Poker tells are one of the most important aspects of poker and they help to separate poker from other games of luck. When playing poker, it is crucial to observe your opponents in order to pick up on any clues they make inadvertently give away. Poker tells can include any piece of information gathered including voluntary and involuntary movements, verbal cues and behavioural patterns. The best part about tells is that every single poker player has them, and if you observe enough hands closely enough, you will eventually find them. Be careful though, some players try to give off reverse tells to trap you.

Eyes The eyes are an important part of reading a player. How an opponent sees the world can often give off small clues to their intentions. Length of staring at the holes cards can give you a clue. Some people can’t help but stare at monsters, others snap them back down immediately. A useful tell is when somebody immediately looks at their chips when the flop comes down, this means a big hand. The reverse is often also true, if someone stares at the flop for longer than normal then it is likely that they missed.

Hole Cards When someone rechecks their hole cards on a flop that is all of one suit, they normally do not have a flush. If a player squeezes out the second hole card after seeing the first one, it often means at least one ace. An opponent who looks at their hole cards and then looks uninterested has a monster hand.

Patterns of Betting The classic saying in poker is that weak means strong and strong means weak. Looking aggressive and forcefully shipping chips into the middle is usually weak. The opposite is also true, quietly putting chips into the pot is often strength. If an opponent looks at his hand and then bets instantly, it is seldom a bluff.

Chip Stacks If you ever notice a player winning a large pot and stacking their chips from the last hand, they will not play the hand unless they have good cards. Tight conservative players keep neat stacks and loose aggressive players usually have unkempt stacks.

Speaking at the table If an opponent is having a conversation during a poker hand and his talk is all of the place, as if his mind is on something else, it usually means he is not too confident in his hand. This correlates to a weak poker hand. Conversely, if a player is talking smoothly while in a hand, it means he is not overly concerned about the hand he is playing. This is because he feels comfortable and usually means a big hand.

Every player gives off tells, try to remain patient and always watch the table even when you aren’t in a hand.

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Poker is a family of various card games played by two or more player who bet on the value of their hands. Numerous versions exist with each version differing based on the number of cards dealt, specific nuances and rules, betting limitations and hand rankings.

The history of poker is the subject of debate. Around 969 AD, the Chinese emperor Mu-Tsung is reported to have played ‘domino cards’ with his wife. Egyptians in the 12th and 13th centuries had a version of playing cards. The Persians in the 16th century had a 96-card game “Ganjifa” and a 25-card version “As Nas”. An early known card game incorporating betting, hand rankings and bluffing was a German game entitled ‘Pochspiel’ popular in the 15th century. The French played a game called ‘Poque’. Both games derived from the German ‘pochen’ (’to brag as a bluff’, ‘to knock’). Other early versions include the Renaissance game of ‘Primero’, the French game ‘Brelan’ and the English game ‘Brag’.

Irrespective of the early origins of poker, the modern day game differs significantly with focus upon unique features such as betting that do not appear in any older version. The modern origin of Poker is believe to have occurred in the mid 1700s spreading through the paddle steamers of the Mississippi River by 1800. Most likely introduced by French colonials arriving in Canada.

Early versions of the game involved 20 cards (AKQJT) and four players. There was no draw and bets were made on a narrower range of combinations including one pair, two pair, triplets, full and four of a kind. There was no straight, flush or royal flush at this point. In the mid 1830s, the 52-card version was gradually adopted partly to accommodate more player and to give more scope to the recently introduced flush. Poker now reached the pages of American Hoyle. Around 1845, Poker began introducing the ‘draw’. The improved the game by allowing a second round of betting and providing initially poor hands the ability to dramatically improve. From the middle of the 19th century, poker changed rapidly and became more widespread with modern day variations all starting to take form.

The modern day poker boom can be attributed to four events. The first is the 1998 film ‘Rounders’ starring Matt Damon, Edward Norton and John Malkovich in which a law student is tangled up in the world of poker and eventually quits his job and heads to Las Vegas to follow his dream. The second is the improvements in modernising televised poker tournaments including the World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour. The third occurred when an unknown amateur Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003. The fourth and final important advancement is the technology to allow internet poker into mainstream society. Since those events, poker has exploded and has never looked back.

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Millions are won and lost everyday in Online Poker. It can be daunting for a new player keen to start making real money with so many bonuses and poker rooms available today.

It is easy to make lots of small mistakes when signing up to Online Poker. Often missed opportunities mean that you lose a lot of value that you could have otherwise obtained. We hope to guide you through the first stages of playing Online Poker.

1) Select a popular, reputable poker room – Obvious but often overlooked. The most popular poker sites are also the most reputable and these include Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet and Cake Poker. Choose one of these to start with.

2) Sign up to the poker room through a reputable rakeback provider to collect a deposit bonus – Online Poker rooms offer bonuses to sign up new players. When you first sign up to a room you have the opportunity to sign up for a few financial extras including a) First Deposit Bonus b) Rakeback c) Rake Races d) Free Rolls. There are many reputable rakeback providers including Rakeback Power, Rakebrain and Raketherake. Most offers between sites are similar but check out a few and ensure you follow the sign-up instructions correctly.

3) Get used to the poker room and practice with play money – Start at the play money tables. Tweak the poker room settings to your liking and get used to buttons, sounds, and graphics. When you are comfortable with the room, it’s time to consider a real money deposit. Deposit Bonuses usually match your initial deposit i.e. Deposit $600 and get a $600 Bonus. The bonuses are slowly released after you play a certain number of hands.

4) Finances and Depositing – There are a few security procedures to go through when depositing real money. Often you might need to provide evidence including a license and utility bill to ensure you are a real person. There are many deposit options available and you should take the time to read through the different options available and work out the best for you. A recommended international and secure option is Neteller.

5) Poker Forums – I highly recommended the Two Plus Two forums. The oldest poker archive on the internet with every possible answer to every possible question.

6) Books about Online Poker – The more you read, the more you will learn. It’s that simple. Many poker books are available and they are all good. Some comprehensive recommended texts include Super System and Harrington on Holdem.

7) Software – I would firstly recommended Holdem Manager – A database that records all the hands you play so that you can review mistakes. It also allows you to have real time statistics about your opponents while you play. Table Ninja is a use program that allows you to use hot keys instead of clicking the buttons – Very useful if playing many tables.
Online Poker Training and Coaching – Numerous websites exist that offer coaching and training facilities, the most notable include Card Runners, Deuces Cracked and Poker Savvy.

9) Bonus Whoring – As crude as it sounds, collecting multiple deposit bonuses is a very legitimate and recommended way of generating a bankroll early in your poker career.

10) Take the time to enjoy yourself – Poker can be riveting, frustrating, infuriating and confusing all within five minutes. Remember poker is to be enjoyed, you will lose hands and win hands but hopefully still be smiling at the end of the day.

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Not everyone knows that poker is comprised of a variety of labyrinthine interrelated games. It is not just a game with different names and a few different rules. Even though there is a kinship between the games, the knowledge of the strategies and the experience required to perform well vary significantly.

If you stick to the more familiar versions of the poker game and do pretty well and step out of your comfort zone occasionally, you will discover that the rules have suddenly changed on you and you have no idea how to proceed. The novice soon understands that to play with any consistent chance of coming out ahead, he will have to target one game to specialize in and grow with. How can such a decision be made?

One thing is certain, all poker players want to be winners. All the games are similar in their nature of complexity, making the decision more difficult. Add to this the fact that there is no game that is more profitable than another.

Profitability comes from you, how you combine your goals, strategies, and take advantage of the possibilities that are unique to a particular game. So, decide which one you excel at, at least as far as profitability is concerned, and strive to better yourself in that game. You can stray and play some of the other games on occasion, but only as a sometime thing. You will see your best earnings by adhering to the one or two versions at which you excel, and have done so for some time. Experience is a very valuable component of poker.

This may not be quite the answer some beginners are looking for. Some games appear to offer greater potential than others and they would rather stick to those until they finally luck out. If blind luck is what you are after, you are, of course, welcome to try it, but then there can be no question of regular income and strategy.

There is one belief usually held by newcomers that if they get to know the game of no-limit reasonably well they stand to gain greater profits than by playing a solid game of limit poker. It seems to them that by betting large sums even though losses are inevitable, those large bets will turn a net profit in the long run.

Now if you are after consistent profitability, you must delve more deeply into the question. Gain is a result of managing your cards well in the face of a constantly increasing bank. The size of the bank, though is not determinant of how you manage your cards. Good card management is determined by the rules of the game. Each hand needs particular skills to make that bank grow to its highest profitability before you collect it. As you are now aware, successful strategies differ greatly between the game versions.

So, by choosing a game only because it seems profitable to you, a ploddingly average poker player is what you will become. You will curtail your profit potential and your strategic growth and will not rise above your opponents to a winning position.

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The official Texas Hold em rules require a dealer button to be used to represent the player in that position; this button rotates clockwise among each player after every hand. The small blind is posted by the player immediately to the left of the dealer, and the big blind to the left of the small blind. The big blind is equal to the minimum bet and the small blind is half of the big blind. When playing in tournaments, the blind/ante structure will periodically increase as the tournament progresses.

Texas Hold em rules state that play begins with each player being dealt two cards face down, with the player in the small blind receiving the first card and the player in the button seat receiving the last card dealt. (As in most poker games, the deck is a standard 52-card deck containing no jokers.) These cards are the player’s hole or pocket cards. These are the only cards each player will receive individually, and they will only (possibly) be revealed at the showdown, making Texas hold ‘em a closed poker game.

There will be a first round of betting that takes place after the two cards are dealt but before any community cards are shown. The two blinds that have been put in will be a part of what those players must contribute in order to stay in the hand. If no one has raised by the time play gets around to the big blind, that player may check or raise.

After this initial round, the dealer puts out a flop, three face-up cards which are used by every player. Then a second round of betting takes place, starting with the player to the left of the dealer.

If a player bets and all of the other plays fold, the remaining player wins the pot and is not required to show his or her hole cards. The showdown occurs when there are two or more players remaining in the hand after the final round of betting. Each player will have a total of seven cards with which to make the best five card hand, using standard poker hand rankings. Any combination of hole cards and community cards can be made; i.e. one hole card and four community cards, two hole cards and three community cards, or even all five community cards.

The Texas Hold em rules state that if the best hand is shared by more than one player, the pot is split equally among them. Any extra chips go to the first player to come after the dealer button in clockwise order. It’s fairly common for players to have hands that are closely-valued, but not identically ranked. It is important to be careful in determining the best hand when the hand involves fewer than five cards, this is when kickers are used to settle ties. Suit is of no importance, only the numerical value matters. The last player to bet is always the first player to show their hand.

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Unless properly introduced into the world of poker, you will undoubtedly be under the impression that poker jargon is an English dialect decipherable by the few who speak it.

No matter what the street (how many cards have been dealt = street) a player makes any one of the following decisions: to fold, to answer a bet, and to call. If a player responds to an obligatory bet on a preflop, that bet is known as a limp or limp in, the player himself is referred to as the limper. A player who calls a raise having placed no bet himself, that bet is referred to as a cold call.

Next comes the check – this is the action of not placing a bet where no bets were previously placed. To make the first bet is known as “to bet,” except in no-limit poker where unique terms apply to different sorts of bets: continuation bet – a common bet that is about the same size as the bank; the pot-bet, which is the same as the continuation bet, and the overbet – a bet much larger than the bank. If the player wishes to raise another player’s bet, it is simply called a raise unless the bet has been raised by another player before him, then the bet is called a re-raise or a 3-bet. If a bet was placed before your re-raise, then the fourth bet allowed is referred to as a cap and the player has “capped the betting.”

The bank or pot are chips which have been placed by the players and which comprise the main prize of the game. The chips of each player at the table are the stack. A bankroll is the overall sum of money available to the player for any given game. If a player bets his entire stack he is said to be all-in. Going all-in, a player is usually seen pushing a stack of chips towards the center of the table. The term “push” implies an all-in bet. If the game continues after a player’s all-in, the bank is split into the main pot and the side pot.

When at the river (end of the game) two players or more have placed equal bets, it is known as a showdown. The winner of the showdown is the player with the strongest 5-card combination (aka hand). Rating the hands from strongest to lowest goes like this: royal flush, straight flush, quad (four of a kind), full-house, flush, straight, three of a kind (a set when a third card is added to a pocket pair), two pairs (a doper), pair or overpair which is stronger than the strongest single card on the table; in the flop, the cards are ranked as top, middle, and small pairs, and winding up the rear is the high card which is the card higher than the highest card on the table and is referred to as the overcard.

Strong hands are monsters, generally ranging from full-house up. The nuts is the strongest current hand. So he who holds the strongest current hand has the nuts.

In the case of even hands, what makes the difference is the highest card of the five best cards, but one which is not part of any of the above combinations. This card is called the kicker. A split bank occurs when players have similar combinations.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Cake Rakeback as well as Interpoker Rakeback.