Top 10 Tips For Aussie Online Poker Players
Poker is a skill game so, if you want to win more, you have to play smarter. Online poker players, especially, have opportunities
to
turn the odds in their favour by playing with carefully thought out strategies and by taking advantage of everything that the internet has to offer. Here are our top ten tips for Aussie poker players that want every possible advantage.
1. Take Advantage Of Your Bonus
Until the rise of the internet, nobody could have imagined the bonus opportunities that are available to poker players in the 21st century. Now, just for signing up and making a deposit, pretty much every online poker room will throw some bonus money your way - sometimes a lot of it. This bonus money may need to be cleared but assuming you actually plan on playing, this won't be a problem. In fact, your welcome bonus is a pure opportunity to help cover your losses and boost your winnings!
With so many different poker sites out there, it's definitely worth checking out online reviews before you pick an Australian poker room to play at. That's because the bonus offers can vary massively from site to site and if you're like most people, you'll want to get the most bonus cash possible!
2. Take Time To Learn The Game
Getting good at anything requires a bit of dedication, and online poker is no exception. Set aside some time to read, watch videos, and talk with other players. Do anything you can to learn how the game is played and what makes a winning player. Then, when you have this information, start to actually use it. Ignore your gut and do what you know is right. In time, you will develop the winning instincts you need from focused practice and experience.
One of the big mistakes poker newbies often make is doing something that might seem like a good idea at the time – playing every hand. Yes poker is all about probability but that doesn't mean that the more hands you play, the more you'll win. Remember, you can fold!
If you restrain yourself and only play when you have a decent starting hand you'll notice in just one session that you'll lose less money and other players will take you more seriously. Your opponents will know you're not there to mess around and that should stop you from being bullied out of big pots.
3. Understand That There Is No Substitute For Experience
Knowing how to play "by the book" is important for new players to avoid the most common rookie mistakes, but no amount of studying will give you the ability to compete with battle-hardened players that have years of experience under their belts. You can have some success now but you'll have to play a lot of hands to get that 6th sense that separates the sharks from the fish.
When it comes to online poker, the old saying “learn the rules before you break them” definitely applies. You can mix up your play to keep your opponents on their toes but do it on purpose not because you don't know what you should be doing!
4. Avoid Tilt At All Costs
Tilt is that inner voice that tells you to be bold and make a play that you, on some level, know is too risky. After significant losses (or wins) it's easy to abandon your fundamentals and give in to tilt. Learn to recognise this feeling and move on. Tilt brings nothing but trouble if you don't learn how to control it.
There are lots of things you can do to get away from Tilt but the most important thing to remember is; it's not a conspiracy against you or a lucky miracle. It's pure chance and randomness that bring you the cards you get and there's no accounting for how other players will behave either. So, instead of trying to make sense of chaos, take a deep breath and remember you'll have plenty of opportunities in the future to play poker when your head is clearer.
The minute you notice your strategy principles vanishing, control yourself and leave!
5. Learn The Basic Strategies
There are some things that every poker player knows. Understanding when to play any given hand, how to raise without scaring off the competition, and how to bluff effectively are all essential tools and there are some basic strategies to help you do these things. Learn these basic strategies and you can put yourself ahead of most players that you will encounter. With practice, these will become automatic reflexes.
You'll often find that there are lots of strategy resources available both at the poker site you're playing at and on the internet more generally. Many sites have Poker Schools and detailed How To Play Guides that can fill you in on the basic strategies and teach you how to put them into practice.
6. Play Within Your Limits
Like all kinds of gambling, your bankroll is the only thing that keeps you in the game and sets you apart from all of the losers that can no longer play. Protect it at all costs! Beyond winning, which is the absolute best way to keep your bankroll healthy, be sure to play within your means to limit your exposure. After all, you never know when a cold string of cards could be coming your way.
The best thing to do is to decide each session how much you're willing to spend. If you win, then great you can carry on playing but if you lose you've got to get out of there when the money runs out. Don't be temped to deposit again and try and get back what you've lost – that's how every gambler gets into trouble!
7. Choose Your Poker Site Carefully
The internet has brought poker into millions of homes and it's changed the way we think about the game. You just have to make sure that you're enjoying online poker with a company that you can trust. More than a few players have been lured into rogue poker sites by promises of big bonuses and fishy competition, only to end up empty handed when they went to withdraw their winnings. Take a look at our recommended poker sites to avoid this mistake.
One of the main things to look out for is whether a poker site is regulated by a government or official body. If it is, it's usually secure and viable and if anything goes wrong you're back is covered.
8. Find The Fish And Play With Them
No matter how good you become, finding easier competition is a sure way to improve your chances. Look around online and experiment with different game types, stake levels, and poker sites to find schools of fish that are just waiting to hand over their chips. It might not be as thrilling as sitting down with the pros, but the goal here is to win.
Newer players often think it's a low blow to play online poker against fishes but the reality is that's how everyone plays. The fish are intermediate and pro players' bread and butter. Those fish keep the pros in the game and allow them to bankroll themselves into bigger more intense games.
9. Take Advantage Of Freerolls And Promos
Just like bonus money can give you a helpful boost, freerolls and promo tournaments let you play in a risk free environment. These games can be particularly lucrative because many players enter and don't take them seriously. For every ridiculous all-in bluff that gets called, there is one less player to contend with. Play it safe early and clean up when these opportunities present themselves. At the end of the day, you have nothing to lose.
Your aim in these kind of freerolls and promos is to just be there at the end. That doesn't mean going crazy at the beginning, trying to gain authority at the table with big plays. It means going slow and steady and then going in for the kill at the later stages when most of the completion has been weeded out.
10. Don't Play While Distracted
So many players turn to online poker as a way to relieve stress and relax, but if you sit down angry, stressed, or distracted, you're just asking to lose! To win at poker (in the long run anyway) you need to be focuses on a lot of details at once. If you aren't in the right state of mind to do this, find something else to do until you are calm and collected. The fish will still be there when you get back.
If you're playing online poker right, it should be an intense experience. All your senses should be engaged and the cogs of your brain should be whirring round constantly – if you're not fully absorbed in the game, you're just leaving yourself open to being exploited!
