To win at poker you need to show skill and expertise. To win at poker you need to have a really good memory and be great at reading other people whilst always keeping your own feelings hidden behind your ‘poker face’. Because of all these factors you have to wonder how online poker is so successful – if the whole point of the game is for players to be able to read each other’s expressions, then wouldn’t it be incredibly difficult to win against unseen opponents? But it could work the other way around too, and being invisible to your opponents could make it easier to keep that poker face even when you think you’ve got no chance.
Whichever way you look at it, playing poker online is a very different game. If nothing else, poker sites like Betfair Poker have brought the game to a much wider audience and give them the chance to bet as much or as little as they like. Playing online it’s much easier to bluff and take risks, as other players can’t read your true intentions on your face. The downside to this is that you can’t see them either and have no way of knowing what hand they have. You need to rely heavily on your memory but after a few games it’s possible to become as good at online poker as you can offline.
The biggest risk of online poker is that an inexperienced player who lost money on a poker site could be tempted to go back and keep trying to win until it was too late. But provided you limit yourself to betting only what you can afford to lose then playing poker online could be a great chance to have some fun, make some money and learn something new. The only disadvantage to playing on popular sites like Party, Betfair and Absolute Poker is that they make their money by taking a cut of every pot, called the rake, as commission. It’s worth looking around for a good online poker deal before signing up to a poker room, sites like raketherake.com have loads of great rakeback deals for most of the main online poker rooms.