Stressed at the thought of playing online poker, even though you’ve been doing awesome in your local poker room? You’re in luck — we know exactly what it’s like to feel like a fish out of water just because you made the switch from offline poker to online poker. Yet the temporary discomfort will unlock so many different benefits. Indeed, when you choose online poker, you’re essentially choosing convenience. You just need to make sure that you’re thinking about the bigger picture when you make the decision to move forward. That’s really all there is to it. Thankfully, you have a lot of chances to get things underway rather than feeling like you’re just spinning your wheels. The last thing that you want to do is miss out on the convenience of being able to win real money at home.
That’s right, we said it — if you play online, you have just as many chances to win serious money as you did if you were playing locally. That’s what attracts so many people to the world of online poker in the first place. However, there are a few things that you’re going to need to do in order to keep the stress low. You don’t want to lose your cool and end up blowing your chances at some good poker.
First and foremost, you want to start at LOW STAKES. Now, we put this in caps because we’ve heard way too many stories of people that think that they can make big money online the way they’ve been doing well in their local card games. This is really a recipe for disaster. You might think that you’re going to be the biggest, baddest poker player in the game but this isn’t the case at all. You will want to make sure that you are starting out low. This is so that you can just focus on playing great poker. It gives you a chance to start with a small bankroll. After all, if you’re as good as you think you are, and then your bankroll should swell up in virtually no time at all.
Online poker deals with players from all over the world, with tools that they use to refine their game to a razor blade’s edge. You’re in for a tough battle, but that should excite you not scare you. In other words, you’ll find yourself getting better just because the opposition is so much fiercer than what you’re probably dealing with in your backyard.
Moving up the stakes slowly lets you really get used to the way that online poker is played. There’s nothing wrong with going with low stakes poker. You can still make a lot of money playing low stakes. In fact, many professionals got their start grinding the low stakes poker tables.
You also want to try to invest in tools that are going to let you get even better. For example, you can go with a heads up display that will show you all of the data that you can stand. A program like Hold’Em Manager lets you see all of your opponents and study the hands that they have played against you. You can see the stats displayed right next to each player, which means that you can get a better idea for the players’ images without too much thought.
What these programs also bring to the table is the chance to review past hands. This is something that’s going to be absolutely critical when you’re trying to become a serious poker player. You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t take at least a little bit of time to figure out where you’ve been. That’s just the way it is.
If you’re going to look at old hands, you might want to be able to sit and take notes as well. You need to see any weaknesses in your game so that you can get them closed without too much hassle.
You might feel that software is cheating but we’re here to assure you that it isn’t cheating at all. As long as the site’s terms of service allows the use of external software programs, then it’s fair play. It would be different if the site blocked you from it.
You will need to also take advantage of some of the features the poker sites give you, like the ability to take notes. Being able to see all of your notes for each and every player. This means that you’ll be able to see any information you need to know in advance. There’s also a chance to color code players. This can come in handy in a hurry, especially when it comes to selecting tables. What if you were to tag all of the shark players with amazing poker skills red and all of the weaker players green? This means that when you see a table of green coded players, you know that the chances of you making good money are a lot higher than at a table full of red players.
You want to make sure that you’re taking your online poker game seriously. This is not something that you really can do while you’re watching TV. It’s just not going to work out very well. It will lead to trouble, and that’s not something that we’re trying to have right now. You get to really build a poker career that pleases you.
After all, isn’t it about your entertainment and pleasure at the end of the day? You want to make sure that you’re building the best environment for great poker that you can. If you follow the tips in this guide, you should be just fine. Don’t worry about being the master of the poker universe in a few sessions. That just won’t happen. However, if you take your poker game seriously and work on ways to improve, chances are good that you’ll be a player to watch in virtually no time at all. Good luck!