A Beginners Guide To Online Poker

For the purpose of this guide we are going to assume that you are a completely new online poker player but that you do understand the basic rules of poker. If you do not know how to play Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha High-Low, or Seven-Card Stud please refer to our online poker rules page where we explain the basic set up and play for the four most prevalent forms of online poker. We also offer a wealth of advice related to poker strategy, and even if you are a beginner it is important that you understand concepts like pot odds, and how to value starting hands. Please refer to our poker strategy page for these articles and much more.If you are going to play poker online you must first choose a poker room that you can trust. This poker room must be financially reliable, technologically stable, and generally honest. Our poker room reviews take all of this into account, and there are actually a number of equally solid companies that offer an excellent product for poker players. Your deposits are safe, your details secure, and when you want to get your money out that will also present no problem. We recommend that you open a NETeller account, or use a similar Internet payment solution, if you are going to play online poker. That way deposits and withdrawals will never be an issue as every major poker room offers NETeller these days. We suggest that you play for free at a poker room before you make an initial deposit, simply to become familiar with the various software features, the time they give you to make a decision in each hand (this differs from site to site), feeling comfortable with the pre-select buttons that are available, and getting used to the way information is presented to you. Each poker room is different in most of these regards, and you need to feel comfortable with the interface before you play for real money. Yo will also find that many online poker rooms, like Pokerroom.com, offer Mac compatible poker. Next, you will want to take advantage of the fact that online poker rooms will pay you to play there, as opposed to your local card room where the idea would be ridiculous. This is one big advantage of Internet poker, and you need to exploit it as a new player. Nearly all poker rooms offer a first-time bonus when you make an initial deposit, and many poker websites offer incentives (reward points that can be converted into money or used to buy merchandise) that are linked to the number of raked hands you play there. Many new poker players lose out by making a first-time deposit that is too small. Make sure that you qualify for the largest possible match bonus offered by the poker room. If the bonus is 50% of your deposit up to a maximum bonus of $100 then make sure you deposit $200 first time out. They are giving you free money, which will help to offset the cost of the rake over time, so you must take it all.Newer online poker rooms obviously feel a more urgent need to increase their volume of players so they tend to offer better bonuses than the more established poker rooms that already have thousands of players. As a new player the volume of players at a poker room is not a primary concern. You are more likely to play low-limit games initially, and the newer poker rooms always have more users at lower-limits than they do at big-limits. If you are already a serious high-stakes player you will probably not choose a new online poker room precisely because they do not have enough consistent games at high levels. Make sure that there are games offered at your stakes level throughout the day. But a less-established poker room also has one other big advantage for shrewd online poker players, namely that they tend to attract very weak players. There is a clever way to ascertain if an online poker table is full of weak players, and every poker room has this functionality: go to the "lobby" of an online poker room and look at the percentage of players that see the flop at a table. This pre-flop % should be around 30% at the most for limit-stakes games and the higher the % the softer the game. When you see that the average number of players staying to see the flop is over 50% at a table you should jump in immediately and take advantage!A lot of these poker rooms get their initial players through casinos and sports books, and poker might just be another form of recreational gambling for these characters. They've never even looked at the pre-flop percentages in the lobby, and even if they noticed the numbers they would have no idea what they meant. All of this is great news for those of you following the Insider's advice and constantly striving to improve your poker game. These fish swim around in plenty of soft games, and we are more than happy to find them for you.So, now that you have found a reliable poker room with an excellent initial deposit bonus, a rewards scheme in place to pay you back the more you play there, software that you are comfortable using, and weak competition that you can hopefully beat on a regular basis, you are ready to start playing online poker at a high level.Our parting piece of advice for new online poker players is to stay disciplined. It is very tempting to play poker with as little skill as all those around you, especially when the cards are going against you and weak players seem to get lucky against you. The only way to win at poker consistently is to make solid decisions over and over regardless of individual outcomes. You have to concentrate - not always easy when you are playing online from home or work, and you should have a plan: when to leave a table, how much profit you want to make per session, how much you are prepared to lose, which players to pick on and which to leave alone. If you take online poker seriously you will already have an advantage, and if you also strive to improve your game by regularly visiting the Online Poker Insider you will have a great chance of making money!