Play Money to Real Money
While many players enter the online poker scene solely with the intent on playing for real or play money, many people start out playing with the play chips, while considering making the shift over to the real games. If you are one of these players, making the switch to real money is not a difficult task, but you must adjust your style of play some if you expect to win (or at least to not lose quickly!).
First, realize that being a winning player at the play money tables means next to nothing. Play money players play horribly because they are not playing for anything! People who play at the play money tables generally just want to see if their hand will win; there is little to no incentive for them to fold because they do not lose anything by calling! If you want to play at the play money tables for practice, I suggest playing the tournaments. Since you are eliminated from the tournament when you lose your chips, there is incentive to play well (so you can gain the satisfaction of ‘winning.’) However, playing play money tournaments may make you a better tournament player, but it may not necessarily make you a better ring game player.
If you are new to online poker, I suggest playing at the play money tables so you can get used to the software and the rules. The play money tables will make online poker more user-friendly for you, so you will not feel intimidated when you play at the real money tables.
Nevertheless, once you are used to the software and are ready to play for real money, you really just need to understand three concepts to have an enjoyable (perhaps even profitable) online experience: online money management, limit selection, and poker fundamentals.
Learning to manage your ‘online money’ or e-cash is fairly simple. While in the past most people deposited with their credit cards and withdrew money via check, Empire Poker has much more convenient methods of depositing and withdrawing money from your account. I suggest you read up on Empire’s IGM Pay method or Neteller. IGM Pay allows you to deposit and withdraw straight from your bank account. It takes a couple of days to register your bank account and after that the transfers to and from your bank account take a couple of business days. If you are a particularly paranoid person, you can open up a new bank account and register that one with IGM Pay.
The other online payment method I suggest is Neteller. As close to an online bank as you can get, Neteller acts as an internet payment middle man. You can fund your Neteller account with a credit card or through an electronic funds transfer from your bank account. Then, you transfer money to Empire Poker, play, and then cashout to your Neteller account. Once the money is in your Neteller account, you can retrieve it by having them send you a check, transfer the money to your bank account via EFT, or use a Neteller debit card (basically an ATM card for your Neteller account). Empire Poker has other methods of depositing money as well, so use the one with which you are most comfortable.
After you understand how deposits/withdrawals from Empire Poker work, you must then figure out which games/limits to play. I suggest starting with low limit hold’em, as there are plenty of games and the games are generally soft. Empire Poker has limits as low as $.50-1, so you don’t have to risk much money to be able to play. In general, you want to play a limit where you can afford at least 50 big bets (the higher bet of the limit), so an online bankroll of $50 is enough to start playing the low stakes limit games.
Finally, in order to succeed at low limit hold’em, you really just need to understand poker fundamentals. These include starting hand selection, game selection, and pot odds. You can read about starting hand selection in the hold’em articles, but in a nutshell you want to only play ‘good’ hands. If you see the flop every time with 95 offsuit, you are going to go broke. Poor starting hands have very little chance of winning. More than likely, you will just end up being strung out for a lot of small bets if you hit a pair. Over the course of time, you will lose a considerable amount of money with these poor hands. However, many of your opponents at low limit hold’em games have a very poor understanding of starting hands, so you can use that advantage alone to succeed.
The second poker fundamental you should understand is game selection. While I will go over this in detail in another article, basically you want to find a game where other people are making a lot of mistakes. After all, you could be the tenth best hold’em player in the world, but you will come out a big loser if you play against the best nine! However, if you are the tenth worst hold’em player in the world, you will come out a winner against the worst nine! Poker is a game of relative skill, so look for a game where there is a lot of calling all the way to the river because chances are you are better than these opponents. Again, don’t confuse game selection and limit selection. What I mean by game selection is the actual table at which you would play, while limit selection is the poker limit in which you would play (e.g. $1-2 limit hold’em).
Finally, pot odds is a very important concept you should understand. Simply put, if you think you do not have the best hand but your hand may improve to be the best hand, these are the odds you need to have in order to call. If the percentage chance of improving your hand is higher than the percentage bet you are placing in the pot, you should call. In other words, if there is a 20% chance your hand will improve to be the winner and you are only putting $1 into a $10 pot, you should call! A rough way to figure out the percentage chance your hand will improve is to multiply your number of ‘outs’ (the cards that will improve your hand) by two.
Playing for money is what poker is about. While playing for play chips can be fun, it is generally not as gratifying as playing for real money because people are not playing as hard when there is nothing at stake. If you understand e-cash, limit selection, and poker fundamentals, you should be in good shape to start out at the real money tables.
