From land based casinos to online poker

Let us find out what a casino player should think and remember when they start playing an online poker or Hold’em or their favorite game. We find that more and more players are trying to switch to online games and they are more competitive while playing the online games. You will have the comfort of playing the game at home and even if it ticks 5 AM in the morning, you will still find some online players as it is a prime time somewhere else in the globe.

The change from a traditional casino to an online casino does not make any difference to the game. The rules and odds, and the gaming strategies are still the same whether you play poker at a land casino or online. If you have a set and your opponent has flushed out, the odds against one of the 10 cards will promote you to a full house or better on the river will still be 3.6 – 1 irrespective of whether where you play poker.

However, this transformation from traditional to online poker will make you to undergo some changes and you need to make some adjustments in order to be successful. If you have never played an online game, and excited to download the software and start, wait a minute, relax and find out what exactly you need to do first. You need to start playing the online poker with mini or micro limits. Understand the game first, and learn how it is different from the traditional game. Then once you get familiarized with the software then you can start with your regular betting level.

Poker in a traditional casino is played at this peace with your competitors all around the table. When you are playing face-to-face with the opponents you will register certain facts like their hand movements, impressions and facial expressions, comparing the hands when they are betting down. You might not be aware of this game watching, but still you continue to do in the subconscious stage. You can do lot of assessment of the players when you watch them while playing. You can observe how they are behaving while playing, drinking or reading a magazine while playing, whether the player is often distracted etc. There is lot of game planning, learning and many tactics when you interact personally with the players. All these would not be possible in online poker. You can never see a player except for their name or a alias name or a graphical image called avatar. You can never judge a person by seeing their screen name or a picture. Internet helps us changes ourselves into different ways that we like and would like to be.

Even though you walk into a new casino’s poker room and do not know anyone still you can make friends and understand people from the style and the way they play the game. You never know whether they are producing their real names or fake names but still you can make sure how he plays the game and their thoughts will get registered in your subconscious memory. Physical appearances are more powerful that a virtual appearance. It was always recommended to take notes about your player while playing poker. But you cannot do this online. The notes after game gets refreshed and you never what notes you have on a particular player after 3 months if you encounter the same person. Some online players play multiple games at one time. Many of them play 3 or 4 games at the same time and few of them arrange dual monitors on their screens so that they can play as many as 8 games at a single time. However, you would not be able to take notes in such scenarios. Multitasking is not possible with every player. You need have special focus and attention or else you might end up in looses. The advantage of the online play is that it gives you an opportunity to play many games at the same time and also helps you to experiment.

You can try to figure out how many bets you can win per hour and play them accordingly. If you can win 2 bets per hour in one game, then if you play 2 games simultaneously then you can win 4 bets in an hour. However, if you can win only one bet in one game and you are losing while playing many games, please stick to one game or else you may encounter losses. Diversifying will help you to play a smoother variance of poker. The software will definitely have option to make it an auto pilot or you can pause the game for some time which allows you to concentrate on the other games. However, the other players will come to know if you have turned on auto pilot and they will change their game plans. The opponents playing strategies cannot be identified so easily in online poker. There are many chances they always use the check boxed of the software to improve their winning chances. The only way you can know about such strategies is write notes about those players.

Online poker gives you an up to date statistics of your play. It informs you how many hands you have played, how often you have flopped or stayed at the river. In the real casino you will always go with your aggressiveness but the online play will always give you the exact count of the play. So, there are many advantages and disadvantages of the online poker. However the game is always as exciting as ever.

Published on 12/26/2009