I am one of those guys who absolutely lives for poker night. I mean, I've got it marked off on my calender for pretty much the entire year and it would probably take a wedding or a funeral to pull me away from the game...and I'd probably just try to reschedule it anyway. I take my fun seriously, and I love it when I can make a little money while having a great time. For a long time I was frustrated that I only got to play once a week, in part because I knew I would improve faster if I could play more often. They say practice makes perfect, but for the most part, I would settle for practice making me more skillful.
I finally decided to go look into some of the free poker sites on the Internet. I did my research pretty carefully and came up with a list of the top poker sites. I had a few qualifications for the sites based not only on their reputation, but also on the different kinds of bonuses they offered. I pretty much knew I would play on any site that offered free poker money where I could try out the site without having to give away my personal information. I also recognized that as I got better, I would probably want to take on some of the bigger and better money offers. Of course, to get big you have to have big money, so all in good time.
Now, when I'm playing with the guys, I sometimes like to take risks. I usually just work off a gut feeling, unless I feel like somebody's poker face has slipped. Online, however, I am a much more conservative player. I read somewhere that in order to continuously make money off of a set limit, you should always have 200 big bets in each hand. At the time I thought that was pretty crazy advice, I mean, you can't make very big bets that way- if you had a bankroll of $2,000, your maximum bet would be $10. What I learned over time is that while I might not get gobs and gobs of money at once, I also don't lose big money, either. That's a pretty important trade-off.
Want to know one of the biggest tricks I learned as a beginner? Just play it cool. As long as you aren't bluffing or otherwise calling attention to yourself, most of the other players won't pay any attention to you, they will just focus on their own hands. Using the pot to stack your odds and betting aggressively are in your best interests. Really, what it comes down to is this- when you're only betting a few bucks, don't assume that anybody is paying attention or thinking too hard. Just play slow and make money slowly, too. Psychology need not come into the game until you're playing at a much higher level or in person.
