Beginner and Newbie Advice

Texas Hold'em is by far the easiest and the best poker game for any beginner to learn. Texas Hold’em strategy can be learned in a matter of minutes but actually understanding and obtaining a solid texas hold’em strategy that would help you win on a consistent basis will take time.

I would suggest playing online, which offers a variety of playmoney tables for players to practice on, until you’re ready to move up to the real money tables. But before I get into the basic strategies of how to play a solid poker game, there are a few factors in poker everyone should take into consideration.

Affordability - Simply, if you can’t afford to lose at poker, then don’t play at all. My solution for those with a hole in their pocket is to practice their texas hold’em strategy online with play money.

Playing with and for playmoney is absoultely different from playing with real money because most players don’t care if they lose their playmoney and tend to go all in with no hand at all. But playing with playmoney will teach you the fundamentals of hold’em and you’ll learn how to play a tight-solid game, especially when dealing with those all-in playmoney maniacs.

No limit texas hold’em is a psychological warfare. If you are not mentally prepared before sitting at a real money table, then you shouldn’t play at all.

WITHOUT mental preparation at a holdem game, you’re pretty much throwing your money away. Mental preparation isn’t placing yourself in a trance or a Zen-like state. Mental preparation is focusing on winning, having a positive attitude, and possessing the 3 main attributes all winning poker players have which are:

1. Discipline
2. Patience
3. A Plan

Discipline and Patience are two attributes one must learn on their own. Our suggested strategies here at "Inside Poker Strategy" will help you develop (A Plan) to play successful online poker, specifically, texas hold’em.

Without these attributes, more experienced poker players will easily take advantage of you and in poker terms, you will be considered as a "fish" in the game of texas hold’em.

The History of Online Poker

Brick and mortar or otherwise traditional places for playing poker are too intimidating for beginner players. Places such as casinos or poker rooms are also located in separate geographical locations. Traditional casinos are also not eager to support poker from the fact that it is very hard to gain or make profit from it.

Traditional casinos usually remove or limit the number of poker rooms. This is because traditional casinos usually make more money from slot machines. Also, the overhead costs of operating poker rooms are much higher than the time charge, or rake of traditional casinos.

Online poker dramatically offered a change of interest. Not only is an online poker room much cheaper to operate due to a smaller overhead costs, it also saves valuable space, and is more player friendly.

Traditional poker rooms in casinos usually require a number of tables eating up valuable space. By making th egame of poker available online, owners do not need to add more tables, and do not need to hire additional employees.

Online poker rooms are also viewed as much friendlier to novices or beginners. The online poker rooms software usually guides the players through the game, giving instructions and prompts when it is the player's turn. Online poker also gives players the opportunity to play low stakes even as low as 1¢ and 2¢ blinds, called micro limit poker.

Security Offerred By Online Poker Rooms

Just to put your mind at ease, I'll share some straight forward honest information about online poker room security.

Lets just get to the point, YES online poker does have some issues with people trying to cheat the poker games. There have been incidents at certain poker rooms of fraud and cheating. Usually this is much more advanced and hi-tech than you would find happening in traditional poker games and poker rooms. Most online fraud is more along the lines of technological fraud, however, online poker is also vulnerable to collusion between poker players. But no worries.

No that I have let the cat out of the bag I can tell you that playing poker online is not as risky as some might lead you to believe. Online poker sites are constantly improving, adding more and more security features and always updating the software that runs the actual poker games and site itself.

They also have installed anti-collusion detection systems which are absent in traditional casinos. For instance, an online poker security employee can retrace a players card history of all their hands they've previously played on that site.

The online poker security employee might see some existing patterns or behaviors that stand out as not normal and therefore this type of fraud is easier to distinguish than when poker is being played in a brick and mortar casino. In a traditional casino, players need only to fold their hands so no one can ever know the strength of their hands.

Thankfully online poker rooms also have devised ways of checking the identity of their players. Online poker sites automatically check the player's IP address. In doing so this decreases the chance of having players that are located or situated within the same households or passing through identified open proxy servers from playing on the same tables.

Online poker sites usually share data with each other regarding identified fraudulent players so they will automatically implement and ban any players who are suspected of fraud and cheating and prevent the player's access to their poker games.

A Great Opportunity Offered By Online Poker Rooms

Major online poker sites all over the net offer various satellite tounaments to attract and entice new players. Satellite tournaments to the World Series of Poker are great simple because in this style of tournament the winners actually can gain access to live poker tournaments and all online tounrnament poker players can have a shot at the big game.

Chris Moneymaker won his entry into the 2003 World Series of Poker this same way. His actual winning of the main event caused shock to the whole poker world. The next year, about four players at the WSOP final table had made their entries by winning through an online cardroom.

The World Series of Poker has more than tripled the number of internet poker players featured in the 2003 and 2004 World Series of Poker. Maybe you could be the next World Series of Poker champion?