Month: July 2020

Finding a Poker Online Mentor

One of the new “fads” in poker online is to have a skilled player mentor you when you’re starting out. New players get overwhelmed with all of the information out there regarding poker strategy and advice, and it’s much easier to have someone teach them everything they need to know one on one. Also, many of the elite players recruit average players so they can teach them then stake them and receive a profit later down the line. There are benefits for both parties who enter into this agreement, and everyone comes out ahead.

Benefits for the Student

If you’re a poker online student in a mentoring relationship, you get numerous benefits. First of all, you have someone who will teach you the ins and outs of the game (preflop play, avoiding tilt, continuation bets, etc.) for free. You won’t have to look all over the Internet for strategy, and it’s always much easier to hit someone up on an instant messenger with a quick question than to have to Google it and search through multiple pages.

Also, besides just teaching you, the best online poker mentor can also help you analyze your game. After each session, you can put together hand histories of your biggest hands and go over them step by step with the mentor to see what you did right and what you did wrong. This is one of the best ways to learn, because you will rarely make the same mistake twice, especially after your advisor has explained a better strategy.

Benefits for the Mentor

Although on first glance it may seem like a one-sided relationship, the mentor also gets some benefits out of teaching his/her student. First of all, the mentor gets the moral satisfaction of helping another person reach their goals. Most mentors aren’t in it for a financial gain – it’s more for the good feeling that mentoring provides them.

Also, there are a few financial advantages to being a mentor. First of all, your own online poker real money game should improve through mentoring. Even though you might be teaching basic strategy, it is a great way to remind yourself of basic tips and tactics through teaching your student. As your student learns more and more, they may even be able to help you dissect hands and learn more.

Another way you can benefit financially is through staking your freshly minted students into big poker tournaments that they couldn’t normally afford. Since most new players only play smaller games, you can offer to put them into big tournaments, with you receiving half of their profits. As long as you’ve done a good job teaching them, this should be your positive point.

Happy playing!

Read more:
Different Types of Poker Online Tournaments to Play
Spot a Poker Online Bluffer

 

Online Poker Game – Moving Up in Limits

Moving up in limits is the goal for the majority of online poker players. After all, who wouldn’t want to play with the best of the best for cash at any given time?

Players Only Poker

But the fact of the matter is that many players have issues when it comes to moving up in limits. Some players move up too soon, either before they have an adequate bankroll and/or skill set. Others will move up when they’re ready, yet will psyche themselves out and not poker games online to the best of their abilities. And then there are players who are more than ready to move up but for some reason, they choose not to.

So with all of that in mind, the goal of this article is to highlight what you need to consider when deciding whether to move up in limits or not.

Poker Bankroll

Your online poker real money bankroll is going to be one of the most important variables to consider before moving up in stakes. The reason being is that no matter how well you play or how confident you are in your game, swings will happen. You want to be prepared for these swings by having an adequate bankroll for the games and stakes you are moving up too. This will ensure that you have the best possible chance at succeeding at your move up the attempt as well as avoid busting your whole roll.

Skill Set

Being a winning online poker real money player at your current game and stakes is also extremely important when looking to take a shot at higher limits. I mean, why would you bother to move up if you’re a losing player? You’ll only lose more and lose it faster.

So how good do you need to be to move up? That’s difficult to say. The best way to determine whether you’re ready to move up is to look at your statistics for the games you’re playing. Do you have a high win-rate or ROI? How does it compare to your peers or the players at the level you’re trying to move up too? If you’re crushing your current game and have decent stats for the games you want to move up to, then you very could be ready. Be aware though that you should have a fairly large sample size when determining if your skillset is good enough. This is even more important the higher in stakes you go.

Confidence

You can have all the money and skills in the world, but if you aren’t confident in your abilities to play on a higher level, you won’t.

From experience, it’s easy to look at the dollar amount and psyche yourself out thinking that just because you are spending more to play, the level of competition is going to be higher as well. But that’s not always the case. You’ll notice that fish and recreational players do play higher limit games. Even the regulars at those particular games and stakes aren’t always “good” and are in fact fish themselves.

Quite honestly, as long as you have the bankroll, confidence can often time even override the skill set needed to move up. This is not to say you can suck and succeed at the higher levels. But you can be a marginal poker player and as long as you are confident that you can compete and are willing to work hard at your game, you will succeed.

Happy playing!

 

Read more:
Online Poker Language to Pay Heed Upon
Understanding Re-buying Basics in Online Poker Games

Tips to Stealing Blinds in Poker Tournaments

As you get deeper and deeper into poker tournaments, the increasing blinds and antes place more and more pressure on your stack. Because of this, you are forced to make aggressive plays to maintain your stack and survive until the later stages. One of the simplest ways to survive is by occasionally stealing the blinds/antes.

Each pot has quite a few poker online chips in it just from the blinds and antes, and most of the time no one has a premium hand. Because of that, aggressive players are able to steal the blinds and antes in the right spots, which helps them pad their stack and survive.

The most important part about successfully stealing blinds is knowing when to do it. This post will explain the best times for stealing blinds, and exactly how to do it:

When to Steal Blinds/Antes

Stealing blinds early on is not essential because the blinds are not significant enough to matter; however, as the poker games online advances, so do the blinds. Stealing blinds in the mid to late stages of a tournament is very crucial. In the early leg of the tournament, you can’t go for the blinds aggressively because it is nothing for your opponents to call you. If you are going to steal a blind, you don’t want your opponents to call you. You need to win the blind and move on.

When the blinds grow larger in comparison to your best online poker chip stack, you should steal the blinds at least once per round. This will pad your stack and allow you to maintain an average stack and not fall behind in the tournament. Winning means increasing your chip stack and preparing your bankroll for the final table. Therefore, your goal from the beginning should be to win, not just to make the final table. You should be in an aggressive frame of mind; poker tournaments are not won by passive players.

This aggressiveness should pick up during the mid-stage of the tournament because this is the time when players begin to tighten up their play, not defending their blinds as much. Players are less likely to gamble at this point because they want to sustain their chips. This fact is particularly true in no-limit.

How to Steal in No-Limit Hold’em

For No-Limit Texas Hold’em poker tournaments, you can be more aggressive. Your raise should be typically 3-4 times the amount of the big blind, rather than 2 times the big blind, as in Limit Hold’em. When you do this, it is a good idea to attack middle-sized stacks as opposed to big stacks or small stacks. The reason is that big stacks have chips to blow, so they might call your raise just to look you up. Alternatively, small stacks have little to lose, so they might re-raise all in with a mediocre hand just to make a play.

Don’t forget your opponents might be utilizing the same strategies to steal the blinds from you with any hand from late position. By being aware of this, you can re-steal their steals. Don’t give credit to other players at all for a decent hand if they raise from late position in late stages of the tournament.

Happy playing!

 

Read more:
What’s Final Table Strategy for Online Poker Tournaments
Survive in Your First Online Poker Tournaments

5 Poker Online Myths You Should Know About

Although this is a poker online site, we like to cover other topics well, including tournament poker games. Gaming club and home poker games have been around for decades, and throughout that time countless myths and urban legends have come up regarding the online poker game. This post will look at the most common poker myths and will attempt to either prove or disprove each one.

Online Poker Myth #1 – All Online Players are Old

One common belief that online players hold is that if you go to a local gaming club, you’re going to find a group of 70-year olds playing poker while chatting about their grandkids. Although it may be true that poker online players are typically younger, there are still plenty of young guns who play at online gaming clubs. You’ll be really surprised with all the 18-20-year olds who grind at gaming clubs instead of getting part-time jobs.

Online Poker Myth #2 – It’s All About Hold’em

Another common misconception with best online poker is that it’s only No-Limit Texas Hold’em. At the smallest of gaming clubs, this may be true, but at any decent sized poker room, this is a complete myth. My local gaming club offers mainly NL Hold’em, but also has Limit Hold’em games running 24/7 and has PL Omaha games running about 90% of the time.

Online Poker Myth #3 – All Poker Rooms have Hourly Fees

Players are used to online poker real money rooms raking each pot and not charging hourly fees like some online poker rooms. However, you should know that most online gaming clubs actually just rake the pots and avoid the hourly fees.

Online Poker Myth #4 – Everyone is Out to Get You

If it’s your first time playing at an online gaming club you probably will feel really intimidated with all of the online poker etiquette and quirky rules at the tables. Unlike online poker, you actually have your cards, chips, and opponents right in front of you, and you have to know how to interact with each appropriately.

However, don’t feel like players are going to scream at you if you screw up. Let everyone know that you’re a beginner, and they’ll help you out and take it easy on you until you get the hang of it.

Online Poker Myth #5 – Tipping = Good Karma

This one is a common myth believed by many people, and it’s actually up to you. A lot of players feel that if they always give dealers nice tips that they’ll be rewarded with more hands and bigger pots. Mathematically, this is ludicrous, but if you believe in karma or “what goes around comes around” then this might actually hold true.

Happy playing!

 

Read more::
Best Tips for No Limit Hold’em Online Poker Players
Reasons to Take Notes While Playing Online Poker