Poker Online - 10 Key Skills
Online poker is a fun and easy way to get involved with the poker craze. But as everyone knows, poker is more fun if you’re winning. Here are a few key skills that you need to bring your game to the next level.
1. Focus
In a casino, the poker atmosphere is all around you. Online, the poker world is confined to the size of your computer monitor. Phones, family members and televisions can all demand your attention. You must be able to tune out all these distractions and focus on the game. If you can, you should find a quiet, closed room to play in. If there are too many distractions, put down the mouse until things are a little calmer. Many people like to play multiple games at the same time. This is fine, but make sure your focus is not so divided that you cannot play effectively.
2. Discipline
At a casino, when you get up from a game, it may be awhile before you can get into another one, and you might use that break to assess your ability to continue to play effectively. Online, within seconds you’re in another game, and if you have been losing, it might be a game at a higher limit or too unfamiliar a type of poker than you are prepared to play. At a casino, no matter how hard it is to get up from the table, eventually, you have to go home. Online, you already are home, and it is much harder to be aware of how much fatigue, impatience, or frustration is affecting your game. Set the same limits for yourself as you would in a casino (e.g. you will only play for X amount of hours or with a stake of Y amount of dollars).
3. Patience
One of the most valuable traits in a poker player’s arsenal is the ability to wait for good hands. Every player, from the most skilled pro to the most inexperienced new player, is getting the same number of good starting hands, and that number is a small percentage of the number of possible hands out there. If two out of every ten hands you get dealt are worth playing, and you play six out of every ten hands to someone else’s two, when you’re both in a pot, who’s more likely to have the best hand? The ability to wait for a good hand, and even to be able to throw away that good hand if things start to look bad, is paramount.
4. Info Gathering/Note Taking
So what do you do while waiting for that monster hand? Most poker sites have a feature that allows you to take notes on other players, so that whenever you play that opponent, you can click on that player’s notes and be reminded of their tendencies. Anything from “player checked when he turned the nut flush” to “player is loose passive, plays almost every pot” can be inputted to give you clues on how to play that opponent. Take advantage of this feature, it can make quite a difference in your bankroll.
5. Game selection/Player Selection
Now that you know from your extensive notes who are the tough players and who are the “fish,” follow those weakies around! The site can alert you when certain players are online, and if there’s a player whose game you feel like you have down, take a seat at their table (they may find it odd that you always seem to wind up at their table, but they’ll be too busy lamenting their consistently “bad luck” to care). You can also watch the various games in progress to see which games have the texture (mix of loose and tight players), that fits your game. Online, there are always lots of games happening, so you shouldn’t have to wait long to find the tables or players that will benefit you the most.
6. Site Selection
Just as you should take the time to decide which games or players are best for you, the wide variety of poker sites out there today give you the opportunity to figure out which site best suits your game. Maybe you are more comfortable with a particular interface, or you just find the opposition weaker at certain sites, find the place that’s most profitable for you and go there!
7. Reading Online Tells
Tells are not as big a part of the Online game as a live game where you can see your opponents, but they do exist. One area where a player may give away hints about his play is how long he takes to act. Following the basic mantra “strong means weak and weak means strong” (i.e., all things being equal, a player with a good hand will act as if they have nothing and vice versa), someone who acts right away probably doesn’t love their hand, and someone who stalls before acting is likely to have something pretty good. Again, each case varies, and someone may be trying to deceive you with the same knowledge you have, so be careful. Also, there is chat in online play, and any information an opponent gives you is good information, even if it’s not immediately apparent how.
8. Money Management
When you’re out in the world, and you don’t want to spend more than a predetermined amount, it’s easy to ensure that you don’t: Just only bring what you’re prepared to spend. Yes, there are credit cards and ATMs, but using these requires going through a number of actions that remind you that you’re spending more money. Online, just a few clicks, and you’re reloaded. It’s not real money, just numbers, right? Wrong. Your best bet when playing online is to set a bankroll and stick to it, no matter how easy it seems to get back in the action. Some sites even help you with a deposit limit that you can set to limit the amount you can put into the site each week. If you have discipline issues, take advantage of this feature. You’ll play better knowing that if you lose your stake, you’re out of action ‘til next Monday.
9. Result Tracking
Just as you can use the software to follow the play of others, you can use it to follow your own. You are entitled to request detailed hand histories which will tell you exactly how many hands you played and how you played those hands. There is even software you can download which allows you to input your hand histories and have them analyzed for you. Take advantage of these features to plug leaks in your game.
10. Solid Poker Play
There is no substitute for a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Get a few of the better poker books on the market (there are a lot of them out there now, so do some research and find out which are the best ones), study the game, and stick to what you have learned. A simple application of basic poker principles will put you ahead of a lot of other poker players who have just wandered online to try their hand. Happy playing, and good luck!
Rick “Stone Face” Ellers started playing poker while he was a paratrooper stationed in Fort Bragg, NC. He currently writes part time for PokerListings.com where you can learn about the exciting World Series of Poker and find great information about Online Poker Rooms.
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