The Psychology of Online Poker

Online poker is often forgotten when credit is given for the recent growth in poker. The World Poker Tour, the Celebrity Poker Tour and even Chris Moneymaker tend to be mentioned as the main reason for the sudden explosion of poker. For those who play a game or two of poker though, there is no denying the contribution poker sites have made over the years. You no longer need to travel great distances to play a game of poker. Now you can play a game a game of poker from the comfort of your own home with a simple click of the mouse. You can still join just about any game you like and bet for whatever stakes you desire. This has helped speed up the learning of beginner poker players.

With online poker players now having the ability to play poker any time of day or night in the comfort of their own home, players can sit down to the virtual felt for a few hands or a few hours depending on how much time they have. With online poker, hands are dealt much quicker than the traditional brick and mortar tables, a player could gain easily obtain as much experience in six months compared to many years if played the traditional way.

There will however always be online poker critics, who complain that online poker can never duplicate the feeling and psychological component of playing face to face. While there are certain advantages to playing on a traditional casino table, there are a few advantages when playing online as well. The ability to your statistics, check hand histories with a click of a button are just a few.

There is one area of online play that is only available online and not in most casino brick and mortar casinos, that is playing heads up No Limit Texas Hold‘em Poker. Brick and mortar casinos cannot afford to offer head’s up matches as it is not cost effective for them, they are however available online 24 hours a day. Texas Hold’em Poker is a game that is just not practical to offer in a traditional brick and mortar casino. Online Texas Hold’em games help improve the development of all players involved.

Many proponents say that online poker is great to work on the fundamentals such as sticking with solid straight forward poker. While that is good advice, it shouldn’t be all you should be looking for when playing online poker. There is a great deal of psychology in poker that you can work on and develop when playing poker online.

Texas Hold’em Poker heads up is actually a battle of wits, guts, and determination. If you’re waiting for cards you will simply get eaten alive. You will need to see many flops and if you get to see many flops, you will see how hard it is to actually hit a flop. This will force you to develop a good post flop strategy, which will actually require plenty of practice. In a full heads-up game, it is very easy to fall into the trap of playing flops you hit and giving up on flops you don’t. Many players very easily give their opponents credit for hitting the flop when in reality they haven’t.

When you play heads-up you will get a better understanding on how hard it really is to hit a favorable flop. Good hands are hard to come by, which means you have to develop and rely on other aspects of your game. You’ll get extensively more experience playing post-flop than you ever could in a full ring game. This experience alone makes heads-up play worthwhile.

The psychological development you will gain is perhaps the best reason to play heads-up poker. While position is important, knowing your opponent is critical. Heads-up play gives you the opportunity to study your opponents and learn them inside out. Even though you can’t see them, you’ll see every move they make and every move made directly against you. That is correct. Everything your opponent does will be done in the context of your own game. It is the ultimate psychological battle!

You are engaged the entire time, observing and staying involved when you are not in a hand. There is however no substitute for facing and making decisions, especially against an opponent who is trying to outplay you. The players who like to play heads-up matches typically enjoy the psychological aspects as well, so you can feel confident that they are not just playing their cards. They are sizing you up and looking for any weaknesses they can exploit. This will force you to work on all aspects of your game. While you must be aggressive in finding and attacking your opponent’s vulnerabilities, you have to constantly look inward as well to improve any imperfections in your own game.

Obviously poker is not all about psychology. There is also a scientific aspect of the game that heads-up poker matches will help you develop. By being engaged in every hand, you will consistently be calculating pot odds and making bets and raises accordingly. The comfort and anonymity of a computer will allow you to take your time in making correct decisions. Soon these decisions will become second nature to you.

Finally, the advent of online poker greatly accelerated the learning curve of poker players. Players can join a game any time of day or night and play in the comfort of their own home even if they only had limited spare time available to them. Also the number of hands dealt per hour is so much greater online that will help you play a greater number of hands and face far more decisions in an average hour than you would on a full casino table. That acceleration way of learning will pay dividends in every other game you play.