crazy hands so be careful. With higher stakes comes a better player who makes calculated decisions and are usually patient players who will wait to trap you. The higher the stakes, the more money you can win; this attracts many beginners with the hopes of winning a huge payout. Dont do this, only play with money you can lose to afford; theres no way your stepping into a high stakes game as a beginner and winning unless you have lady luck on your side.
Sometimes, actually, a lot of times when you play lower limit games you will face bad beats and some insane players that will put you in a bad mood or get you extremely angry or frustrated; this is called going on tilt. Tilting or playing on your emotions will almost all the time will negatively affect your decision making; youll call big raises when you shouldnt, or go all in on a mediocre hand. When you notice that youre starting to get angry or frustrated, just get up and take a five-minute break to cool down. Tilting is the downfall of many online poker players.
Everything I said may seem obvious to most intermediate and even beginning players but youd be surprised at how many players fail to acknowledge these basic principles. Knowing and applying these three basic rules will put you ahead of many naive poker players and will surely give you an advantage.