Reasons to Play Poker Online

But why should you play online poker? It does seem odd that folks are willing to put their
money in the hands of a privately held company based in the Dominican Republic, Costa
Rica, or Antigua and engage in a game of chance with faceless players from around the
globe who may or may not be using their wireless phone company’s unlimited nighttime
calling plan to conspire against you. Then again, playing online has its advantages, not the
least of which is that you can play from home, where you set the rules. You can smoke or
 not, eat at the table, wear whatever catches your fancy, and listen to music without wearing
headphones. You can also fi nd games at any time of the day or night. Curt is a night owl
who’s often up until 3:00 AM or later, which means that he hits the sweet spot for mid-day
players in Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Doug is more of
an evening player, so he often shares tables with players from the eastern part of the United
States, early starters on the Pacifi c coast, and the late-night players from Europe and Scandinavia.
To top it off, you can leave a game whenever you want to. It’s not uncommon for
someone to log on and play for 15 minutes to kill time before their favorite television show
comes on, so leaving abruptly doesn’t raise eyebrows the way it might if you drove for an
hour-and-a-half to a brick-and-mortar casino, won a few hundred dollars in a nice little rush,
and shoved off before your fi rst drink arrived.
There are also procedural benefi ts to playing poker online. For example, the limits can
be much lower than in a physical casino. Believe it or not, you can play for as little as
two cents a bet—yep, that’s $0.02. Online casinos also tend to take a bit less money out
of each pot (the rake) because they don’t have to pay for dealers, cocktail servers, fl oor
personnel, or carpets. Also, because the cards are shuffl ed within a second after a hand
ends, you will often get in 30 or more hands per half hour, as compared to 20 hands per
half hour in a traditional casino. When you’re a favorite to win money at your table, you
want to play as many hands as you can. Yes, the rake grinds away at everyone’s bankroll,
taking a few dollars out of circulation every time the cards are dealt, but with some good
play on your part, you can get your share of the loot. As poker genius Mike Caro says, the
chips fl ow clockwise around the table and eventually end up in the good players’ stacks.
If you’re good at making good decisions quickly, you can play at multiple tables simultaneously
and increase the number of chips coming your way.
Finally, the number of aggravations that make a game a struggle goes down when you
play over the Internet. Online dealers don’t make mistakes, and the other players can’t
fold out of turn, reach for their chips while watching for your reaction, or talk trash without
your permission.