Top Tips for Online Poker: The Basics
The explosion in popularity of poker over the past couple of decades has led to so many different online poker options as well. The most important thing is you need to know the basics of poker before you start playing poker at an online casino. If you don’t you might as well just start a charity and give your money away!
How to find a reliable site
The next step is to find a site on which you will be playing. It’s very important to pick a reputable one as they will be housing your money in a similar way a bank would. So you want that money to be there when it comes time to cash out. All this will take is a little bit of research as you will find the fraudsters pretty quickly. You also want to make sure that the sites have enough people on them so that you can find games when you want. If it’s a reputable website you really shouldn’t have to worry about that as reputable sites typically have plenty of action.
The difference between online and live poker
Now for some actionable tips that you can implement the next time you’re playing online poker. The biggest difference between online and live poker is that you cannot see the other player. In live poker, you can look the other person in the eyes or into their sunglasses and read their body language to figure out if they have it or not. When you’re playing online you can’t do that all you can read is the size of the bet in comparison to how they have played previous hands. This means you can’t read the other player at all online! This means that you have to play the hands you dealt even more and capitalize on the situations where you have the best hand. The best way to do this is to only play the better hands you’re dealt so that you have the best odds of winning the hand. You must be picky when it comes to the hands you play with since reading the table is very difficult to do.
How to play in your position
Now that you have limited the hands that you play the next step to improving your poker game is learning how to play in position. You will need to pay close attention to what position you’re sitting at on the table for each hand. In case you don’t know there are better positions on the table than others. The best position to be in is going to be on the button which means that you’re last to act, the worst position is what’s called under the gun which is right after the blinds and is first to act. When you’re sitting on the button you’re going to want to play more hands as you can steam more pots from here by betting. The closer you are to the button the looser you should play and the opposite is true as the further you get away from the button you should tighten up playing only the very best hands. You will be shocked to see how many hands you can win when in position and the rest of the players check it to you. So you must exploit that whenever you do get the chance!
The final and most important tip for online poker is to know when to raise, fold and check. There is a reason that they are in that order because raising is the most important and should be the most common thing you do. Folding is second because there is nothing wrong with folding when the opponent has you beat. Checking is last as it’s the weakest move you can do and should avoid it at all costs! When in doubt on any hand you should be either raising it or folding it as you want to get the most from the opponent when you have the best hand and give away the least amount of money when you have the worst hand. Checking is something you should be doing when you’re trying to trap someone and extract as much money from them as possible. But please be careful as this is a move that can and will blow up in your face as they will hit their hand sometimes and it will hurt your chip stack.
Conclusion:
If you can keep it to these simplest tips your success rate will go up exponentially playing online poker. As we said before if you play basic poker and play the hands you’re dealt your success will go up. Since it’s a lot more difficult to get live reads on people online you need to keep your bluffing to a minimum only doing it in the best of positions. As with anything else in life you need to continue to practice and play frequently. Know when to hold em and know when to fold em’!!
