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#1
11-05-2007, 09:13 PM
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My Beginners Guide to Online Poker
There are probably many of these, but one more can't hurt.
Ok, so you've decided to venture into the world of online poker. Welcome. When first starting out online, there are so many things that one should understand before they begin the adventure. There are many excellent sources of information on the internet and real world. I won't try to summarize them all; instead I will give some basic advice that I wish I would have followed. Poker is a great game. It's a game that involves both skill and luck. Whatever your reason for pursuing poker, you need to be honest with yourself throughout your poker career. Are you playing for fun? Are you playing to make money? Are you playing to gain experience/learn about the game? What exactly is your motivation? For each person, it will be a different variation of these things - be honest. Being aware of your reasons for playing poker, you need to have some idea how much you are willing to spend/lose playing poker. You should set aside a certain amount of money or determine a budget per month to play on-line. This amount should also be money that you can afford to lose. Poker, while being a game of skill, is gambling. 95% chance to win does not equal 100%. A beginning player will typically lose money. A brief story - I started playing poker with friends and got interested by TV coverage. One day, I decided to try live (casino) hold'em. I was scared of No Limit, so I played 3/6 Limit which was the smallest game. I quickly lost my first $100. Over the next 3 days, I won $300. I felt great, the game seemed really easy. I decided that I’d deposit the money online to try out online poker. I played 2/4 limit, and well, I got CRUSHED. I quickly lost that money and much more. Why? Two reasons. Live versus Online. Online games are 'harder' than live games. Online, you can play 0.01/0.02 hold'em. In a casino, 2/4 is the lowest limit available in most US casinos. So just because you won live at a level does not mean that you will have success online at that same level. Bankroll Management. Remember how much money you budgeted for poker earlier. The next step is to decide the stakes that you will play. There are some basic guidelines that most people used when I started. If playing No Limit Texas Hold'em (9 handed), you should have at least 20 buy-ins for the level (ie $25NL 0.10/0.25 blinds - $500 bankroll). If playing Limit Hold'em (9 handed), the old thought was 300 big blinds (ie 1/2 - $600 bankroll). This is just basic advice for a beginner - more discussion can be found by searching this site. If you are stay true to what has been written so far, you should have an enjoyable start to your online poker career. However, there will be times when things don’t go well. Poker players commonly refer to this as being on tilt or tilting. Tilting is a situation where you are not playing at your best. This can be for multiple reasons: problems in your personal life, having someone beat you on a longshot, simple frustration over how a session is going. Tilting can destroy your bankroll because your mind will not be clear. Decisions will be made to get back at another player instead of what is the best play for that situation. A common issue for players is to chase their losses. This is moving up in stakes to try and quickly win back the lost money. This has probably bankrupt more players than anything else in the online poker world. If you feel yourself doing any of the above bad traits, you must QUIT the game. Go for a walk, play some video games, or whatever you need to clear your head. Oh yeah, don’t play while intoxicated – that one should be obvious. Now, here are some items that you should research BEFORE signing up to a poker site. Most (perhaps all) sites offer an incentive for signing up and depositing. This is your initial deposit bonus. This is money that will be given to you for meeting certain requirements which are different for every site. The next item is rakeback. You get rakeback for many sites by signing up to the site though an affiliate. Rakeback is a return of a percentage of the money you have paid in rake. Some affiliates will offer gifts (poker chips, books, cards, etc) for signing up through their internet sites. A little research can help you get a little something extra for your time. If you decide to get more serious about online poker, you should strongly consider buying poker software. There are two types of programs that most players utilize. One will keep track of all the statistics for your poker sessions. Pokertracker is one, and I think PokerOffice is another. The second program will take the statistics from the first program and display them over the table that you are playing. Over time, these statistics can help figure out an opponent’s likely hand/range. The main program used is PokerAce HUD. I’m sure others exist. Hopefully this will help you get started off on the right foot. Poker is a great, interesting game with many variations to explore. Be honest with yourself, minimize tilt, and try to improve constantly. Lastly, one should be responsible with gambling. It can become addictive (I’ll leave that story out.) 
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