Playing poker via the Internet is a trend that is difficult to escape. I, too, have made my experience in this area and would like to report on it in the following.

Getting started with online poker
Although I hadn’t played poker before, I came across the online poker provider Pokerstars.eu via advertisements a while ago and looked at the site. Since it was advertised that the registration would be free, I registered on the portal out of curiosity and downloaded the client software. That went so far also quite simply and I could use the software already after few minutes.

The use of the software was also rather unproblematic, since on the starting side and/or in the so-called ?lobby? the individual play ranges were exactly written out: in the first menu bar the Poker kind was described (thus for example Texas Hold’em), the second menu was for the table limits and in the third menu bar it concerned the sizes of the play rounds. Below there was a list of available tables.

When I was a beginner, I first decided to play poker with play money and then sat down at small bet tables. Texas Hold’em was the most popular game. Since I didn’t have much experience in the game, I entered the initial games without any particular system or strategy. If I had good cards in my hand, such as two pictures, I would call, if the cards “only” had small values, I would fold, regardless of the community cards. This way of playing wasn’t very sophisticated, but it kept losses and winnings to a minimum, so I didn’t win or lose much more than two or three Euros in one evening.

Training experience with play money

Over time, I got better at poker. I played mostly in the evening and then only a few rounds in a row. Since it was all about play money in the beginning, I was able to try out a few more courageous moves such as continuing to play supposedly bad hands. If I won something this way, it was okay, but even losses didn’t really hurt because it wasn’t about real money. Often the players sitting at the same online table were a little more inexperienced or daring, so you didn’t actually need any special tactics to win a few chips. That took away the appeal of the training games over time, so I switched to real money games at some point.

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Up and down

To participate in real money games, players must first purchase a certain amount of chips. At Pokerstars.eu this was done via the poker client as well as on the provider’s website. For the beginning I had chosen a small amount of 20 Euros and got a deposit bonus of the same amount – 40 Euros for poker. When choosing the tables, I first went for those with small limits, which was also due to the fact that many of the tables with high limits or the no limit tables were reserved for players with VIP status. But already in the first rounds, I noticed that the real money game was different from the previous real money training rounds. Even though there were always players at the table who gambled away their chips as if there was no tomorrow, most of the players were more prudent and played very differently than I knew from the training rounds. Because real money games aren’t just about playing your own cards, they’re also about influencing your opponents. So I’ve often seen myself with a solid hand like a 10 and a queen in my hand, but end up throwing away the cards earlier than necessary because another player was too quick on the bets. Often such maneuvers were probably a bluff, but it made more sense for me at that time not to take a big risk and to throw away some safe hands, which is annoying afterwards.

Over time, however, I also got to grips with the real money tables and didn’t fall for the bluffs of the others quite as often anymore. I also tried bluffing a few times myself – sometimes with more and sometimes with less success. But I never had the big crashes that I lost all my credit in one evening, because I set myself a limit of 10 Euro maximum loss per evening. At the tables with the small limits you could play with it for quite a while.

Balance of poker time

Personally, I didn’t get rich with online poker, which may be because I wasn’t too good at playing my teammates. If I remember correctly, my highest win was just under 15 Euros in one evening, while my highest loss was about 11 Euros. Of course it was fun to have a good evening and get some good hands together with some good community cards. But it was annoying if either the cards didn’t fit or the players did their bluffs and strategies so cleverly that after only two rounds 6 Euros were missing in the account. But that’s the poker game: sometimes you win and sometimes you lose! I certainly won’t become a permanent player and don’t have what it takes to be a pro, but occasionally I sit down again for two or three rounds at one table – mostly at the play money tables – and gamble a little. Because even though my poker time hasn’t brought me any big money blessings, I still find it sometimes quite entertaining. And as long as it’s just about play money, the trouble isn’t that big if you’ve had a bad day.

Written by Jan, 19 years old, Karlsruhe