An Introduction to poker

So you have decided that its about time that you get involved with one of the fastest growing online gambling games in the world and your ready to take on some of the worlds best and worst poker players from all over the world.

There are so many things that you will have to learn, experience and study to ensure that your classed as one of the better players within the online poker industry because without improving your game and mind frame towards the game and how you should play it, playing online poker will be little more than a hobby and what could prove to be an expensive one at that should you make the wrong choices.

Firstly you have to look into why your looking to play poker online in the first place, are you simply looking to fill your time with something to do or are you seriously looking to be able to make an initial investment with the view to turning a profit?

If your looking to play just to fill the time and boredom that you have, you need to steer well clear of the real money side of online poker because you don’t possess the drive or willingness to improve to be able to turn a good profit if any from the game. You would be better suited to joining up to an online poker room and playing within the play money section of the site, that way you get the game play of the real thing but without the risks that are involved.

If your looking to make the game into a profitable pass time for you then you need to realise that as with a large percentage of things within the world, nothing comes for free.

You need to be able to look at your income and decide what you can afford to place in terms of an initial investment, this means how much money you are able to place into an online poker room when you join in order for you to be able to play within the real money sector of the site.

Trying to make poker bankroll by joining an online poker site with the view to only play the low level freeroll tournaments will only mean that the time that you are investing into the game carries very little return, with many freeroll tournaments offering between $20 - $100 prize pools.

So you can see that there is a way to make the funds to build your career on, I mean looking at the $100 prize pool aspect of the tournament might well leave you thinking that should you be able to win that tournament you would walk away with $100 placed into your account, wrong.

The stated prize pool amount is the amount of money that is placed onto a tournament to be shared out between all players who are able to finish within the paying positions so the reality is that for a player to win a freeroll tournament that is offering $100 as a prize pool, they would in fact only take $15 for themselves with the other players who place taking a share of the money too.

So as you can see, spending 5 hours battling your way through a field of a large variety of poker players and poker ability with the view to collecting $15 at the end of it is just crazy.

Ideally, if you are looking to make money while playing the game you need to be able to stake $50 or more on your time of account creation, this amount is based on the minimum that many online poker rooms offer in order to be able to qualify for their first deposit bonuses.

So many online poker rooms are battling to be able to attract new players to their site on a daily basis and so with the market proving to be a highly cut throat one, online poker rooms are battling it out to offer new players and members to their sites and so are trying to offer more attractive bonuses for when a player makes their first deposit into their account.

The most notable bonus for you would be the first deposit match bonus, meaning that online poker rooms will credit your account with bonus funds to the tune of the amount that you initial invest in your first loading of your player account.

The funds are then unlocked by you as you generate rake at the real money tables, with many programmes needing you to get 1000 player points per $10 bonus funds.

Now that we have thought not only about why your going to play the game and how your going to fund your action, you need to think about how your actually going to play at the tables.

This is known as a players stance or approach to a game, meaning that you can define how your going to act within a number of situations.

This is where a large number of new and inexperienced poker players find themselves having to deposit into their accounts again within hours of only just doing so because of their poor approach to the play.

The worst thing that you could do is think that playing every hand is going to offer the same amount of possibility to return a victory as this is so untrue but yet players do this on a daily basis.

You need to consider how you are going to bet into pots, what hands your willing to start with and which ones are going to be danger hands that you should fold at the soonest possible chance.

Too many new players of the game think that by folding they are failing at the game, you need to be able to fold in order to retain your bankroll.

Don’t panic that the blinds will pass over you, costing you a small amount of funds each time as when you finally make a hand to which your happy to play, the ratio at which you tend to return on a winning hand is much greater than that of the forced bets that you have folded in the past.

Now that you have thought about how you would like to play the game, its time to learn the way that you would need to do that, just thinking right I will fold the hands that aren’t paired will not only cost you money but it will also mean that your participation level at each table that you play is so low that you will quickly lose interest in playing.

You need to be able to read over poker strategy that is offered on the internet, watch poker videos and read about past experiences that players just like you have had when they first started playing, learning from their mistakes so that you don’t fall into the same ones.

The saying that knowledge is power is so true when it comes to playing poker, if you have the knowledge of how to act in any situation then you are going to carry not only confidence into the hand but also a willingness to play the hand to the best possible extent.

Finally you need to think about what stakes are best for you, investing the whole of your poker funding onto one table not only means that should you get caught up in a big hand you will lose all of your bankroll but you will also take a huge knock in terms of confidence.

So many players load their accounts, invest the whole amount into one cash ring game, lose it and then decide that poker is not for them that it is scary, you don’t want to be one of those.

Look to take to the tables that you can afford to play and take on a minimum of 40 times the big blind, any less than this and you will be forced to play poker with cards that are less desirable and so placing yourself and funding at a higher risk.