Inside Online Poker : Got the basics? Get the NUTS!

Poker is not a standard gambling game. To begin with, it is you against other players - there is no casino or bookmaker to beat.  You are playing against a group of people whose sole aim is to win your stack. Secondly, poker is NOT simply a card game.  It is a game of people that just happens to be played with cards. Of course, luck and the cards you are given play a part, but in the long run it's you who'll decide if you win or not.

This means that if you want to be a world class poker player, you need to tick the following boxes. You have to fully understand the game you're playing; remember there are dozens of poker variations, so you need to specialise and master just one, maybe two. You need to be able to 'read' your opponents like a book and, with practice, work out their every move. At the same time, you should be as difficult to 'read' as War and Peace. In Swahili. The other players at the table should have no idea of the hand you hold. You need to know the odds of every card and betting option available. Position - your seat relative to the dealer - and how to play it should be second nature. A cool, clear head and Solomon-like judgement are also mandatory. This all adds up to a pretty tall order.

To be a successful online poker player, you fortunately need to know far less. You need a good grounding in all these skills, plus understanding of the most important and popular online poker variant - Texas Hold 'Em. Inside Edge will teach you all this over the coming months. To begin with, we're going to equip you with all the tools you need to get online, play with confidence and, crucially, start to make money from other players.

Fundamentals
Let's start with what you already know or certainly should know. You should already be familiar with the basics of Texas Hold 'Em. You should know what hand beats what and how the betting, checking and raising system works. In short, you should be comfortable with the mechanics of the game of poker before you dive into any cash game online. If you're not 100 per cent confident of this, don't worry, you can find all of this info and more in our poker section at inside-edge-mag.co.uk.

Next, you need a PC with a fast and, crucially, stable Internet connection (Broadband preferably). If your system crashes or your connection hangs halfway through a game, it could wind up costing you dearly. If you're involved in a pot and you can't match a raise because your connection has hung, you'll lose the pot, no matter what cards you're holding.

The busier the site you use the better, as you'll always be able to find a good selection of players and games at your level. More players mean greater anonymity too. You don't want regular players learning your style of play and using it to their advantage. I'd definitely advocate being a member of at least a couple of sites for this reason.

If you're a Mac user, your choices are more limited, as most poker software is PC-based. Mac owners can, however, use www.pokerroom.com.

Choose your game
When you're logged on to any poker site, the choice of game can be bewildering. Remember what I said about mastering one discipline? For that reason, stick with what you know - in this case Texas Hold 'Em - for the time being. We'll be covering Omaha and Stud in future Inside Edge articles. Suffice to say that they're more complicated and more difficult, so generally attract a higher standard of players.

You must also choose your table stakes. These usually range from $0.25-$0.50 tables all the way up to $100-$200. The $0.25-$0.50 represents the cost of the blinds; they effectively set the minimum stake that you'll need to pay to see a Hold 'Em hand to the flop. Your funds obviously dictate the level of table you play at, but bear the following in mind. The lower-value tables are almost always 'looser', attracting players who seem to believe that poker is more about cards and luck than skill. They'll see more flops with weak hands and generally make more mistakes. This is good news if you want to make money by making the smart plays. The higher-value tables are obviously frequented by more experienced players and the quality of the game will be noticeably better.

My advice is simple - only play the higher value tables if you can justify it yourself. By all means move to $1-$2 tables, but only if you can say with some certainty that you're better than the other players at that table. Again, remember what I said about poker being a game of people and players? There's absolutely no point in being the worst at any table - the other players will simply regard you as a source of income.

Your next choice is the number of players at the table. Shorthanded tables will have five or six players, some tables up to ten. I recommend that you look for a table with a maximum of five other players. In my opinion, five other players are easier to watch and gauge than nine, and your calculations of pots, odds and the like are simpler.

One key point to watch is the chip stacks at any game. The most you can buy in at any table is determined by the stakes. On $0.25-$0.50 this is usually $50. If you see two players with more than $100 each at this level of table, what does that tell you? That they've both doubled their stacks as a result of playing, which suggests they're good players. I call them 'double stackers'. You also don't want to be stuck between two of these guys with $20 when they start raising - your whole stack could disappear before you even see the turn card. My advice is to avoid tables with more than one 'double stacker'.

Sometimes you'll meet triple or quad stackers (with $200 or so on the $0.25-$0.50 tables). These guys are bound to be good and are probably just cruising the low stakes tables to make a consistent profi t. Simply avoid the tables they're playing at. Stick to tables with a good selection of players in the $20-$70 mark at $0.25-$0.50 tables.

You next choice will be whether to play Limit, Pot Limit or No Limit Hold 'Em. My personal preference is No Limit, as it is, in my mind, the purest and most skilful variant of the game. However, unless you're comfortable with this level of betting skill AND the risk of having to wager your entire stack on one hand, perhaps even before you've seen the flop, I'd choose Limit poker. Limit is also a more mathematical form of poker, as at low stakes there's almost no bluffing and less risk of really big pots. It's a good game to help you master some of the basic skills without risking your entire bankroll.

Pot Limit is somewhere in between, as the maximum raise is only the entire contents of the pot. This makes it a good halfway house for people who want to master No Limit games without risking their entire bankroll.

Your last choice (phew!) is whether to play cash games or tournaments (where up to 300 players can take part). For this article, we're going to discuss cash games where the amount you stake is the real amount of cash it's actually costing you.

Let's see some cards then!
Any online poker article will advise you to watch a table for a while before you dive in. It's good advice, but rarely adhered to. Most poker sites are so busy that just getting a seat at the table can be a bit of a scrum, especially if you're being - and you definitely should be - picky about the chip stack levels at a table.

If you've enough patience (and world class poker players have saintly quantities of this), then it's worth watching a few hands once your seat is reserved. This is your warm-up. Do the following.

Watch the betting at each stage of the hand and try to guess what cards each of the players are holding. Try to predict their next move before they make it. You should be able to roughly guess the hand they show at the end (remember you'll see only the winner's hand); you should also have a good idea of what was folded or mucked and why.

This not only gives you a good idea of the style of players at the table you're about to bet real money on, but also hones the following drill. At any stage in a game of poker, you need to know the following:

>> What hand does my opponent have?
>> What hand does he/they think I have?
>> What hand does my opponent think I think he has?

You should know this at every single stage of a poker game. You can't always be right, but you must always be thinking it. In Limit Poker, you must always believe that your hand is currently better or can be better than that of your opponent. If you don't believe that to be case, you shouldn't be in the hand. End of story.

If you know your hand is currently better, if you have the best hand on the board or the Nuts (for example, you hold QhKh and the flop is the 9h, 10c, Jc), then that's just great, keep raising and hopefully someone will follow. You can't lose unless the Nuts changes (say the Kc comes down on the turn, AQ or any two of clubs would now be beating you).

Unfortunately, finding yourself with the Nuts is quite rare, and you'll constantly face decisions on whether your hand is currently better and whether it's worth continuing to put good money into a poker pot. For this reason, you must know your pot odds, especially in the more mathematical Limit Poker.

Pot odds will be covered in the future, but the principles are this. Good players have knowledge of the odds of certain situations. They know that if you have a pocket pair (paired hole cards), the odds of hitting a set (a third card to give you three of a kind) are one in eight. There are two useful cards left in the deck and you have five chances to hit one of them. Another good example is that there's a roughly one in three chance of completing a flush if you have four of the same suit after the flop.

You then need to apply the percentages to the pot on offer. If there's only $10 in the pot and you have the aforementioned flush draw (and you're sure you're currently being beaten), you shouldn't call a raise that's bigger than the pot odds; for example, $3.

This is key to any poker player and must be enforced with discipline. Human nature is optimistic and we all remember the time the flush actually came, but don't be tempted: don't get involved in pots where the odds are against you. You'll simply lose in the long term.

These pot odds apply equally to starting hands. In a Limit game, there's no point playing anything other than A-A, K-K, A-K, A-K suited and A-Q suited if you're early on in the betting. If you're last to speak in a later position (for example, the dealer), you're in much better shape, as you have a chance to gauge every other players' hand by the bets or calls they make. In these later positions, you can consider the following if there's some betting pre-flop. QQ, JJ, 10-10 ...6-6. Some players will also play 5-5...2-2. Also A-Q, A-J, K-J unsuited.

If there's little or no betting pre-fl op, then drawing hands (hands that can drastically improve) can come into play; these include K-Q suited...6-5 suited (Suited Connectors).

NB these can also include loosely connected cards such as K-J suited...7-5 suited, A-x suited and occasionally unsuited connectors, depending again on position, stack, the size of the bet and the strength of the table.

Again, this does give some indication of the importance of your position at the table and your relative distance from the dealer. We'll be covering this in future poker masterclasses.

Aim to deceive
Bluffing is a much over-hyped skill in poker. It will serve you well in high level, No Limit games, but remember, you can't bluff players who don't know what they're doing. This makes bluffing entirely useless in low stakes, Limit games, where it may only cost $2 to see a pot with $20 in it. In No Limit you could make it $20 to see that pot, which would cause weaker players to fold, even if they hold an okay hand (a mid-pair, for instance).

Essentially, bluffing is using betting to represent a hand you don't have. If you suspect your opponent has a higher hand than yours, but detect a lack of confidence in his betting - a string of calls, checks or a very low raise is usually a good sign - you can persuade him of the strength of your hand even if you hold absolutely nada. This is especially true if there's an obvious power hand on the board, such as three of a suit.

My advice is straightforward. Although it feels wonderful to pull off a successful bluff, it should only be used by experienced players at higher level tables, and then only in No Limit games. If you try bluffing at low stakes Limit games, you'll get called time and again, and just bleed away your stack.

Your other deception tool is check-raising. This is essentially the inverse of bluffing, where you convince your opponent that your hand is weaker than his even though it isn't, encouraging him to keep betting into you. This is great if you hold a powerhouse hand (Full House, Flush and the like) and he has little or no chance of improving. By checking or calling weakly, you can capitalise on these types of hands. This is critical, as unfortunately these hands don't come round often.

Now get stuck in!
No matter how long you've been playing poker, there are always ways to improve your play. Inside Edge will be here to help you hone your online poker skills every step of the way, whatever your level. All that remains now is for you to get playing and practice what we've discussed. See you at the tables!