Top 10 online poker tips
Top 10 online poker tips
In general, online players come in many shapes and sizes. Some people have a natural ability for poker, while some others will take a longer time to get into the groove. Whether you are starting out on your online poker journey or just looking to improve your game, these top poker tips would set you well on your way.
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Get a good welcome bonus
Every good online poker site out there will offer a welcome bonus for new players when they make their first money deposit. Sometimes this bonus will come in the form of a fixed number (some sites will even give you a small amount to start playing just for registering, without depositing a single penny), but normally poker sites will take your initial deposit total in the form of an ‘unlockable’ bonus.
One of the most common is a 100% first deposit bonus: this means that if you deposit ZAR100, you can unlock another ZAR100 incrementally by playing real money poker games on the site. Not getting a good welcome bonus is as good as passing up the chance of free money, which no one wants to do.
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Learn to multi-table
An online poker site earns its money from players paying rake on each competition or cash game hand: this is also a set rate of each pot or tournament entry fee that goes to the ‘house’, and freeing the bonus is usually based on generating a set amount of rake.
All good poker rooms online will allow you to multi-table, which in other words play more than one table at once (usually up to at least four, often more), and this is a great way to generate rake faster, and by extension make cash at an even faster rate when you are winning.
However, it is important to make that you can handle the demands of playing one table before loading up a second, two before loading a third, and so on. Mastering online poker is picking up experience, and you shouldn’t try to skip steps in the process in an effort to get ahead.
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Master your tilt
Almost every poker will have experienced tilt at some point in time, and don’t think that it won’t affect you just because you’re playing online power rather than live. Tilting means making rash decisions, usually after losing a big pot or getting unlucky in some other respect, and it all has happened to the best of us.
Different individuals have different reactions to tilt, but if you can steady yourself and treat each hand afresh without letting emotions get to you then you’ll be on the right track.
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Learn strategy
The growth of online poker over the last 15+ years has seen a detailed strategy play a bigger part. In addition, print books from respected players like Doyle Brunson and Dan Harrington, many of the online generation have taken to posting instructional videos on the internet.
Much of this content is available free and can be a great tool to help you improve your game. While the basic strategy for live play has been around for decades, online poker is forever developing and strategy for the different situations is responding inking. You can find poker tips for beginners, intermediate players, and even those at the top of the game, so whatever your level, there should always be something suitable for you all the way through your poker journey.
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Understand pot odds
One of the biggest mistakes that beginner players make is to ignore pot odds. These adequate to the likelihood that your hand will win against your opponent’s hand in any given scenario. Far too often a player will call a big bet with a poor chance of winning just because they have money put in the pot, but sometimes the reverse is true and a player will fold, thinking that they are behind, when they have the right odds to call.
Say that you are playing a cash game and need to call an all-in bet of ZAR50 on the flop with ZAR250 already in the pot. You are getting an odds of five-to-one to make the call, so you only need a better than one in six chance of winning in order to justify calling the bet. Eventually, making the right call based on pot odds will make you money, even if short-term results don’t always make it seem this way.
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Manage your bankroll
While some movies or TV shows will have a poker player sit at the table with all the money they have to their name, this is hardly a good rule of thumb. Because you never want to put yourself at risk of losing more money than you can afford, so practicing bankroll management, i.e. only having a small percentage of your money on the table at any one time, is the way ahead.
A proven approach for recreational no-limit hold’em cash game players is to always get at least 10 buy-ins (or 1,000 blinds) for the stakes that you are playing. For instance, if you have a bankroll of $100 then you should stick to games of $0.05/ $0.10 or below. When your bankroll grows you can then step up, and when it shrinks you should be prepared to drop in stakes.
If you’re an online tournament player, you should have more buy-ins for your preferred stakes than for cash games. This is because tournament play has a higher variance, and you can often go to several tournaments without winning a single cent, even if you played perfect poker.
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Become a specialist
No-limit Texas hold’em is undoubtedly the best know variant of poker: it is mainly used in the World Series of Poker Main Event and features in the majority of televised tournaments, not to mention movies and TV shows. However, most online poker sites will provide many other variants, not to mention different categories within no-limit hold’em such as heads-up (one against one) or six-max games.
With such variation on offer, it does not pay to be a jack of all trades and master of none. Your best option is to find something you are good at and practice that in-depth so that you can beat less experienced players.
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Analyze your play
Ask pretty much any amongst the world’s top poker players about how they got to where they are today, and they’ll tell you that lots of it is down to them analyzing their own play. It has helped them find their strengths and improve on them, as well as finding their weaknesses (or ‘leaks’) and working out a way to get rid of them.
Online poker rooms will permit you to look back at hand histories to see if they’re things you have been doing well or badly, and you can access these at any time. It can also help to speak to other poker players as well and ask for their advice or talk through your last tournament or cash game session with a bunch of poker friends.
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Play at a trusted site
Next poker tips is to play at trusted site. There are loads of online poker sites out there, as the game has grown in reputation over the last two decades. This means you are almost spoilt for choice when deciding where to play, making it all the more crucial to choose a trusted site.
Trusted poker sites give you the security that you are sporting a fair game and will always be able to collect your winnings after a big score, while the best and most trusted sites will also attract more players, creating big prize pools and ensuring that games are running 24/7.
If you’re unsure of what websites to use, you can always find online casino reviews as they review the most trusted and reliable casinos out there. For example, mega888 which is one of the popular online casino applications in Malaysia hosting various games for players to choose such as slot games, fishing games, arcade games and not to mention the sheer abundance of live table games.
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Understand that poker is about the long game
Next poker tips is to understand poker is long term game. It is always frustrating to lose at pretty much anything, and poker is no exception to this. However, you shouldn’t feel downhearted if you don’t start winning straight away: because poker is a journey of improvement and perfection, and losing your first deposit isn’t the end of the world.
The most crucial thing is to develop a winning habit, and this means working out whether your execution are doing wrong as well as what you are doing right. In the long term, it’s better to repeat good decisions where you got unlucky than bad decisions that you got away with.
The best poker players play millions of hands online, so good and bad luck will ultimately balance each out over time. That means you need to make the most of what you have to control, namely the ability to make good choices in your poker games.
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