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Internet Poker: Improve Your Game Online

Although you can’t see your opponents’ eyes twitch or their veins pulse, Internet poker offers some real advantages to beginning poker players and advanced poker players alike. Indeed, there is tremendous potential in playing online as far as improving one’s game goes. Read the following article to learn why you should play Internet poker and how to choose a good place to play.

The fact is, when playing Internet poker you can do many things that you just can’t do in the regular card room. You can record your play using a video capture card for later studying, you can take notes on yours and your opponents’ play and you can develop a vast body of information to help you improve even your live game skills. Not only that, if you’re a beginning player, you can have handy reference charts and strategy guides right in front of you without looking like a freak.

You may not find recording your play all that practical, but if you’re really serious about improving your strategy, it just might help you see your mistakes more readily and learn what motivated your actions as well as your opponents’ actions – especially when you see what their hands were. If you are interested in this method, you’ll of course need a video capture card. Note taking, however, can be just as useful for recording what happens in a game.

Video or note taking will force you to actually think about what you were doing during a specific hand and why. Also, humans are funny creatures, in that we tend to fool ourselves by having selective memory about certain things, justifying our greed or our emotional swings in any number of ways. In recording our play, it can help to keep us disciplined. All of those silly little wishful bets here and there may not seem like much at the time, but when you look back at your notes, you’ll see how they can add up.

Where to Play Internet Poker

Now that you now why you should play Internet poker, how do you know where to play it? Well, there are a few things to consider: the reputation of the website, the types of poker games offered, the table limits compared to your budget, the sign up bonus and simply the style and layout of the Internet poker rooms.

First of all, make sure to play at a place that has been around for awhile. Read some reviews online and make sure the site is well known and doesn’t have a history of ripping people off. Also, be very careful that the website address is the address that it’s supposed to be – not simply a link that you clicked on somewhere that takes you to some sign up page asking for your credit card number immediately.

Next, you’ll of course want to find a place that has a variety of games that you want to play. The most popular games right now seem to be Texas Holde’Em, Omaha Hold’Em, Seven Card Stud, and a couple of others. Make sure to find a place that offers the game you want to play, because you’ll be hard pressed to find a site that offers all games.

Also, it is important that you check out what the table limits are for your prospective Internet poker site. If you’re only looking to drop some spare change or play for free, make sure the site offers what you can afford.

Another important factor is how much the poker site offers you in return for signing up. Most sites have some sort of sign up bonus, where they will match your initial deposit by giving you some free money to play with, under certain conditions. Read these conditions carefully and find the best site for you that offers the best sign up deal.

Finally, what would an Internet poker room be without the look and feel of a real poker game? Some online poker rooms may have very poor graphics, terrible sounds and a lame interface. You’ll want to choose the site that offers the most realistic atmosphere and attracts a good following of fellow poker players. Of course, you shouldn’t put this at the top of your list of considerations, as image is definitely not everything, but if the site has spent the time and resources to make their rooms look good, they just might take the game a little more seriously than other sites. Goldenpalace.com, for example, one of the more popular sites, has quite a nice looking poker room and offers a 25% bonus. This is similar to some of the other poker sites out there.

One last thing before you hit the online poker rooms: make sure not to get carried away. It may seem like virtual money, but the money you’re betting is real. If you even suspect that you might have any sort of gambling problem at all, please visit our sister site's Gambling Problem section.