Online Poker Can You Make Money

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If you're strictly a recreational player who only joins a home game once per week or who plays online poker for an hour or two here and there, you can still win at poker but only a limited amount.

So yes, you can make money playing poker, but you need to use a specific strategy. In order to make money playing poker, you need to have good tilt control. Poker is a skill game over the long run. Generally, one needs to put in money first to start playing poker. You might find that in the beginning you lose a little bit as you make your way around the sites learning all you can about playing poker online. Eventually if you pay attention to what is going on at the tables, you will realize that there is money to be made by following some of the rules of poker.

Online poker how to make money
Placing these two words, online and making money, will bring out the sceptics. This is because these two words often time don’t go together.
Well, playing poker online is the game changer that has merged these two words. So, the answer to this question is yes, you can make money playing poker online. The catch here is, you have to employ specific strategies to ensure you come out top plus win the game.

Can You Make Money Playing Online Poker

This strategies would cover, selecting the right games to play in, selecting the calibre of players to pitch your skills against, the hand of cards which you are dealt etc. now, a combination of these factors will determine how much money you will walk away with from a poker table and just how much you stand to lose also.
Remember, poker isn’t just a game of played at the foot of lady luck, it involves skills which you can learn.
These skills are developed over a period of time. There have been great poker players who over the course of their playing days raked in thousands of dollars from the game. This is because they honed their skills and ignored the possible short run luck which not everyone has, in a game of poker.
This quick luck might see some players making the mistake of taking the wrong move in a game and at this point lady luck turns her back. The experienced poker players deploy their strategies which are known to serious players of poker while also adding an element of unpredictability into the game to throw off other players.
One such element is the perfect poker face which gives away nothing. This would work only in a poker game played in a brick and mortar casino though.
When it comes to playing poker online it is a different ball game entirely. This is way easier because you don’t get to see other players physically. You all might be in different locations scattered around the world.
What links all players will be the online casino you choose and the game you choose to play. So, the easiest way to make money playing poker online is to deposit funds into your online casino account, remember to make sure the casino has online poker available.
This funds should be as minimal as possible depending on the minimum amount allowed on that game. Grow this amount by playing in games through the deployment of known strategy, win such games, withdraw your funds.
This simple strategy can be used at different online casino sites as the options available to poker players grows by the day. While some locations might have access to thousands of online casinos some other locations might be restricted to just a few regulated casinos.
Make sure you check that you can play on the online casino and have access to your winnings before going ahead. This is in addition to the playing in the right games which if you are lucky, has some inexperienced or say, bad poker players.
Bad poker players can be recognised from the bad calls they make during the game. Such bad decisions are for example, calling all the way with a bottom pair and chasing every draw, limping most of the time, betting the absolute minimum amount, showing tons of garbage hands at showdown.
These are the kind of games you should look for and join in to play. Finding these kind of players takes a bit of effort on your part so there has to be some form of consistency from your part while searching online casinos for them.
Another way by which you can make money playing poker online is by betting new casino bonus offered on a poker game. Some online casinos offer this bonus, and some don’t. the difference you might see here is the odds might not be in your favour and you could most easily lose this bonus. Remember, playing in a brick and mortar casino is entirely different from plying your skills online but the rules are still the same.

Online Poker Can You Make Money Glitch

You can still apply the strategy of depositing a small amount in exchange for chips, keep playing in poker games using it to increase your pile of chips, then cash out. Now, when in a physical casino you would easily cash out, take your money and leave. Playing online differs a bit at this point. Most online casinos state that players need to have a certain amount as their balance before they can cash out.

So, you are now aware that making money playing poker online is possible. Might not be as easy as written but following this guides would see you on your way to making some real money. All this though is dependent on your skill level and the kind of games you play in.
If you are a novice at playing poker it is best you stick to cash games. cash games are great because the blinds are fixed. The stay that way throughout and a player has the freedom of movement in the game. Unlike playing in a poker tournament, blinds move upwards steadily so a players movements are restricted, you move you lose.
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Cash games are simply the best way to getting started or getting your legs wet in the game of poker. Most cash games start at 1cent blind and to buy into the game wouldn’t be more than $2. This is a safe amount to bet as a $2 loss is easy to ignore. Also consider playing in games that have more players at the table say, 10. This is advisable because the higher number of players slows down the pace of the game and helps you learn more.
There are poker games in which the blinds are higher, e.g. live poker. The buying might be from $50-$100, with the blind set at $1 or $2. This might also be good for a beginner but remember start small, grow, cash out.
PokerNews Staff

Many different paths carry first-timers to the poker table. Some come to poker via other card games, while others find poker after having sampled other gambling games in the casino such as blackjack, craps, or roulette. Sports bettors also sometimes wander from the sportsbook over to the poker room and find themselves in a game — and perhaps find poker intriguing thanks to the sports-resembling competition the game provides.

Those who stick with the game do so for many reasons as well, although most are motivated by the prospect of making a profit at poker. Especially those who win at first — which happens quite a lot — will keep playing to try to win more, with some even being encouraged to think about winning a lot more and perhaps even to become professional poker players.

But while poker is a game that rewards skill, luck plays a role, too. Those who initially win at poker likely do so in part because of getting dealt good cards, hitting draws when they need to and avoiding others' hitting theirs. Only those who take some time to learn poker strategy and gain experience are usually able to sustain that success over longer periods.

In other words, the short answer to the question 'Can I make money playing poker?' is obviously that you can, but you also need to be willing to put in the work to increase your skills and have an advantage over your opponents. The fact is, while it's certainly possible to win at a single cash game session or go deep and win a lot in a single tournament, only a small percentage of players remain profitable long term, and invariably those players are better skilled than those who do not.

Let's look a little more closely at the question, however, by asking a few other questions addressing factors that will affect the likelihood of your being able to make money at poker as well as how much money you can make.

1. What is your win rate?

The generic term 'win rate' is used to refer to how much someone is winning at poker over a given period of time or hands played, although in truth the term is also used when referring to how much a player is losing, too. A player with a positive win rate is profiting at poker while a player with a negative win rate is not. Calculating your win rate is done differently in cash games and in tournaments.

In cash games, a win rate is usually expressed as the amount won per hour or 100 hands. In no-limit hold'em or pot-limit Omaha, the unit of measurement is often converted to big blinds — e.g., in a $1/$2 NLHE game, making a profit of $10 = winning 5 big blinds.

Meanwhile in limit hold'em, stud games, and others with fixed-limit betting the amount won is usually measured by the number of 'big bets' it represents. For instance, in a limit hold'em game where the small bet is $2 (preflop and flop) and the big bet is $4 (turn and river), a player who makes $100 is said to have won 25 'big bets.' (Somewhat confusingly, both 'big blinds' and 'big bets' are often abbreviated as 'BB.')

Meanwhile in tournaments a win rate is usually expressed as a player's 'return on investment' or 'ROI.' Divide your profits by your expenses and multiply by 100, and you get a percentage representing your ROI. For instance, if you spend $200 in buy-ins and cash for $220 total, your ROI is $20 (the profit) / $200 = 0.1 * 100 = 10%.

Obviously if your win rate or ROI is negative, you aren't making money playing poker. But even if you enjoy a positive win rate or ROI, you need to consider other expenses related to playing poker and look at whether or not your winnings are exceeding them. If it costs you $10 in gas every night to get to and from a poker room and you're only averaging winning $5 per session, your win rate is positive but you aren't making money. Or if you spend $10,000 over the course of a year traveling to poker tournaments but only have an ROI good enough to earn you $8,000 worth of cashes during that time, you're technically 'winning at poker' but losing money overall.

The biggest point to take away here is that if you are interested in making money at poker and don't keep track of your wins and losses, start doing so right now. Find out what your win rate or ROI is, take into account other possible expenses associated with playing poker, then you'll see whether or not you are making money at poker. You'll also likely be encouraged to sharpen your study of the game in order to try to increase your profit if you're winning (or to become profitable if you're losing).

2. How much do you play?

Another question to ask when addressing the larger question of whether or not you can make money playing poker is to consider just how much poker you're playing.

If you're strictly a recreational player who only joins a home game once per week or who plays online poker for an hour or two here and there, you can still win at poker but only a limited amount. Also, those who play poker only sparingly aren't necessarily gaining experience and knowledge that will help them build their skills and win more consistently.

A number of serious players who put in a lot of 'volume' at the tables are able to increase their profit steadily even if their win rates are somewhat low. Most tend to consider cash games a more reliable way to make money at poker given the higher variance of poker tournaments.

If you think about it, in most poker tournaments only the top 10 or 15 percent of finishers enjoy any profit at all, so it logically follows that the majority of players finish out of the money most of the time they play. Really only the most successful tournament players are able to cash enough to sustain an ROI as high as 10 or 20 percent (or more), with most who are profitable sitting in the 5-10 percent range.

Online Poker Can You Make Money Without

That means when playing tournaments even good players lose money more often than they win money. But when they win they win enough to more than make up for the losses, sometimes hitting especially big scores when finishing at a final table or winning the entire tournament and getting back 10, 20, 50, or even 100 times the buy-in.

Cash games tend to be less volatile that way, although even there good players will frequently have losing sessions. They may even have more losing sessions than winning ones, although they manage to enjoy larger profits than losses, generally speaking, and thus have positive win rates. Even so, if you don't practice sound bankroll management, you can experience one very bad cash game session and lose everything you've won and then some.

Once you've figured out your win rate, you can think about how much you need to play in order to make a desired amount over a given period of time.

You should also try to gauge what is the best amount of time to play poker for you in order to increase your chances of remaining profitable. Some are better of playing, say, only 10-20 hours per week than 40-50 hours per week, or shorter sessions instead of long ones, because they have trouble focusing and thus playing well over longer periods. Meanwhile others can put in those extra hours and not suffer as a result.

3. What stakes are you playing (and are they right for you)?

Probably the most important question to answer when delving more deeply into whether or not you can make money at poker is to look at the stakes for which you are playing. And — importantly — whether you are choosing well when deciding upon your stakes and sitting down in games in which you can win and win consistently.

One common misconception among new players is that the best way to win more money at poker is to play for higher stakes. A player who wins consistently at the $1/$2 NLHE cash game might imagine simply picking up and moving over to the $10/$20 game will result in winning 10 times as much money, but more often than not such ideas turn out to be foolhardy.

Games of different stakes attract differently skilled players. While the lowest stakes games almost always include the least-skilled and least-experienced, they attract strong players sometimes, too. Similarly, many of the best players can be found in the higher stakes games, but there also will inexperienced or poor players sometimes sitting around the table.

On average, though, the higher the stakes the tougher the games. Thus do the profitable players' win rates actually go down as the buy-ins and/or stakes go up. In online cash games (just to cite one example), NLHE players of the lowest stakes including the 'micros' have been known to sustain win rates of as much as 20-40 BB/100 hands over large sample sizes, while the best players in the higher NLHE games online generally top out at around 3-8 BB/100 hands.

That's one reason to be realistic about moving up in stakes in poker — even if you're great and better than most in the games, you aren't going to win at the same rate you did at the lower stakes.

But you also need to be practical about your own ability as a poker player and recognize when the competition is too tough to beat. As you move around and test out which stakes work for you, continue keeping accurate records and note at which stakes (for cash games) or buy-ins (for tournaments) you are winning most consistently, and where you are winning less or losing.

Sometimes you might find it hard to win in a lower stakes game than in one a notch or two above, simply because of your particular skill set and how well you respond to the styles and tendencies of others. More often, though, there will be a stakes 'threshold' (of sorts) above which you might take shots now and then but probably shouldn't go on a regular basis.

Can You Actually Make Money Playing Online Poker

In any case, be honest with yourself and smart with your bankroll, and your chances of making money at poker will increase as a result.

Online Poker How To Make Money

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