Great Poker

Online poker is a potentially reasonable income source, if you are a good poker player, however -as any lucrative undertaking - it requires an investment.

I know how difficult it is to give up money for something that presents no guarantees, and online poker doesn’t give you any. On the contrary, as you read around poker articles on the internet, it’ll become pretty clear, that beating online Texas Holdem (the most popular poker genre on the internet) is not easy at all.

Even if you’re a reasonable player already, when you join an online poker room for the first time, I suggest you begin with the play money tables. Some people will insist that play money tables are a useless waste of time, but in fact, they are one of the best learning tools you’ll ever encounter. Even if you’re a good player already, you need to get a taste of what it’s like to play online. You will get familiar with the interface and you’ll avoid making stupid mistakes, like hitting call when you want to fold, and so on.

Now for the truly important part: moving on to the real money tables. You can do that two ways: the right way and the other right way. The right way would be to deposit enough money so that you can play your preferred limit/stakes properly bankrolled. (that means, you’ll have to have the equivalent of 200BBs in your online poker account)

An adequate bankroll will not only allow you to dominate players who are foolish enough to venture into games under-bankrolled, but it will also swallow a lot of the luck-induced variation that Texas Holdem will throw at you.

In the short-run, rookies will have a fair chance against veterans in online poker because of this luck factor (that is probably one of the reasons why Holdem is much more popular than Omaha)

So that settles it… You need a hefty bankroll to start with. Also, you can sign up to a rakeback deal before you get down to action, and that way, the effects of the rake on your play will also be limited some.

The “other” right way to start off in online poker, is to go for one of them “free bankrolls”. Some sites offer such free bankrolls you can use to kick-start your bankroll, however the sums offered are usually rather smallish. On the other hand, if you do not have enough money for a proper bankroll to start with, and you are going to struggle along under-bankrolled, you might as well do it on someone else’s money.

Game selection is the next thing you have to tackle: obviously, you’ll be playing Texas Holdem, since Omaha doesn’t really give rookies a fighting chance. So Holdem it is. Do you play in regular cash games? No.

There are several factors that say you should stay well clear of regular cash games while a rookie, and especially while you are playing on a skinny bankroll. Rake is collected on every single hand when you’re in a cash game, and the bigger the pot, the more rake you pay. Poker rooms love cash games because that is where most of the rake comes from. You should avoid them for the time being. With your extremely flimsy bankroll, cash games are where you’re the most exposed. In winning poker, you should be able to generate value by simply surviving, cash games however, do not value survival at all.

Obviously, to defeat all these factors working against you, tournaments are where you should play. You pay a one-time fee at buy-in, and no hand-by-hand rake. Your slim bankroll will not influence you in any way, since you’ll be using tournament chips to play, and so will all other players. Survival takes on a whole new meaning here. You don’t even have to win a tourney to land ITM, just survive for long enough and you’ll be a winner.

The downside of tournament play is, that massive MTTs are very-very difficult to beat, because of the sheer number of competitors. The answer to that is: play in STTs. If you can best 4-7 players at a STT table, you’re already a winner.