If and when you get to the tournament stage of your poker playing career, you will play at both online and land-based poker tournaments. Until then, and for a long time after you start playing poker “for real”, we here at Juicy Stakes Poker Online Casino believe that your poker play will be best served by playing online.
What Will I Miss by Not Playing at a Land-based Poker Room?
The only thing you will miss as far as poker is concerned is learning to read tells. It is quite true that it is a lot easier to read tells if you can “see” them in person. However, there are also tells in online poker and tells do not account for a large number of hands.
It is a considered belief that players who have obvious tells on land will also have obvious tells online.
Here is a short list of the things you will not miss when you play online here at Juicy Stakes instead of playing at a land-based poker room:
- The cost of travel and hotel accommodations.
- The inability to be in complete control of your poker play since you have incurred costs to play.
- The possibility that you will be the weakest player at the table but you can’t seem to leave.
- The possibility that one opponent (or more) will successfully intimidate you into folding winning hands and continuing with losing hands.
- The inability to be anonymous.
As a New Poker Player You Will Need to Get Advice from Many Sources
We feel that you should never have to pay to learn how to play. You should be able to afford to play at a low-stakes level for as long as it takes to develop the skill to move up to a higher-stakes level. And Juicy Stakes tries mightily to give new poker players good advice on what a new player should be doing and looking for.
So, here are a few tips, in no special order, that we feel will help you develop into a solid poker player.
Play Aggressively but Play Relatively Few Hands
This sounds like the advice a wife gave to her husband in the classic movie “The Twelve Chairs” in which she told him to “hurry home but don’t gallop”! wouldn’t we expect an aggressive player to play relatively many hands?
Overly aggressive play always means playing hands you should not play. No one will learn anything about you that they can use if you fold in early position. If they are good players, they also fold most hands in early position!
But you should play the top of the range of hands and occasionally a speculative hand such as connected and suited low cards. This will confuse opponents and will work to your benefit.
If you do play a solid hand or a speculative hand, you should play it aggressively, raising the Big Blind before the flop. Simply calling the Big Blind is the definition of limping in and shows a lack of aggressiveness on your part.
There are times when limping in can be a complicated bluff but in most hands a player is better served building the pot him or herself rather than hoping to have it built by another player.
Finally, all poker players at some time or another succumb to the temptations of impatience. This is a sure way to reduce one’s stack quickly and dramatically. By playing tight on the initial betting sequence and aggressively if you do bet, you will be able to win a lot more pots than if you play tight and then passively when you do bet.
Impatience Leads to Not Folding Hands that You Should Fold
Good poker players−and here we simply mean good players, not necessarily pros−understand that folding is a primary strategy move! A good player feels when he or she has a losing hand even if they have a high pair! The rule of thumb should be to fold if you are in doubt.
This is a rule of thumb; it is not a playing strategy for every hand since we often are not sure what our opponents have. But we need to be able to fold a hand we desperately want to play!
This is the core ability of good players!
Pay Attention to Every Hand
One of the many benefits of folding correctly−and this is a skill not so easily learned−is that it allows players to pay attention to a hand as it unfolds without the stress of actually being in the hand themselves.
Learning observation skills is as important as learning poker skills.
Try to Never Limp in First
Limping in shows weakness. It also gives the player down-bet the incentive to limp in too. If you raise, you can win a hand before the flop. This might not win a lot of money but it is a win!
Raising the Big Blind is an aggressive move and we advise being aggressive with your bets even as you are tight in the hands you play.
Bet Aggressively if an Opponent Appears Weak
It is important to reiterate that an opponent might appear weak ON PURPOSE in order to get the others, including you, to add to a pot that he or she is almost sure to win.
It is inevitable that this will happen if you play enough competitive poker. In friendly at-home games, there often is a house rule called “no sandbagging” which is the competitive poker equivalent of check-raising. In a friendly game, bluffs are bluffs and the acting part is more straightforward.
Bluffing is a Long-term Learning Process
There is little we can add to the science of bluffing and bluff detection here. Players have to learn how and when to bluff and how to detect a bluff pretty much on their own.
There are also quite a few skills players learn as they play. Semi-bluffing, fast play, slow play, check-raise, and how to defend the Big Blind are just a few of the many subtle poker elements that experienced players know a lot better than new players.
Try to Find Games with Players Who are Weaker than You
This is another benefit of tight play, especially in the early stages of a game. You want to see if you can determine the general skill level of the other players in the game.
At an online casino, if you feel that you are weaker than the others, you can simply move to a different game. If need be, you can postpone playing until the next day or a few hours down the road.
As we made clear, travelling to a land-based poker room makes players want and need to play in order to justify the cost of getting to the poker room. That is simply never the case at Juicy Stakes Online Poker!
Play Only When You Feel Good
This may be the single reason why playing at an online poker room such as Juicy Stakes is good, especially for new players. At a land-based poker room, you might not feel up to it but you are invested so you play.
At Juicy Stakes, if you feel less than in tip top shape, you can always postpone the game to when you feel better.
Juicy Stakes Offers Great Online Poker
We offer poker in several game variations and at many stakes levels. As you can see, we also do as much as we can to help players improve their poker play.
