My name is Mia, I am 26 years old and come from Dresden. I made my first poker experiences with friends. We met about once a month to play poker. Since we all still went to school or did an apprenticeship, it wasn’t about money, it was about fun. But soon that wasn’t enough anymore and we started to play for smaller amounts like 5 Euro per player.

Poker is a very fascinating game which, unlike many other games of chance, has a lot to do with strategy, knowledge of human nature, mathematics and tactics. I have always been interested in how individual poker players manage to regularly win large amounts of money. I began to argue more intensively with the topic and announced myself with the offerer Full Tilt Poker. These have beside the normal play mode also a Pokerschule, in which one could learn different tricks and tactics in individual modules. At Full Tilt Poker you can play for both real money and play money. To test myself out, I started with play money, but soon realized that this had nothing in common with “real” poker. So I started depositing real money quite soon. This was possible with various deposit methods, such as direct transfer or credit card. Currency is always expressed in dollars at Full Tilt.

In Real Money mode, you have to look around Full Tilt for the variety of possible offers. There are a variety of poker variations, tournament options and normal cash game poker tables. I preferred to play Texas Hold’em tournaments with 9 players. The first 3 players were always paid. I always kept the stakes low at the beginning, which means I played tournaments with $1.25 or $2.50 stakes. It’s a different feeling to play poker online because you can’t see and interpret the gestures and facial expressions of the other players. I found this very difficult, especially at the beginning, because it’s harder to judge the players. In the smaller tournaments, I felt that it was more about luck than actually playing poker. There were games where I won with every hand, no matter how good or bad they were, and there were days where I lost with the best hands. This can be really frustrating over time.

I’ve also found that low stakes, whether in tournaments or cash games, don’t make a real poker game. I think this has something to do with the fact that with these amounts of money everyone is playing – from the experienced poker player to the player who is playing for the first time. A tactic, certain poker rules or calculating percentage odds for one’s hand has no purpose. Sometimes you have the feeling that the players are not playing the game properly or have opened so many games at the same time that they have lost the overview.

I’ve played poker tournaments with higher stakes, such as $10 to $50, and there’s a clear difference. The seriousness and the whole game is completely different. The same applies to cash games. Only from a blind height of about 2 and 5 dollars does playing make sense. In the long run, however, I find these stakes too high.

I have also played several big tournaments with up to 8000 players. There are so-called freerolls, which, as the name suggests, are free. These take place once a day and every player has the opportunity to play for free for various money prizes. The huge number of players makes this almost impossible. I also think it’s no fun when every player goes all in for the first few rounds, no matter which hand he has. The only purpose of this is to win as many chips as possible in the shortest possible time, or to save time by quickly eliminating them. These types of tournaments have more to do with luck than with skill.

Overall, my poker experience with online poker is rather negative. It’s an exciting pastime, but I’ve never won much money. I have paid out smaller amounts, but overall I have rather made losses. Personally, I find the real poker game much more interesting and varied. But those who have the necessary small change and play tournaments with higher stakes can also get their money’s worth in online poker.

 
Experience report written by Mia, 26 years old, from Dresden