Poker Players?

[Anusien]

Who here plays Texas Hold 'Em online?  Where do you play, how good are you and how much do you make?  I'm sort of filled with false confidence in my poker skills after I joined a game I've played in before and went from scrubbing out at like 6th out of 10 or so to winning a 9 person game and making some money.  I know that a lot of the people that play online are really bad and you can probably get some money out of them easily.  So does anyone here have any tips for getting a jump start into online poker?

[MarkPharaoh]

If you want just money and skill level of your opponents don't matter to you, then play on Royal Vegas Poker.  They automatically give you $10 and I know numerous people who changed that $10 into thousands (yes, the players suck that much).  As for the major poker sites, I suggest PartyPoker and EmpirePoker (less play skill) or PokerStars if you want more competition.  If you go with EmpirePoker, go to www.soft32.com and download PokerOffice (normally a $70 program, but free when you play 250 raked hands on EmpirePoker).  Hope this helps.

[nataz]

mmm...I go on partypoker binges every once-in-a-while.

its sooooo bad for my grades its not even funny. It's like my version of WOW 

Normally I put in around 100-200 dollars a month, and make back around 400-500, setting me up with about 300 dollars profit/month when I feel like playing hardcore.

At first, this looks really cool. Then, I realized that if I just went out and got a minimum wage job, I could work half the time I spend playing poker, and make twice the money. But, eh, its fun. 

most of my money is made at the low limit Texas hold em tables. 10+1 dollar tourneys are useally profitable also, seeing as its not the hardest thing in the world to make top 2.

The biggest mistake (that my friends and I used to make on a regular basis) was feeling a little too smug after cleaning up at the low limit tables, and then deciding that we want to take our winnings and hit up the higher level, no limit tables.

300 bucks is a lot of money for me considering I'm a college student, and honestly I can't take the pressure. My play rotates from ultra tight to ultra lose, and I never ever make money. All I keep thinking about is that I just lost a months rent for my apartment, or how I could have bought a damn mox for this amount of cash.

I managed to lose over 700 dollars (all profit thank-god) in about 48 hours playing like that, and since then, I've been cashing out every month. If you don't have the money, you can't lose the money.

Basic tips:

-set a monthly limit of what you buy in
-cash out on a regular basis, and stick to that no matter what
-don't count on poker to realistically pay your bills
-don't count on making money, if you need money, get a job
-try and play in the 10+1 events
-if you are at a suck-tack-ular table, just leave, don't try and force it
-shop around for good seats, there are thousands of tables, no need to put yourself in a hardplace before -you even see your first card.
-use the comment feature built into party poker, or better yet, use notepad to keep track of other players habits. Sure, you can't do this in real life, but writing things down will help you remember.

there is tons more I could post, but a lot of it is just common sense.

Remember, it's all just a game

-carter

[Detroit]

Several of my friends play on partypoker and they all clean house on the site. Generally the word among my friends is that party poker is a great place to start playing at the lower tables, and as you get better you'll just make more and more money. I have 3 friends who play fairly regularly and combined they must have made almost 10 thousand dollars this year playing online poker. One of them made almost 1500 in the course of a day.

Also, we have started playing limit games instead of no limit games, and if you watch your opponents and play semi-tight you can make a good amount of money in limit games.

As for myself, I don't have the time or the patience to play online poker anymore but i plan on picking it up again this summer as sort of a second job. As long as you play relatively conservatively, and mix up your playstlye every once and a while you should do well with online poker.

[Rico Suave]

I don't play online for money, but I do play in real life.  Much of the skill involved in playing poker is the ability to tell when your opponent is bluffing or not.  It is far easier to tell what my opponent is up to in person, and that is important when deciding how to gamble my money.  I just find it difficult to part with money online in a gamble... 

I have played online, but I never put any money into it.  My money is put into either local tournaments or over at Atlantic City.  Hold 'Em is definitely growing in popularity everywhere recently, and much like Vintage it has a lot of new players.  I always say the more the merrier.

[wonkey_donkey]

Much the same at my end - I don't like playing online, as it seems to take two of the biggest elements of poker out of the game; reading players by their other actions (not just the way they bet, which is why I also don't really like fixed-limit poker - hold'em's more suited for pot-limit or no-limit), and the element of playing with real people, so to speak. Generally speaking, the majority of the poker I play is with friends (although there are exceptions, of course, if I feel like playing higher stakes stuff for example), so losing the social aspect is often a fairly big thing. Playing online doesn't quite do it for me, somehow.

Tom

[warble]

Tip 1) Start at the small tables.  You never risk what you don't want to lose, so if you start at a big table all they will do is bet you out of hands.

Tip 2)The best poker players are VERY aggressive.  If you can't handle it, don't play poker online.

Tip 3)The best poker players are VERY tight.  If you don't have hours and hours to spend waiting for good hands to pop up so you can make $$$ don't play poker online.

Tip 3)Fish are just as brutal as good poker players, because they will call absolutely everything, many times with only high cards in their hand.  Online poker is about playing both fish and experts at the same time.  If you can't tell the difference between an expert poker player and a fish, that's okay, but don't expect to do much better then riding some streaks to a couple hundred bucks.

Tip 4)Gambling involves a lot of luck if you don't start out with a big stake.  The larger the initial stake relative to the buy-in (if you play $25 tables $400 would be a reasonable stake to begin with) the greater the probability that you can make money before you go bankrupt.

Tip 5)You have to communicate with the other players at the table through your betting style and the hands you play.  If you can't inspire fear from your opponents through careful play and aggressive bets when the correct hand shows up, you will be deemed a fish.  If you can't take advantage of that fact, and you are unable to inspire fear in your opponents, you will likely go bankrupt very quickly.  The flip side is that if you communicate the fact that you are a fish, but are actually extremely tight with your play, you will make a LOT of $$$ very quickly from those people who are "reading too much" into you.

Tip 6)Online poker will not make you as much $$$ as a regular job.  If you're serious about making money, go get a job.  Don't expect gambling to be anything more then a fun hobby.  Unless you're psychic.

[hulk3rules]

Who here plays Texas Hold 'Em online?  Where do you play, how good are you and how much do you make?  I'm sort of filled with false confidence in my poker skills after I joined a game I've played in before and went from scrubbing out at like 6th out of 10 or so to winning a 9 person game and making some money.  I know that a lot of the people that play online are really bad and you can probably get some money out of them easily.  So does anyone here have any tips for getting a jump start into online poker?

You won a 9 person game??  OMG you should go pro

[Anusien]

Pfft.  The point isn't to go pro, the point is that I'm not a complete fucktard.  I'm just looking to possibly build some experience, and if I do so at the cost of randoms with too much money and zero skill, than so be it.

[hulk3rules]

Pfft.  The point isn't to go pro, the point is that I'm not a complete fucktard. 

Winning a 9 person game doesn't mean you're not "a complete fucktard"

[nataz]

Winning a 9 person game doesn't mean you're not "a complete fucktard"

to be fair, it just means that you were better (or more lucky) then 8 other people :-p

welcome the the real word, there are thousands of people out there

[Machinus]

Pfft.  The point isn't to go pro, the point is that I'm not a complete fucktard. 

Winning a 9 person game doesn't mean you're not "a complete fucktard"

rofl

[leviat]

Pfft.  The point isn't to go pro, the point is that I'm not a complete fucktard.

Winning a 9 person game doesn't mean you're not "a complete fucktard"

What the hell is wrong with you people? Seriously... is there something about magic that turns all you people into giant fucking dicks? Is it because you have nothing to stick it into? If people don't start being a little nicer around here, I'm just going to start taking away posting privs with or without Z's permission. Hulk, consider yourself warned by me.