Playing poker online

 

 

No. Poker is a game of skill, and every decision you make is about maximising your Expected Value or EV for short. And i will explain why.

 

Most gambling games, like roulette, for instance have a negative EV for you, and a positive EV (5.49% in this case) for the casino. You can wiki roulette to see how they do the calculations. Meaning - sure in the short run you could win, but in the long run, if you played the game 1000 times, the casino would always end up winning by about 5.49%. These gambling games are in favour of the house.

Poker however, pits you against other players and not the house. In a full ring game (9 players) or shorthanded game (6 players), you want to make the best EV decisions against the many other players playing worse(making -EV decisions) than you. 

 

A very simple example would be if you were delt AA before the flop came (preflop), which everyone knows is the best hand preflop. This hand has an about 80% chance to win against all other hands preflop. If u played and raised all in with this hand against a player who played and called every all in, you would undoubtedly have a huge edge as you will be an 80% favourite every time, making it a +EV decision. Of course this is an exagarated example and playing one hand would be silly so what you would do is play say the top 20% of hands. Against a person who plays maybe 70% of their hands, you again, will be making a +EV decision every time u play with him as chances are your starting hands have a lot higher probability to win. This is just scraping the surface, and there is an EV attached to every decision and every situation. As such, many sites often provide starting hand charts for beginners to use, as this would be the simplest way to boost your EV.

 

However, there is always variance and in the short term poorer players might get lucky, win big but thats also what attracts them to come back. In the long term, a good player who always makes +EV decisions will always end up a winner. And that is why poker is not gambling but a game of skill of understanding and exploiting your opponents mistakes.

 

Extremely. Some sites have over 50,000 people logged in at one time. They run advertistments on the TV and the web. Major sites are listed on the stock market. Any bad publicity would affect their business so these sites often provide top notch customer service. As long as you don't do anything silly like giving people your password, your money is in very safe hands. Also, these sites have no incentive to cheat when dealing hands, if anything, they want to be extremely fair as they want you to play as they earn their income in the form of "rake" which is a very small % (less than 1% usually) cut of the total pot. Unlike the casino, you are playing against the other player, and not the house.

 

Obviously if the poker site seems very dodgy, you have heard of it, they don't advertise, there aren't many players - you wouldn't be depositing your money in there. But for the vast majority of sites, they are very safe and reputable.

 

There are three main big sites. These are Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and Party Poker. These sites have lots of traffic, play money tables, plenty of freeroll tournaments and very good customer support. If you're a beginner i suggest playing at these sites when you start, preferably the first two. In my experience Party poker actually calls you up after you sign up to ensure you made the deposit and they require some form of id verfication before activating your account. Some people like this extra security, but I find this annoying and unnescessary.The first two sites don't do this. Anyway, all three sites are extremely safe and well known.

 

Sadly, not right away, and its kind of misleading in that sense as no one bothers to read the fine print. Well for some sites you get a very small portion (around 10%) of your deposit instantly, but that is rare. What the sites normally mean by this is, you deposit $600, and then after you accumulate a certain amount of player points, they will give you your $600. Now these player points are accumulated by playing raked hands, meaning the sites gets rake from you (for every pot above x amount), give you player points in return, and if u reach the required points you get that "bonus" which is effectively giving you back a percentage of the money they raked from you. Long story short, this takes about a month of constant play, is very hard to clear at any limit below NL25, and bonuses are effectively about 30-45% rakeback. So bonuses are a good thing of course, but what actually happens is the site is just giving you back 30-45% of the money they took from you.

 

The biggest online community would have to be the 2+2 forums. Basically what happened was David Sklansky wrote a whole bunch of extremely popular poker books, published by 2+2. Players naturally flocked to the site to discuss everything poker related in the forums and tada! a community was born. Posters discuss everything from posting graphs of their yearly winnings, their desktop setup, the optimal way to play certain hands, and the usual whine post of the bad beat that they just suffered.

 

A screenshot of "Tillerman" showing him playing 24 tables at the same time. This is actually not something he recommends and he was promoting the site and showing off his new monitor, but is impressive nonetheless, as he finished the session up by 1k.

 

If top players are defined by players playing in the biggest games online, then the names Phil Ivey, David Benyamine, "durrrr", Gus Hansen, Brian Townsend, "Ziigmund", Patrik Antonius immediately come to mind. These players typically win/lose a few hundred K daily. If you're interested, there is a website that keeps track of this -HighStakesDB

 

Some players however, are extremely good but dislike the variance of these high stake games and stick to lower but still substantial limits. One such player is Leatherass who plays a solid tight low variance style at 5/10, who as you can see is still a very big winner.

 

The best players and a very select few earn over a million a year. This can be compared to Tiger Woods and golf. Yea alot of us play golf, and it doesn't seem too hard, but who actually makes as much as Tiger Woods?  Bottom point is the percentage of players who have this type of success is infinetly small so don't be disillusioned. However, with the right attitude and discipline, you still can make a decent amount of money.

 

Obviously the amount you earn would depend on the stakes you play and the amount of time spent playing. When players reach the 400NL limit (meaning $2-4 blinds) and are decent winners, they can expect to make a decent living >5k every month, if they treat it like a job and play 8 hours everyday. This lure of easy money and total job freedom by just clicking your mouse is what lures alot of players into poker, hoping to emulate the success stories they heard. Even for me, just looking at the sick graphs above have got me excited all over again, even though i have seen them a thousand times. However, a rude awakening is in order. Which leads me to the next question.

 

Common estimates put this amount at about 15%. With the 10% making a breakeven to decent amount, the top 4% making a good amount and the top 1% making an obscene amount. More importantly, this also means that 85% of people who try online poker end up losing money.

 

 

For many players, online poker is much more preferable to brick and mortar poker due to the fact that you can play more than one table at a time, and hands are played faster. This will of course drastically increase your win rate and hourly profit. However, i strongly advise playing no more than 4 tables at a time. Many people tend to get caught up in playing too many tables, thinking they are increasing their winnings in direct proprotion as they add more tables. But what ends up happening is they put less thinking into their decisions, it becomes very robotic resulting in -EV or not so positive EV decisions, and their understanding of the game doesn't increase. Learn from my mistake, stick to a max of 4 tables.

 

A huge leak for alot of players is bankroll management, meaning the total amount of money you have online. A general guide is to always have a minimum of 20 full buyins for the levels at the lower stakes, (NL1 to NL200) and a minimum buyin of 30-40 after that.

 

Every poker player is subject to variance. If you play a solid tight style, your variance may be reduced, but there will always be upswings and downswings. Having good bankroll managment ensures you will never go busto or broke.

 

For instance, NL10 means the blinds are 0.05(small blind of 5 cents) and 0.1(big blind of 10 cents). The full buyin is 100 times the big blind, or $10 that's why its called NL10. So you should have a $200 bankroll (20full buyins x 10) to be playing at this limit. If you do win consistently, you should have $500 before taking a shot at the next limit, NL25, and so on. If you start losing at your new limit, to a point where you only have 15 full buyins, never be ashamed of dropping down and grinding your old limit again. If you follow these steps, you will never go busto. Also, slowly moving up the limits and beating them consistently ensures that mistakes or leaks you have in your game is fixed at the lower levels where you lose little money and its alot less costly. That is why it is extremely important to start playing small and slowly moving up so you don't make fundemental mistakes at higher limits where it costs you alot.

 

Bankroll management is extremely important because of the inherent variance. If u do not have good bankroll managment, you will probably lose all that you have made. You are no longer playing poker or capturing the result of your long run +EV decisions, but instead end up playing in that short term variance moment, and that is akin to "gambling" and is extremely stupid and pointless. There are two prime examples of players like this.

 

NeillyAA, a good small stakes player with absolutely no discipline or bankroll management control who made and lost tens of thousands of dollars investing a massive amount of time over a couple of years, only to lose nearly all of it with almost nothing to show for.

 

theashman, a very good high stakes player which is sad because playing in the short term variance, his skill becomes ultimately useless and he lost about 700k in one week playing beyond his means.

 

Both these players could have booked and stored away sizable winnings. For instance, theashman might have lost 100k instead of 700k on a particular bad downswing and still have 600k to his name. If you wanna read more, clicking their names would lead you to their respective blogs. Also, as you move up the limits you meet less poor players (fish) and more good players. This results in your edge decreasing and your variance increasing and that is why you need a higher amount of buyins at higher limits.

 

Tilt is when you lost to a particulary bad suck out (where you were 90% favoruite to win when you got your oney in), or maybe just lost coinflips(50-50% chance of winning) 10 times in a row. You are now mad and overtaken by your emotions and as a result have poorer judgement and start making really bad decisions. You know you are on tilt, everyone at the table knows you are on tilt. You are going to get owned and lose more. You are playing -EV poker. So if you cannot control your tilt, the simplest thing to do is to JUST STOP PLAYING. Do not try to make your money back. Even worse, do not try playing at higher stakes to make it all back. That is suicidal. Players are better at that limit, making variance even higher. Come back to the tables when your mind is fresh and your emotions are in control. I read Phil Ivey has a very simple rule of just quiting the table if he does down 1-2 buyins. Simple but amazingly effective.

 

 

Some poker sites are connected to the same network, meaning they share the same player database and the poker client they use are made from the same code and are similar to one another. So a tactic certain players use when clearing bonuses is to clear the "sign-up bonus" at one site, then clear the same "sign up bonus" offered at the sister site(different site but on the same network), which in most cases is totally legit to do. Or they simply switch to sites with the juiciest bonus deals. Given that there are over a 100 reputable poker sites to do this on, it certainly is a good tactic.

 

Other players manage to get hold of a good rakeback deal, which you can think of as a never ending bonus that just restarts once you clear it. "Rakeback" doesn't sound as a attractive to players depositing for the first time, but i ultimately find it to be the better deal as you save yourself the trouble of constantly switching sites and some of the rakeback deals effectively return you more than the bonuses. Two big sites to get you started are listed below.

 

Raketherake - Probably the biggest rakeback site out there.

Bonuswhores - An extremely detailed site with bonus clearing information and guides for almost every site out there.

 

 

Poker Tracker / Holdem Manager - These programs allow you to gather and display while playing, statistics about your opponents, which you could then use to your advantage to classify/profile them, giving you better understanding on how they play and how to play against them. A very important statistic would be the VPIP (which is the % of hands a player plays) followed by the PFR (the % of hands the player raises with).

 

For example consider an extreme example of a player with a vpip and pfr of 6/6 in a 6 max game raises from early position. You have QQ. You fold, as simple as that. The player only plays 6% of his hands, given that he knows the importance of position, he would play less hands from early position and more hands from late positon, so probably ends up playing the top 1% of his hands. He either has AA or KK. In contrast if a player was playing 40/20, and limps in from early position, you could probably easily raise him off his hand with any 2 cards as his hand would not be strong enough to face a raise preflop.

 

Also, anyone who plays with a vpip above 50% (meaning they play more than half their hands) can be straight away interpreted as being a bad player. These bad players tend to have the same tendencies such as being calling stations (calling bets with weak to marginal holdings) which you can then exploit easily.

 

These programs are totally legal and it helps you refine your play by looking at past hands and your own stats. It also tells you the money you have won and is an essential tool for any serious poker player. Poker tracker 3 also allows you to plot graphs and tracks your daily and monthly winnings. I am not familiar with Holdem Manager but it is also a popular software.

 

Poker Stove - This program typically calculates the equity of a decision, given the opponents ranges of hands.

 

For instance, if you had the hand K2offsuit,  and wanted to see how that faired agianst a random hand, plug that into poker stove.

 

Hand 0: 50.509% 48.42% 02.09% 1015702916 43754133.50 { Kh2d }
Hand 1: 49.491% 47.41% 02.09% 994361217 43754133.50 { random }

Conclusion: K2off is a very marginal winner against a random hand.

 

Poker stove is particular useful when you have trouble putting an opponent on a hand but know the likely range of his hands and wish to calculate the correct play.

 

 

I find the best way to improve your game would be to watch pro players play and explain their thought processes for a variety of situations. You can do this by subscribing to an online site where pros film their actions in videos and explain the rationale behind their decisions. These subscribtions typically cost between $20-30 a month and there has been a huge growth in this industry in recent years with many newly developed sites competing against each other. This of course, is always good for the consumer. Yay!

 

Cardrunners - The biggest and best site without a doubt. Has recently undergone notable improvements with new instructors and the introduction of  the "video series" format, and Lee Jones taking the helm.

Notable pros include: CTS, Raptor, sbrugby, green plastic

 

Stox Poker - Probably the second biggest site.

 

LeggoPoker -

Notable pros include: Straate, Aejones

 

DeucesCracked -

Notable pros include: Krantz, Danzasmack

 

PokerNews - A set just launched in Sep 2008 featuring a very impressive lineup.

Notable pros include: Patrick Antonius, Genius28, Mig.com

 

Some players take it to the next step and find it beneficial to live with other poker players. Having the ability to constantly discuss hands with each other, or to motivate each other by playing along side each other, or the simple joy of living and socialising with like minded people is definitely a good thing. Two famous house mates are Raptor and Durrrr, both high stakes players who used to live together.

 

Raptor/Durr - Bluff Magazine did an Interview with them in the house they bought. There were barely 20 at that time.

 

 

More pictures can be found in the 2+2 forum post by raptor

 

  

Partly due to relatively how easily and how much money they have made, supplemented by their gambling nature, poker players often engage in ridiculous prop bets with each other.

 

An example of this was how David Gray bet Howard Lederer, a vegetarian due to gastric bypass surgery, $10,000 that he wouldn't eat a cheeseburger. Of course Lederer ate the cheeseburger, and won.

 

Phil Ivey is said to routinely participate in golfing prop bets and Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak even had a reality Prop Bet Show where they went around making prop bets with each other for several thousand dollars a bet. There are episodes of these on you tube.

 

Many gamers have crossed over to poker. The characteristics that have made them champions in their respective games, such as competitiveness, motivation, intelligence, analytical/strategic ability are very similar to the characteristics needed to become a good poker player and its no suprise that some of these players have even went on to become world poker champions.

 

Starcraft players - The more high profile players are Elky and Tillerman. There are heaps of starcraft players who have ended up becoming very successful. In fact, there is a particular poker community site consisting largely of ex starcraft gamers called Liquid Poker where players blog, discuss hands and poker topics and generally help each other out.

MTG players - Most notably, Dario Minieri and David Williams who used to be champions in magic the gathering, have become very successful.

 

UTG - Under the gun, meaning the person who first acts every round.

Eg. He raised from UTG, im sure he had a strong hand.

Button- The last person to act every round.

Eg. It is common for most players to have a wider opening range on the button, to capitalise on their positional advantage.

 

Betting Terms

Rainbow - Of diffrent suites.

Eg. The flop came A54rainbow - which could mean ace of spades, 5 of diamonds 4 of hearts, all of different suites.

The nuts - The best hand.

Suck out - A player who gets all the money in while behind, coming back from extremely low odds to win the hand.

Eg. The flop came AK5rainbow. I held pocket aces for a set of aces - the stone cold nuts. I shoved $2000 into the $100 pot, the donk called, turning over 6spades7diamonds. The turn came an 8s. The river came a 9d giving him a straight. Facing the greatest suckout of my life, I then went on life tilt for the next 5 weeks.

Slowplay - To play a very strong hand passively to appear weak, to trap or induce a player into betting. This allows you to get more of his money you would not have gotten otherwise, if you had played aggresively.

Shove - To go all in - in no limit that meets betting with the entire remaining money/chips you have.

Eg. I slowplayed my set of queens. As i predicited, he raised and I waited 10 seconds pretending to think, then i shoved and celebrated.

Snap - Like snapping your fingers. An instant action.

Eg. I knew he was going to bluff, so when he shoved, i snap called with my pair of 7s. 

Flat - To just call a raise.

Eg. This player is tricky, he just flats with Aces preflop.

Coldcall - To call a re-raise, i.e Player A raised, Player B Reraised, and you called as well.

Eg. Cold callers often have disguised hands.

Continuation bet - To continue betting on the flop, after originally raising preflop. Aggressive players cbet a very high % of the time.

Floating - Normally refers to calling the original betters continuation bet in position, to see what he does on the turn, and if he doesn't bet, bet to win the pot, often with nothing.

Eg. Players tend to continuation bet too much on dry boards, and normally do not bluff again on the turn. This is exploited by people who float them.

Donk bet- Happens when a person a leads into the original raiser (normally out of position) on the flop. In no limit, this is often interpreted as a sign of weakness as if you had a strong hand, you would rather check raise. It looks like you have a marginal holding and want to see where you're at.

 

Fish - A bad/losing player. I believe this term comes from players calling and "fishing" for cards on the turn and river when they are behind on the flop.

Shark - A good/winning player. Sharks eat fish obv!

Donk - Similiar to Fish, A donkey or a bad player

Calling Station - A player who has the tendency to calls big bets with often marginal holdings a high % of the time. They never like to fold. Hence, do not bluff these players.

Nit - A very tight player who plays solid and often folds marginal hands easily to aggression.

LAGtard - A very aggresive player who bet too much and actions are often very predictable.

 

 

 

Doyle Brunson

Stu Ungar

Phil Hellmuth

Barry Greenstein

Scotty Nguyen

 

An important event that comes to mind is the legislation passed in the US which banned online gambling. To the chagrin of US poker players, poker somehow got lumped into this and was banned as well. This greatly reduced the amount of fish in games and the amount of players. Many websites began to restrict US players from depositing. Interestingly, notable US poker players like Doyle Brunson are currently supporting Obama's canidacy for president as it is known that Obama has interest/understands or at least is not averse to the idea of poker. They are hoping the legislation will be lifted if he is elected.

 

These particular hands were popular in recent poker culture

The Patrick Antonious - Jennifer Tilly hand You tube link

Basically Jennifer Tilly had the nuts and she put patrick on quad kings. The look on Phil Ivey's face at the end of the video is absolutely priceless.

The Sammy Farha- Jamie Gold hand You tube link

Basically Sam and Jamie end up playing a 400,000 pot on high stakes poker. A huge debate started on some fourms to debate if Sam did indeed let Jamie off by not betting the river.

 

I have left some parts of the last section unfinished for now

Also depending on the feedback / comments, I might include more sections but im afriad this page gets too long.

Hoped it was useful and thank you for reading! Please comment / Rate =)