How to Play Poker Online

Online poker is a vicious game, and the inexperienced player will usually lose all his money if he or she fails to understand the simple rules of the game. There are thousands upon thousands of possibilities with every hand that comes out. This is a guide written by an experienced player, to help the new players better their game and win money playing poker online, or even at the casino for that matter. This guide will cover the most popular poker game online, Texas Hold 'Em.

The first and most important thing when playing poker online is to manage your bank roll. Without proper bank roll management, you will lose all your money and have to make another deposit fairly shortly. You may get lucky and win the big bucks on a table you really shouldn't be playing at all. When depositing less than a $100 a .05/.10 cent game is probably where you should be playing until you at least double your money. When depositing less than $50 a .02/.05 cent game is preferable until you double your money. I would not recommend depositing more then a $100 your first time playing online anyway, even if you are an experienced poker player at the casino, because online and casino games are a bit different. Some players recommend taking a shot at the higher levels and if you really feel confident then do so, but you could also lose your bank roll.

The second important thing to remember is fold,fold,fold. Folding is thing you should be doing most in poker. There are many charts explaining which hands you should be playing, you can find one here http://www.preflophands.com/. This site will give you the top poker hands, I would only play the top thirty or so hands on here and fold everything else. My pre-flop percentage is usually under 30%. You should keep yours around there to. If a player sees more then 50% of the flops, he's either lost all of his money, or caught a really, really good run of cards. This next site will give you the poker hand rankings here http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-hand-ranking.

Choosing the site you will play on is the third most important thing to playing online poker. Pokerstars.com and Fulltilt.com are good sites for the beginning player to be on and two of the most popular. Choosing the wrong site could lose you all your money, or they could even hold on to your pay-outs for no reason and the player could never get his or her money back!

So, now that you got your top hands, and you've reviewed those two charts you should be on your way to playing good quality cards and raking in cash. One thing important is this, leave the bad hands to when your in the big blind, and don't ever play them. Some people get lucky, but their luck doesn't last forever. Becoming a disciplined player and knowing the rules and when to call your hands and how to raise them pre-flop is the most important. Another thing I would suggest is to find a chart of the button position and which hands you should call at what position. This is a mistake a lot of players make, when raising pre-flop and would consist of another whole manual. It is one of the most important aspects of poker and should not be forgotten.

Bluffing should not be done for the beginner, although most players bluff way more online then in the casino. It is suggested that the beginning player should not bluff at all for the first one hundred hands until he or she is comfortable with the game and understand how bluffing works online. There are "tells" even over the computer folks and you will be able to recognize them and others will be able to recognize yours.

In closing, the best way to learn poker is to play online at low limit levels yourself, and stay away from play chips because it's a totally different game. Read as many books and manuals as you can and remember to fold,fold and fold more then anything.