10 Tips to Winning Online

Chapter 9

Tip 1. Do a table search for fish and high pot tables

Before you sit down at a table online you can search to see what kind of players you will be up against. A good habit to get into before you sit down is to click on the “Average Pot” tab located in most lobbies under the list of tables to choose from.

The tab will tell you how much the players are betting per pot and will let you know if they are aggressive or tight. If you are an aggressive player you would obviously choose the tight table and vice versa for a tight player. You will also find that the high “average pot” tables are full of fish. You can expect large swings at the higher “pot average” tables but expect to win big pots as well.

Tip 2. Learn from the online pros

A big majority of internet poker pros hang out online as well. All the big guns play online because they can play so many tables at once and make so much money. Watch how they play and you will be amazed at how they win at online poker. You will notice that they mix up there play a lot but in actuality they play much tighter than you would expect.

Almost all the pros you will watch have a much tighter style when playing the fish online. One exception to this might be John Dagostino who plays aggressive no matter when and where he is at. Watch and learn by how much they bet in certain situations. Learn how they play online because it’s not the same as you see on TV. Most of these guys used to hang out at Fulltiltpoker.com before “Black Friday”.

Tip 3. Know your odds of winning

A great aspect about online poker is that even if you don’t know your odds of winning you can use software that tells you the odds. Some poker rooms have even added odds calculators to their poker software. We’ve also added a poker odds calculator tool so that you can choose your preflop hands to see what the outcome odds would be.

For pros the odds come instinctively but why not use the software if you’re not a pro? It’s a huge advantage in online play that you can’t use in live play. Imagine sitting at a brick and mortar casino with a hand held poker odds calculator.

Tip 4. Understand your opponents online

I once read a study that said 95% of poker players online are losing players. This percentage is astounding but it’s true. There are so many fish playing online poker that even if they do have solid fundamentals they don’t follow the basic rules of online poker. They play too long hours, play when they shouldn’t be, and go on tilt with a blink of an eye. Why else would so many pros choose to play online if there wasn’t so much money to be made?

The one huge factor that separates the pros from the rest of the losing players is they have discipline in their game. As we stated over and over losing players play too many hands and get stuck in bad positions leaving you to take their money. Anytime you feel like going on tilt, playing marginal hands, or playing when you shouldn’t just remind yourself that not doing those things is what makes you part of the elite 5%.

Tip 5. Playing for bonuses

Poker bonuses are more important for players who play mid stake games.< It is always good to have 2 or 3 poker accounts at different poker rooms to make sure you are always receiving free money. Also, try to pick a poker room that has frequent reload bonuses. Reload bonuses are probably the most valuable bonus aspect that a poker room can give. Party Poker is a good site for reload bonuses.

Tip 6. Best time to play online poker

The best time to play online poker is late night for players if you’re not too tired yourself. The majority of online poker players come from the US and the UK . In general there is a big time different between the two but if you are from the US the best times to make money are from 10:00pm – 3:00pm especially on Friday and Saturday.

For UK players the best time to play would be early in the morning from 5:00am-8:00pm.
Yes these are really odd hours but we’ve done the research and calculated the amount of players per hour and factored in the time and exhaustion factors to prove these are the best times to play. A good time to play online is when others are tired and they can’t think straight.

US poker players can’t really play late at night because they would just be playing against the players who are fresh since the UK is five hours ahead. In order for players to go up against tired opponents they must play early in the morning to catch the players that are tired or frantically trying to win their money back.

Tip 7. Over bet rather than slow play

Too many online poker players are fish so the need to slow play goes right out the window. They are willing to call large sums of money so slow playing is really not all that necessary. When you’re on the ropes as whether to slow play a hand or to bet big, lean on the side of over-betting. Online poker warrants bigger bets than normal to educe calls.

Tip 8. Best Poker Site to make Money

There are actually poker sites that have more fish than others. Poker rooms like Pacific Poker and Party Poker are full of very bad players. They advertise very heavily on TV and typically to the player who has never played before. If your goal is not to make money but instead to play against top notch online players then you should go the Full Tilt route. The higher staked games have some of the best online players.

Tip 9. Find Guaranteed Tournaments

A Guaranteed tournament is when the poker room guarantees the prize pool whether 10 people sign up or 2000. The buy-ins are very cheap and you can win a lot of money. The best guaranteed tournaments are $50K-$200K. There is a good chance that the full amount of players will not sign up giving the tournament a bigger prize pool to player percentage all at the expense of the poker room.

Tip 10. Play more than one table

Multitabling is a tricky subject. Some players are very good at it and some just can’t concentrate while playing more than one table. Your best strategy is to test it out and see how many tables you can handle. Just about all online pros like to play 2-4 tables at once letting them win more per hour. We’ve devoted an entire article to this subject because it is so important if you want to take the next step in online poker.

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