5 Online Poker Tips
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Welcome to the first in a series of articles written by guest poker webmasters to showcase their poker websites. This first article is written by the webmaster of FirstTimePokerPlayer.com, and covers the basic tips you'll want to understand when deciding to play poker for the first time. The article leads into a comprehensive series of 101 tips - a guide to playing poker online - which you can find in it's entirety at FirstTimePokerPlayer.com.
Five Online Poker Tips To Kick Start Your Poker Career
Poker tip 1: Make sure you know the poker rules
This one may sound kind of silly, but I’ve seen enough players express their amazement in the chat box after their flush got beaten by a full-house and the pot did not go to them. Everyone can make these types of errors once in a while, but if you’re serious about playing winning poker then at least make sure that you know the rules of the game as well as the poker hand rankings inside out before risking any money at the poker table. This will prevent you from making unnecessary mistakes and losing money you don't need to lose.
Poker tip 2: Choose the right poker room to play at
Not all the online poker rooms offer every game you might wish to play, and sometimes when your favoured game is offered there isn’t enough traffic in them to fill up a single table. This holds true for certain poker variants like Seven Card Stud and Omaha, but also for full-ring Texas Hold’em games as opposed to shorthanded ones. Furthermore, you might be interested in freerolls or have a very small starting bankroll with which you can only play at the 1 cent/2 cent no limit games. What it comes down to is that you have to know what you are looking for in an online poker room and then it’s just a matter of making sure the poker room you choose to play at offers those features. Compare several rooms and try to stick with the more well known ones. It would also be beneficial if you read something about first deposit bonuses and rakeback before signing up.
Poker tip 3: Devote some time to learning poker strategy
Okay, maybe a little bit more than just ‘some time’. At the lower stakes your opponents will make so many big mistakes that a basic understanding of Texas Hold’em poker strategy will be enough to already win such a nice amount of money that flipping burgers can’t compete with it. Don’t start by diving into the matter of how to bluff, squeeze, triple barrel etc. Instead, make sure you understand the big picture first. Basic poker strategy fundamentals - such as estimating your hand strength relative to your opponents likely hand, understanding the importance of position, initiative, pot odds and implied odds (stack sizes!) - are all very important. Once you truly understand these principles you can start filling in the ‘details’. And sometimes you might already find yourself accidentally executing these details correctly as they follow naturally from the fundamentals mentioned.
Poker tip 4: Practice proper bankroll management
If you spend enough time improving your online poker skills then you can get really good at poker. However, this does not directly have to be translated into good results. Because there is and always will be an element of chance in poker, even the best poker players sometimes have ‘losing streaks’. And to reduce the risk of going broke because of normal losing streaks you need a certain buffer in your bankroll. For No-Limit Hold’em you will often hear people say that you should move up to a new level only when you have at the very least 20 buy-ins for it. Even more important when it comes to bankroll management is that you move down a level in time when you start losing. A better rule of thumb would be to say that you should be very careful with putting more than 5% of your bankroll at risk on one poker table.
Poker tip 5: Be patient…
If you've hopped from poker tips page to poker tips page on different websites before getting to this one then you'll probably have seen the tips above somewhere else already. It’s a cliché and the truth is: patience alone doesn’t even make you a winning player. It’s rather a lack of patience that could make you a losing one. And the same goes for discipline. If you have the virtue of always being patient and disciplined, then you would make the best decisions possible with your knowledge level all the time. Emotions wouldn’t interfere with your decision making after bad beats and all the knowledge you absorb about poker strategy would be exploited to its fullest. Oh my, I wouldn’t even dare to think about the potential such a poker player would have.
If you’re still ‘poker tip hungry’ after reading the five online poker tips above then you can find a lot more in this helpful list of 101 online poker tips at a site called First Time Poker Player. Enjoy!
Poker tip 1: Make sure you know the poker rules
This one may sound kind of silly, but I’ve seen enough players express their amazement in the chat box after their flush got beaten by a full-house and the pot did not go to them. Everyone can make these types of errors once in a while, but if you’re serious about playing winning poker then at least make sure that you know the rules of the game as well as the poker hand rankings inside out before risking any money at the poker table. This will prevent you from making unnecessary mistakes and losing money you don't need to lose.
Poker tip 2: Choose the right poker room to play at
Not all the online poker rooms offer every game you might wish to play, and sometimes when your favoured game is offered there isn’t enough traffic in them to fill up a single table. This holds true for certain poker variants like Seven Card Stud and Omaha, but also for full-ring Texas Hold’em games as opposed to shorthanded ones. Furthermore, you might be interested in freerolls or have a very small starting bankroll with which you can only play at the 1 cent/2 cent no limit games. What it comes down to is that you have to know what you are looking for in an online poker room and then it’s just a matter of making sure the poker room you choose to play at offers those features. Compare several rooms and try to stick with the more well known ones. It would also be beneficial if you read something about first deposit bonuses and rakeback before signing up.
Poker tip 3: Devote some time to learning poker strategy
Okay, maybe a little bit more than just ‘some time’. At the lower stakes your opponents will make so many big mistakes that a basic understanding of Texas Hold’em poker strategy will be enough to already win such a nice amount of money that flipping burgers can’t compete with it. Don’t start by diving into the matter of how to bluff, squeeze, triple barrel etc. Instead, make sure you understand the big picture first. Basic poker strategy fundamentals - such as estimating your hand strength relative to your opponents likely hand, understanding the importance of position, initiative, pot odds and implied odds (stack sizes!) - are all very important. Once you truly understand these principles you can start filling in the ‘details’. And sometimes you might already find yourself accidentally executing these details correctly as they follow naturally from the fundamentals mentioned.
Poker tip 4: Practice proper bankroll management
If you spend enough time improving your online poker skills then you can get really good at poker. However, this does not directly have to be translated into good results. Because there is and always will be an element of chance in poker, even the best poker players sometimes have ‘losing streaks’. And to reduce the risk of going broke because of normal losing streaks you need a certain buffer in your bankroll. For No-Limit Hold’em you will often hear people say that you should move up to a new level only when you have at the very least 20 buy-ins for it. Even more important when it comes to bankroll management is that you move down a level in time when you start losing. A better rule of thumb would be to say that you should be very careful with putting more than 5% of your bankroll at risk on one poker table.
Poker tip 5: Be patient…
If you've hopped from poker tips page to poker tips page on different websites before getting to this one then you'll probably have seen the tips above somewhere else already. It’s a cliché and the truth is: patience alone doesn’t even make you a winning player. It’s rather a lack of patience that could make you a losing one. And the same goes for discipline. If you have the virtue of always being patient and disciplined, then you would make the best decisions possible with your knowledge level all the time. Emotions wouldn’t interfere with your decision making after bad beats and all the knowledge you absorb about poker strategy would be exploited to its fullest. Oh my, I wouldn’t even dare to think about the potential such a poker player would have.
If you’re still ‘poker tip hungry’ after reading the five online poker tips above then you can find a lot more in this helpful list of 101 online poker tips at a site called First Time Poker Player. Enjoy!