Playing Poker Online
Playing poker at home can be a great opportunity for having fun and getting together with your friends once in a while.
The goal of playing poker at home is not necessarily making money. It’s more an opportunity to socialize. Nevertheless, home poker is silent gambling, although there is not so much money concerned, the desire to win is the same.
Thus, by gathering your friends in your home around a table you can have your very own “casino”. In order to have a doing well home-poker night, you need to prepare thoroughly.
The first thing you need to do is call up your friends, or send them an e-mail to invite them, but be sure to ask them to confirm a day in advance because you wouldn’t want to be in the situation where there are not enough players.
All these being taken care of, make sure you have the whole thing you require for your poker night.
First of all you need to have at least 2 decks of playing cards. Moreover, you need to have a large card table, enough chairs for everyone to be seated, poker chips, a notebook and some pens (to write down the scores), and of course some snacks and drinks.
Several good music could also come in handy. Once every person has arrived it’s time to get started. Seat everyone around the table and after that make sure everybody knows the rules of the game by briefly relating them.
After that shuffle the cards and deal. It’s a good idea to rotate the deal so that everybody feels involved.
Home poker nights are a great chance to meet people, so ask the people you have invited over to bring with them some other people, too.
Thus, you will get to know new people. Since the goal of this reunion, besides playing poker, is also having fun, take some breaks from playing, and thus allow your friends to have conversations.
Nowadays “Texas Hold’em” is the most popular poker game, so some of the friends you have invited might know online poker strategy and they must be aware of how to choose the online poker website. But if you are into trying new things, as well, we recommend you other poker games, such as: “Double-Flop Texas Hold’em”, “Crazy Pineapple Poker”, “Omaha Poker”, “Seven Card Stud”, or “Razz Poker”.
Online Poker Strategy
Online Poker is a complicated game but a few simple guidelines go far in preventing beginner mistakes.
Later in the guide we will recommend good poker books and poker web sites where you can learn the finer points of advanced strategy, but for now keep these ideas in mind:
Be patient: Fold before time and often. Top Holdem players might fold 80% of their hands before the flop. ( Online Poker Strategy )
The idea is to only play when you contain an advantage. The sad truth is, most of the time you don't have an edge and you can tell just by looking at your first cards.
If you're going to fold at all during a hand, the earlier you fold the better, because you will contribute fewer chips to a pot that someone else wins.
By failure a lot early, you give yourself a stronger average hand when you do play. That makes it easier to follow the second rule.
Be aggressive: Don't be afraid to rise. The fewer opponents that are in the pot with you, the more inclined you should be to rise instead of call.
Often the best choice is to rise, next best is to fold and the worst choice is to call. The exception is when there are a lot of other players in the pot.
Now the poker odds are that somebody has a pretty good hand. In this case you can fold your medium-strength hands and call with good draws. But when you make that draw, don't slow play it.
Know when you're beat: Okay, so you started with a strong hand and have been doing a lot of rising.
But now this other guy just won't quit retrieval you and your hand hasn't improved. Well, it may be time to give up. Don't be afraid to fold when you know you're beat.
Get inside your opponent's head: What do you think he has? What do you think he thinks you have? What does he think you think he has? If you can outsmart your opponent on this level, you have the advantage.
But it takes practice. New players tend to concentrate too much on their own hand. It's just as important to understand what your opponent might have as well.
A good start at developing this skill in Holdem is to imagine what is the strongest hand anybody could have given the current board.
For example, maybe a pair of aces in the hole would make three aces. Then think back over the play of the hand so far. Is your opponent's play consistent with holding two aces? If not, he probably doesn't have that hand.
To go to the next level, look back over your own play so far this hand. Is your play consistent with holding two aces? That gives you an idea what your opponent might think you have.
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How To Choose The Poker Site
The more people that play at a poker site, there will be a greater the choice of games. At the largest sites, you can connect any time day or night and find hundreds of tables to choose from.
Also, a site with a large player base can afford to spread a lot of different kinds of poker games, including less popular games that might be your own favorite.
A smaller site can't do this because it would drain players from the other poker games, possibly causing another game to "break" (that's when all the players leave a table) because it has too few players.
Another advantage of playing at a popular site is you can be assured that they are making a lot of money and will be operating far into the future.
Ring game vs. tournament traffic: Some sites specialize in tournaments and others in ring games (that is, regular non-tournament single-table poker games). Depending on your own tastes, you'll want to choose a site that is tailored to your interests.
Game selection and profitability: Although we mentioned this in the section on popularity, it's worth calling out separately.
One of the most important skills of a winning player is the ability to find the most profitable game. ( Poker Player Website )
But even the best poker player will do poorly if all the games are bad. Some sites tend to attract stronger players than others.
Even within a site, some games will be much better than others. If profit is one of your motives, you want to play at a site where the other players are less skillful than average, and also where the site gives you the tools to distinguish a good game from a bad one. We'll talk about that more later.
Financial reputation: This is a key factor if you are planning to play for real money. The last way you want to spend your time is worrying about whether your money is safe with the poker site.
However, if you are only going to play for play money, then you don't care about this, since they won't have any of your money. In general, today's largest sites also have the best reputations.
Loyalty program: Every site has promotions aimed at retaining their customers, but some are more generous than others.
Some sites hold free roll tournaments, some have high hand jackpots, and others give you Frequent Player Points (like airline miles) that you can redeem for merchandise or tournament entries.
Many of the promotions are available to play money players as well, in the hope that those players will someday decide to play for real money.
Game variety: Some of the biggest sites don't have a wide variety of games, even though they have a large enough player base to support it.
