Online Poker vs. Livepoker
The Advantages of Online Poker vs. Live Poker
As poker has moved onto the internet we take a look at why it is better than the cash games & tournaments at land based casinos. Just why has online poker become so popular?
Play More Hands
When playing at home or in brick and mortar casinos, you will find it can take an age for the dealer to count chips (especially with a split pot), sort out the rake, shuffle the cards and get them dealt individually to each player. Once the hands have been dealt it can take a while for players to count how many chips they wish to put in and actually make the bets. One of the major advantages of online poker is that this is all done in the blink of an eye by a well educated piece of computer software.
There is no shuffling to wait for and the chips and cards are distributed immediately. So why is this an advantage? At a land based casino you will maybe play about 10 to 15 hands an hour, while online you can play over 40. This means you will learn the game quicker and more hands means a quicker return rate on your money. Tournaments also run a lot quicker, the 10,000 entrants to the WSOP took nearly 5 days to find a winner, the equivalent online poker tournaments took only 8 hours.
Play whenever, wherever, & without anyone else being able to watch your tells!
This has got to be one of the best advantages to online poker, nobody can see you, if your sat at your home game and you land pocket aces, a big smile appears on your face, you blush slightly with excitement and anticipation and its there for everyone to see so they all fold to your raise and you win nothing but the blinds. When your playing online and you land the big pair, you can dance and sing around the room it wont matter, nobody will know any better.
This makes playing bluffs easier as they cant see you praying for them to fold, this also makes it easier when your playing to a straight or flush draw as again they cant see you screaming at the screen for the card you need. On the flip side, you cant see them either, this makes the game all down to finding tells in opponents betting patterns.
More Affordable, micro & low stakes tables are almost always only available online!
As a beginner it is good practice to get onto the play money tables at no cost to yourself, these you will not find anywhere but in online casinos and they can help you develop your game ready for the cash tables. One of the advantages of online poker is that you can play really low stakes, as little as $0.01/$0.02 blinds.
These are again a good way to start out learning how everything works online. There are also some amazing competitions that you can enter for almost nothing. You can enter free rolls or for a small stake such as $1.00 you can enter with 1000 other players and you will be then in a competition with $1000 prize pool where the top prize is usually around $100 to $200.
Playing poker on the internet has many advantages and these are just some of them, for starters your sat in the comfort of your own home with no pressure and so you can relax more and enjoy your game.
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