Online poker is full of excitement, disappointments, success, skill, luck and money up for grabs, of course. Online games consist of millions of players around the world - all ready to take each other's money. Online games consist of online poker rooms, too, since the players need a place to play poker at. Poker rooms run their businesses by taking a certain piece of a pot to theirselves (called "rake"). Online poker is a big business, and known just about whatever part of the world you are at right now.
I want to guide you through the world of internet poker games. We're going to start from something as simple as creating your player account, proceed to memorizing rules and finally obtaining and maintaining winning poker strategies. I want to start all this by saying following: there are players who just want to enjoy the "excitement of competition" - however, I'm here to tell you how to win money. Getting excited from playing poker is a great start, but doesn't help you to win money yet.
I've always had fun playing (and beating) these games, and I'm sure you'll find them just as enjoyable especially when your poker bankroll starts growing up. Let others enjoy the word "competition" and "excitement", let's just enjoy winning money.
Cash Games & Tournaments
There are different kinds of online poker games and game variations. You can play either cash games or tournaments. You can read more about the differences between these two on poker rules page, but introductions to these games can be read here:
Cash Games - The fastest way to get to play poker is playing cash games (also called "ring games"). There are always minimum and maximum buy-in requirements for each table. Generally, maximum is 100 * Big Blind, so for example if you play a $3/$6 No Limit or Pot Limit game, the maximum buy-in is $600. The amount you buy-in with should make a big difference to the way you play. Some players master the art of low stack play, but most pros that I know of play with a full buy-in stack. And I do too.
Poker Tournaments - There are different kinds of tournaments. You can either play multi-table tournaments or sit & go tournaments (and then different variations of those tournaments). Generally, the difference between these two tournaments are: there are multiple tables in multi-table tournaments, whereas sit & go can be played on multiple tables, too, but you'll know exactly how many players take part before the tournament starts. Multi-table tournaments have either guaranteed prizepools or every buy-in will raise the prizepool. Finally, you'll know when multi-table tournaments start, when sit & go tournaments start when certain amount of players have registered.
World Championship of Poker and Full Tilt Online Poker Series are very popular tournaments. Both have prizepools of millions of dollars and you'll become rich if you do well in one of them. You're playing against beginners, starters, bad players and best poker players in the world.
Creating a Poker Account
It's easy to create a poker account and takes about 5 minutes (if that). Remember to enter your real information, otherwise making money transactions is impossible (also, it's against the poker room's rules to enter fake information). You don't have to enter your credit card, or Moneybookers or Neteller information rightaway though. You can start by playing free poker games. It's good to know whether you like the poker room in question (see: online poker sites or not before any kind of money transactions.
You can't usually change your nickname/username after you've entered it once, so think about something you'll want to play with for years to come.
Online Poker Strategy Tips
It is one of our goals to make a lot of money by playing poker, but even more important is to fully understand the idea of "making as much money as possible". We play against other players everyday, and to win money from their poker accounts, we'll just have to play better poker. An effective way to become a better poker player is to play against better opponents. This is only true though, if you know what you'll have to do in order to get better at poker. Poker Strategy Tactics website is going to help you with this.
One of the biggest mistakes for a new player is to go "too high, too fast". I'm touching this subject in this Poker Skill Levels article, but to make one things clear; you don't become a great player overnight. It's a lot of hard work. There are players who go higher up in limits too fast, but also some that I think go higher too slow, possibly never. If you want to play poker "half-time" and just make a little bit of pocket money out of it, that's fine, I don't blame you. Your mindset should be different, though, when you want to get as good or great as you can.
You'll need to love poker. And even though poker is about making money, I think it's quite important to have a certain amount of desire for competition - to prove yourself you're better than others. This is a quality that I think will also destroy some (or most) players because they push it too far. You're supposed think about poker and think about money, because that IS what makes great poker players really great - they manage to make more money than others. There's no other way to rank a poker player than the amount of money he has made. But a certain amount of desire for competition is definitely a great quality to have - understanding why we're playing poker is another.
Before you move to the next chapters on this website - more poker strategy, theory, tips and mathematics that is, I'd like to remind you of one thing: there'll always be losing days. It's impossible to not to lose at poker. Even if you played better than your opponents in every single pot, they would still hit their few outers from time to time. Plus, you'll just have to be wrong in your estimations sometimes - it's only natural. It'll help you to realize what's the best possible action for future games, too.
You'll find my other categories for online poker strategy on the left side of this page. I've continued this article since it's getting too long for one page - see Online Poker Tips.
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