Online poker can be exciting and rewarding. Using the internet, you can play the game from the comfort of your own home without having to drive to a casino or worry about not finding stakes small enough for your bankroll. In order to do it right, you must have a plan. The following online poker tips will help you enjoy the game for years to come.
Use a HUD
The number one online poker tip for serious players is to use a heads-up display or HUD. This is a piece of software that allows you to display stats on your screen to give you an idea of how you and your opponents have been playing. The most useful stats are the ones that tell you how often your opponents voluntarily put money into the pot (VPIP) and how often they put in a preflop raise (PFR). These stats give you an idea of how tight or loose and how aggressive or passive your opponents are. This information is invaluable for constructing an effective exploitive strategy against them. The most popular HUDs on the market are Holdem Manager 2 (HM2) and Poker Tracker 4 (PT4).
Don’t Get Distracted
Using a HUD can help you pick up on some information you may miss, but it cannot tell the whole story. For example, let’s say you notice that a player has a PFR of 60%. This is an insanely high number if you glance at your HUD and see this, you may think the player is raising with the top 60% of hands and respond by 3-betting him wide. This will turn out to be a mistake if that stat is the result of this player getting dealt premium holdings 3 out of the last 5 hands, or 60% of them.
A good online poker tip for getting the full picture is to pay attention to the hands that go to showdown, even after you have folded preflop.In order to do this, you must not get distracted by surfing the internet or watching the television between hands. Although you are in the comfort of your own home, you are still playing a serious game for money. In order to do you best, you must remain in the moment.
Limit The Number Of Tables
Let’s say you have taken the previous tip to heart. You keep your eyes on the screen and yet, you still have a hard time keeping up with the action. An online poker tip that can help in this case is to limit the number of tables you play at one time. When you first get into online poker, one table may be all you can handle. Once you get familiar with using the HUD and the poker software, you may be ready to add a second table on your screen. If you feel like this isn’t overwhelming, you can continue to add tables up to the point where you are comfortable following the action on all of them. For winning players, each additional table increases our hourly rate, but sometimes we get greed and add too many tables to the point where this is no longer true. Having so many tables that it begins to hurt your play can turn a winning player into a losing one. It is up to you to fits the happy medium that fits your individual situation.
Bankroll Management
This online poker tip can make or break you as a poker player. You only have so much money to play with, so you cannot bet it all on one game. This is a common mistake that new online poker players make. Instead, you want to practice bankroll management which means making sure you only have a small percentage of your poker money tied up in any one game at a time. For example, let’s say you have a $1000 bankroll. It would be foolish to play $100 tournaments because if you lose ten in a row, then you will be out of action. This is not very hard to do. Instead, you should play $10 tournaments with occasional shots at $20 tournaments. That way, your money will last a lot longer and give you time to grow it at a reasonable pace. Additionally, the smaller games are generally easier to beat than the bigger ones so you have better shot of actually making money in the lower stakes. Once you have increased your bankroll and your experience, then you will naturally be more prepared to play the higher stakes. I have no doubt that these online poker tips will save you from a lot of heartaches and help you stay in the game for as long as possible.