The Poker Donk UK

Giving Online Poker a Try

Everywhere you look, you are being confronted with online poker. Watch any televised poker tournament and at half the final table are online poker players. Once you decide to give online poker a try, you want to give yourself the best chance at success. Here are four tips to help you get started the right way.

Deposit Bonuses

Almost every poker site offers a very attractive bonus when you make your first cash deposit. Usually they will match your deposit 100% and sometimes even more. Most sites will require you to play a certain number of qualified hands on their site before they give you the bonus. They have specific methods of determining what hands qualify. Read the fine print and figure out how hard or easy it will be to get your bonus from each site that interests you.

Test Drive the User Interface

You will have eliminated quite a few sites just by carefully examining their bonus. To maximize that bonus you will need to spend quite a bit of time playing on their site so it is important to be comfortable with how you play on their tables. All of the poker sites allow you to download their software for free and play in freeroll tournaments and live games using play money. Go ahead and try out 2 or 3 of your top contenders. Many let you change the look of the table and players as well as the deck of cards used. Make sure you find the methods of folding and sizing your bets easy and comfortable.

Money Management

By now one of the many poker sites has separated themselves from the pack. It is time to make that first deposit and start playing. Variance is the single biggest obstacle to your success. Everyone will suffer a losing streak, even the professional poker player. Solid bankroll management is the key to surviving variance. As a general rule, you should never risk more than 2% of your bankroll on a single poker tournament. In cash games do not risk more than 5% in a single buy-in.

Mental Discipline

Poker online is not the same as in a casino. In a casino you may see 35 hands an hour. You will probably see more than 100 hands an hour playing online. This means you will take many more bad beats than you may be used to. If you go on tilt and start raising and calling when you shouldn’t, you will lose money very fast. It is much better for you to find something else to do until your discipline returns.

Armed with these tools you should be well on your way to success in the online poker community.