Poker Games

The psychology behind playing poker online is totally different from the live game. People feel more confident when they’re online, as though they’re “hiding” behind an Internet persona. You can use this to your advantage–since people tend to be more confident, they think they can get away with playing much more loose, “bluffing” too often and leaving themselves open for exposure.

Just like how it is much easier to argue and debate people online, poker players in online poker rooms tend to feel much more secure trying to draw out another player, even when they should probably play more conservatively.

People tend to get rivered to death in online poker rooms. If you’re new to online poker, you’ll find that your swings are much greater online than in live games, especially at lower limit games. Since most new online poker players stick to low limit games, they find that they face constant callers more often than in live games. How do you deal with it?

Unfortunately, there’s not a good way to defend against this kind of behavior in online poker. The only trick to dealing with constant callers is to check-call the river. Most likely, your opponents are just holding pairs. The only defense against constant calls is to play along with them.

Unlike in live poker games, you can’t look at a person’s body or facial expressions in a game of online poker to learn their “tells.” Since you can’t see your opponents when you play poker online, you have to judge their tells based on their actions instead of their expressions, language, or body movement. The first thing you should learn to watch is how fast a particular opponent bets. In the online game, 9 times out of 10 a fast bet means that a player has a strong hand. Slow play, or taking a long time to make a move, tends to indicate that a player has to think before betting, indicating a weak hand.

Altering your poker game to suit online play takes a little bit of time, but it is worth it. The competition at most online poker rooms is much weaker than what you’d find in your neighborhood casino’s poker room. Often, online poker rooms are full of people who wandered over from online slot machines or sports books, players with no poker skill who think they can win a quick buck playing Texas holdem.

Playing online poker can be lucrative, especially if you learn to use the anonymity and heightened anxiety that the Internet gives people against them. Find an online poker room full of weak competition and keep your head on your shoulders and you can really clean up.