After reading the rules of poker and a couple of articles, I’ve decided to play poker online… I started to play for fun money, but quickly found out that in most cases, the players will call or even raise after the river knowing that they have nothing in their hands. The fact that you can loose $100 of fun money will not make you very sad, but it will be fun to win the pot when you have nothing in your hands. Yes, fun money poker is a good place for a novice, it will help you memorize poker hands, make a decision quicker, but I don’t think one should play too much for fun because it can give you a distorted vision of what a poker game is (I’m saying this after playing for a week at $0.02/$0.04 and $0.10/$0.20 real money tables).

One slip of the tongue regarding fun money poker: Now I’m playing poker at Absolute Poker, there you can reload your fun money chips at any time once your fun money account drops below 200 chips. You can reload up to three times per hour. I wonder why people are playing to build a fun bankroll ? I saw players with $50,000 fun money and more. Can anyone explain why the heck do they waste time for virtual money? I’m curious.

Ok, after a few hours of fun poker I’ve entered the real money tables. I started with the lowest stakes: $0.02/$0.04. I was very happy when after a few minutes I won my first pot! I quickly earned a few cents, but the pleasant thrill ended soon when I lost my winnings plus a few of my initial bankroll. Hmm, I’m impressed.

I riffled the first pages from The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky and understood that:

1. I was relying on luck too many times
2. I wasn’t aware that low limit games are very tight
3. Bluffing in low limit games will cost you money

But the most important is that when you play poker you are not playing against the cards – you are playing against the other players.

I became more careful (I also switched from $0.02/$0.04 to $0.10/$0.20), and started to play only good hands: AK, JJ, QJ, etc. … and it worked for most of the cases. Well, you waste a lot of time waiting because you play only a little number of hands, but the game is more stable. I was folding if the flop didn’t suit me, but the money I was wasting to see the flop were regained when I won games with lots of raising (yes, I was raising because I Had good cards).

But the mega-cautious strategy will not bring you a lot of money. People will fold too soon when they see you are raising, and the pot is not big enough in order to compensate previous losses. So yes, sometimes I was checking instead of betting in order to make others think I have nothing in my hands.

I played for two days consecutively for one or two hours per day and won around $5 each day. A few days later when I came back home in the evening I said: “I’ll play poker until I win $10″. …. That was a terrible day. I played all night long, I saw the sunrise, I won only $5 … and in the morning I lost $10 very quickly. I slept the whole day, and didn’t played poker for a week, analyzing my faults.

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