If you are still yet to make your first deposit with a US-facing online poker site, keep reading on. First and foremost, before depositing any money and getting serious about playing poker, you should understand that bankroll management is very important and will be the biggest influence regarding whether or not you will be a successful online poker player.
You can be the best player in the games you play, but if you have no regard for smart bankroll management, then it will all be for nothing, as standard variance and poor management of your poker bankroll will make you go broke. It’s just a question of how soon, not if it will happen. So, treat your bankroll in poker like an investment. Don’t use it for other stuff outside of poker. If you invested in stocks, would you cash out just so you could buy a nice car, or some other luxurious item you didn’t need? Of course not! So why should you treat your poker bankroll any differently.
A big part of bankroll management also relates to making sure you have your roll divided over a number of different poker sites, so that if anything was to happen, like a new poker site shutting down due to poor liquidity or whatever reason it may be, your entire bankroll wouldn’t be at risk.
Also, by opening an account at multiple US poker sites you like to play at, you’ll get to take advantage of multiple welcome poker bonuses offered by the rooms to all new players. Once you do what is required to claim the full bonus, it’s basically free cash that will get added to boost your bankroll, which is very handy when you first start playing poker online.
There is a reason why online poker is so popular in the US. Due to televised poker events and Chris Moneymaker, an amateur poker player at the time, winning the 2003 WSOP ME and post Moneymaker era, the game exploded. Recreational poker players in the country took notice and wanted a share in the huge prize pools being offered at online poker rooms and card rooms.
Also, it was at this time that the game of No Limit Texas Hold’em, the same event that Moneymaker won, was gaining traction, and becoming more popular than 7 Card Stud. This game is even more fun and exciting to play as players can bet all of the chips in front of them to apply maximum pressure. There was no other game like it. In their books, Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson both called No Limit Hold’em the “Cadillac of Poker”.
And then came the internet, and the ease of access to no limit hold’em games meant the popularity of the game soared with millions of Americans playing the game online, and having the ability to satellite into major live events through satellites and qualifiers for very little money. In fact, Chris Moneymaker gained entry into the 2003 WSOP, a $10,000 buy-in event, by playing a $40 satellite online.
The great thing about playing online poker is that you can play a range of stakes you won’t find live – and whatever game. There is a huge selection of games to choose from over a wide variety of stakes, starting from as little as a few dollars to enter all the way through to the nosebleeds at the super high stakes tables where you will find the best players in the world battling it out.
If you happen to be already playing online poker and have been for some time but don’t feel very confident about your own game and the chances of winning money, you should have an honest look at your game and perhaps get another winning player to analyze your game. This can be as simple as recording a session to have them look over your play, or getting them to rail you sometime when you play online, and then discuss important hands with them after the session.
Keep in mind, the result of a hand should not indicate whether you played the hand well or not. That is results orientated thinking, which is something you want to avoid when you play poker. You can play a hand in an optimal manner and lose and similarly you can play a hand poorly and end up winning the pot if lady luck was on your side or in situations where you had the best hand but extracted the least amount of value, which is costing you money in the long run and should be viewed as a mistake.
Before deciding on which US-friendly poker site you should play on, you really need to determine the main game you will be playing. Do you prefer playing in online multi-table tournaments, sit & go’s or cash games. Not only do they all require very different strategies, you’ll find some sites are better than others based on the selection of games which are spread throughout the poker room. If you are not entirely sure what games are available to play, you can always install the poker client, create an account, which should only take a few minutes or so, then fire up the games lobby, in order to see how many active players are online and at the tables, and to see exactly what games are running.