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Yes, the rules are the same whether you are playing in an online poker room or a brick and mortar poker room. But there are special considerations that you need to be aware of when playing online poker. We’ve developed a few simple tips that will hopefully help you in your online poker endeavors.
Online Poker Tip #1: Make sure you’ve got Rakeback
Don’t play poker without it. Rakeback adds money to your poker bankroll and you are simply throwing money away if you do not have it. Fortunately, here at PokerNewsPage.com, we offer the best Rakeback offers and sign-up bonuses on the internet.
Go to our Rakeback page and get started on your Rakeback today!
Online Poker Tip #2: Choosing an ID Name
Sure, seems easy enough, right? Just pick a name that represents your favorite sports team, hobby, something related to your card playing prowess, etc. While that might be a fun way to come up with an user ID, why give your opponents any information about you at all? If you have a name like ‘PokerShark’, players will immediately get (rightly or wrongly) an impression that you know a lot about poker and might be pretty good.
We suggest picking a user ID that gives away no information about you whatsoever, maybe even something random like “adbd233”. What can your opponents learn from that? Are you male or female, old or young, experienced or inexperienced in online poker? Your opponents will have no clue and no initial read on you. Sure, there probably isn’t too much of a read you can get from just a name, but why give your opponents even the slightest idea? Plus, having a random, difficult to type user ID will make it more difficult for people to look up your stats on data mining sites.
Online Poker Tip #3: Practice, Practice, Practice
Most online poker rooms offer free money games. While the practice games are so loose that its difficult to practice sound strategy, there is one important benefit to playing in the free money games before diving into the money game: you get used to the software interface. The last thing you want to do when you are playing in a real money game is hit a button to ‘raise’ when you meant to fold your 72 off suit!
So before you get ready to kill your real money game, spend a little time (as little as 30 mins or so) playing the free money games or freeroll tournaments to get used to the software setup. You’ll be glad you did!
Online Poker Tip #4: Choosing a Real Money Table
At a brick and mortar poker room, there aren’t always a lot of tables available and you often have to wait and go to the first one available. You have no idea if it is a table full of loose, crazy players, or tight tough players. And, its not easy to get up and move to a table that is juicier than the one you are on.
Fortunately, with online poker there is usually an abundance of tables at the limits you want to play, and there is almost always a number of seats open. So you can sit down at a table, play a few hands, and get up and join another one just a matter of seconds. Further, many online poker room software allows you to see certain statistics on the tables such as flop % (# of people seeing the flop), average pot size, and number of hands per hour. With this kind of information, you’ll find a juicy game in no time.
With online poker, the play at a table can change quickly because people are constantly coming in or out. Pay attention to the play at the table you are on, and if it becomes tight, or if you no longer have the edge, get up and leave. The next good table is just a mouse-click away.
Online Poker Tip #5: Note Taking/Stat Tracking
Can you imagine the look you’d get from other players as you took out your pen and paper during/after each hand and wrote down notes? With online poker rooms, that isn’t a concern at all. You can take notes at anytime and nobody will even know.
Taking notes gives you such a great advantage. Every time you run into a player we recommend at a minimum, you jot down his/her tendencies: does he always raise pre-flop with a big pair? Will he raise on a nut flush draw? Will he fold if you check/raise? After a while of keeping notes on a player you will have a good understanding of how this person plays, and you will probably have a good read on what hand he is playing. You know that all the good players have notes on you, so you better have notes on them.
Here is an example of notes that we kept on one person (name not the real name):
Sharkkiller202
+ FISH!!! Total calling station
+ Will play any two cards.
+ Will only raise when he hits his draw, otherwise just calls.
+ Will raise pre-flop with any pocket pair
Now, who do you think we look for every time we log on? That’s right. And this guy doesn’t even take notes and doesn’t seem to even recognize that we always seem to show up on the same table as him.
So keep good notes, keep a list of fish, and follow them from table-to-table taking their money.
It is also a good idea to purchase a poker database/HUD. This will allow you to keep stats of all of your opponents (as well as yours) and help you identify tendencies of your opponents which provides you an even better read. If you are playing a lot of online poker, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor by having one of these. In the near future, we’ll have an article of good online poker tools/resources to help you play your best online poker.
Online Poker Tip #6: Mental Preparation/Distractions
Typically a trip to your local brick and mortar poker room, or to a tournament with at your buddy’s house, you have some time to mentally prepare for it – the drive over, or the week before your buddy’s tourney. With online poker, you can sit down at your computer and start playing poker within just a few minutes, so you don’t have time to properly prepare mentally and to get into a poker playing state of mind.
We recommend that before you sit down at your computer you take a few moments to switch from your every day life into the lean, mean, poker playin’ machine that you are. Think about the strategy you will employ, and remind yourself this is real money you are playing with.
Which brings us to our next thought. When you play poker online, it sometimes doesn’t feel real enough. After all, you aren’t going to the cashier and handing over your green in return for a stack of chips. Also, when you push it all in, you don’t have get the feel for having to collect all your chips and put them in the center of the table – all you have to do when playing online poker is press the “all-in” button. So as you play poker online, constantly remind yourself that this is your hard earned money you are playing with, and not a video game.
When you go to a brick and mortar poker room, the entire atmosphere is about poker. Sounds of chips being shuffled, cards being shuffled, bells and whistles going off at the slots, etc. When you play from home, its you and your computer. And your TV. And your radio. And the internet. And your wife. And your kids. With so many distractions, how can you possibly play your best game? You have to make sure that when you decide to play online poker that you can get away from the wife and kids, and make sure you aren’t tempted to watch TV or listen to the radio, or surf the net. You need to concentrate on the game at hand. If you don’t believe us, play a week’s worth of sessions while watching TV, and then play a week’s worth with no outside distractions (that includes checking email!). You’ll find out how much better your results are when you concentrate on your game.