Some players think that the biggest difference between poker online or on land is that online poker rooms such as Juicy Stakes Poker offer bonuses that you can access with the poker bonus code. The fact is that there are many ways that playing online can help you improve your poker!
Online Poker Teaches Discipline
When you play online, you can come and go as you please. This makes it a lot easier for players, new and experienced, to set time budgets for playing and to stop when the time limit expires. Land-based poker rooms encourage the exact opposite.
If you have to travel any distance to get to a poker room on land, you automatically have an incentive to play a lot longer than you should. After all, you have invested in travel time and costs! At Juicy Stakes, there are no travel costs so there is no incentive to play on and on after you are too tired to make good decisions.
Online Poker Encourages Hand Analysis
When you play online, you will have a relatively limited number of hands to analyze after the session is over. On land, there are many more hands so analysis is a lot more difficult.
Hand analysis is an indispensable way to see deeply into hands and players’ actions to see how these actions can help you improve your own game.
Many new poker players underestimate the importance of hand analysis. This has two unhappy results. One is that many new players will play too many hands! We will talk about this in more depth soon.
The second unhappy result of underestimating hand analysis is that players get bored quickly and that, in itself, leads to many poor decisions. The opposite attitude−which means to value hand analysis−compels players to pay close attention on every hand, whether you are directly involved in the hand or are “just” observing.
Online Poker Teaches Players to Recognize when They Have Gotten Tired
Online poker is available every day. That means that there is no incentive to play too long or to play when a player has gotten too tired to make good decisions.
Poker at a land-based poker room encourages players to play too long. Players rationalize continuing to play by saying “I’m not so tired” or “I’ll play on for just another hour” or some other reason to continue playing.
It is okay to analyze hands even when you are too tired to play them! It is simply not helpful to play hands when you are tired. The easy availability of online poker makes it entirely unnecessary to play beyond one’s physical ability to do so.
Online Poker Encourages Patience
We said above that online poker encourages discipline. Patience and discipline are not the same. Discipline involves bankroll management, time management, taking the time to analyze hands, making every effort to pay attention to every hand, and so on.
Patience is a lot more connected to emotions.
Every poker player gets upset or angry at the vicissitudes of poker! We might make all the right decisions and still lose the hand on a super unlikely river card.
It is hard for any player to contain his or her emotions in poker. But online poker, being available every day, allows players to quit a session in order to cool off. Players at land-based casino rooms don’t like to quit a session because they have the travel costs invested in playing.
Patience is Directly Related to Playing Fewer Hands
Players at land-based poker rooms are notorious for playing more hands than they should. When a player enters a hand that they have no reason to enter, in most cases they are throwing good money after bad.
This is especially true of players betting from early position. Impatience leads many players to call the big blind even with a poor hand hoping to fool the opponents into folding.
And what if they do fold? How much does a player win by getting everyone to fold before the flop? How much will the player lose by calling with a poor hand and not fooling the others to fold and then losing the hand?
In short, playing on land leads players to play too many hands because there is always the feeling of time running out. Time effectively never runs out at an online poker room!
Online Poker Encourages Playing at One’s Skill Level
At Juicy Stakes Poker, you can choose from several poker variations and many different stakes levels. There is no reason to play at a higher stakes and skill level than your own! Land-based players often find the table available to be with higher skilled players and a higher stakes level than what they are comfortable with.
Playing at your specific stakes and skill level is also a sign of accepting reality. Playing at home online is a lot more conducive to facing and accepting reality than playing at a land-based poker rom. The very fact that the atmosphere on land is 100% about poker means that the atmosphere is not realistic.
At home, we still have dishes and laundry to wash, work projects to work on, friends and family to see, significant others to keep happy, and innumerable other things to think about.
That’s one of the many reasons to schedule short sessions. Land-based poker is all about poker which automatically takes it out of the realm of everyday real life!
Even poker players have hobbies and other outside interests! It is our contention that you can improve your poker by getting away from poker to do other fine and interesting things!
In Short, Playing Poker Online Encourages Good Habits
Excellence in poker is more than just book knowledge! It is a confluence of poker knowledge and the knowledge of how to manage ourselves in complex situations.
The everyday nature of online poker encourages all of the good habits we have spoken about here. In addition, being able to manage complex situations can help us in many ways not related to poker at all!
Juicy Stakes is a Leader in Online Poker
We offer great poker with many poker variations and many stakes levels. We also offer bonuses, tournaments, and the blog of helpful articles.
If you are not yet a member of our team, we encourage you to JOIN JUICY STAKES POKER NOW!