Technology Is a Double-Edged Sword in Online Poker

First of all it's best if you understand before you play one hand of online poker, even if you are only playing with fake money, that technology and more vitally how you use technology will usually plays a tremendous role in your success or failure as an online poker player.

Not using technology to your advantage in online poker is kind of like bringing a knife to a gunfight: you are likely to get shot up and killed and if you want more, come get more.

Online poker players use technology to:

• Communicate and collude with other players
• Track wins and losses to get a full picture of their skills and performance over time
• Find where the so-called "fish" (new or bad players) are playing and go hunt them now
• Track how you play the game of poker, when you're likely to raise, fold, etc.
• Receive a portion of the house "rake" back as a credit

Let's take this last idea, called "rakeback," as a simple example of how pivotal and profitable effective use of technology can be in the online poker universe.

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A Simple Example of Online Poker Tech Power: Rakeback Software

Rakeback is basically a software program that you can attach to your playing account that automatically credits a percentage of the online poker room's "rake" back into your playing account. Big poker sites like FullTilt.com rake millions per night, so this is not chump change.

By using rakeback, you can recoup part of your cost of playing online poker. With rakeback percentages regularly exceeding 30 percent, why wouldn't you use rakeback? And yet studies show that the majority of online poker players do not use rakeback software.

In summary, because we've got to move on here but also need to make sure the point is driven home, you must use online poker technology to your advantage and you also must prepare to have online poker technology used against you by millions of other online players.

If you're not ready for all that, casino cardrooms or home games may be your preferred poker environments.

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Three More Rules for Playing Online Poker

In keeping with our notion that this page will serve as a sort of guidebook to new or newish online poker players, let's bang out three more must-dos for online poker players:

1) Play at an online casino that meets your needs as a player.

Some online poker rooms are dishonest, some are being scammed by their own players, some have glitchy software, some are full of really good players that prey on newbies, some give you great sign up and loyalty bonuses and others are stingy, and there are other factors too.

Spend time looking at our reviews of online poker sites so you can make informed choices about where to play online poker. The time we spend on these reviews can save you real money.

2) Just because it's called FullTilt.com doesn't mean you have to go fully on tilt right away.

Another "rule" of online poker is that you need to consider how much money you're willing to invest into your online poker playing. There is just something about the Internet where the lack of tactile handling of money and chips can make you lose track of how much you're losing.

When you first start out playing poker, online is a fantastic way to learn the game…but not if you are burning up your entire poker bankroll within the first week of playing!

The urge to play for real money online can become strong when you see how garbage the free play tables actually are most of the time, but still…slowly will you grow, grasshopper.

3) Tournaments are the single best thing about online poker.

Especially consider engaging in online tournaments if you're just starting out or not a terrific player, rather than going into the cash games. Even the middle limit cash games online are often stocked thick with excellent poker players, so it can be a hard slog for the newbie.

The preponderance of strong players online is to some degree dictated by the reality that far from everyone has access to a casino or thriving home game, but on the Internet anyone from any country or town in the world can hop online and become a good player.

Do you really want to sit down and play poker for a few hours with three unemployed PhD's from Russia who have nothing but time on their hands and have extremely large brains?

Online poker tournaments allow you to fix your cost of playing and are meanwhile a lot of fun, you can meet cool people and have some great times climbing up those leaderboards.

But online poker tournaments, of course, are not only for beginners or average players.

Many online poker rooms also use tournaments as marketing tools, for example if you win a tournament online you may be able to win a seat at the World Series of Poker. Opportunities like these are obviously very appealing when you see the success of someone like Chris Moneymaker who won the $2.5 million World Series of Poker but he only got there by winning an online tournament and before that he was an anonymous accountant (albeit with a cool name).

So anyways, these are some of our house rules for playing online poker.

That and one more: have fun!

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