Pro poker player basics: start from the play money tables

Everyone wants to play poker and win win win. No loosing, no mistakes, no money loss. That is a difficult task, especially when you are just a beginner. This article provides the beginning poker players with the advice on how to start a poker pro carrier.

Imagine the morning after the night when you were taught the basic poker hands and rules (or read a couple of articles about it on the internet). The future looks bright as you are almost a poker pro, but now you need some practice.

Practice

Professional poker players had to practice a lot before they started winning millions. They practiced with their friends during the parties, practiced online at the play money tables. A future poker pro like yourself should do the same. If you can’t party every weekend and play poker with friends, try doing it for a couple of hours every day at various online poker rooms. If your friends use Facebook or MySpace challenge them playing Zynga’s Texas Holdem – the most popular social network poker game in the world. If you don't like it, try another one – Poker Palace on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. The games are free, they have various tournaments and give the opportunity to increase your skills.

Observation and Patience

While at the play money tables, try observing how people behave. Try bluffing even though your opponents have nothing to lose (in most of the online poker rooms lost chips are reloaded in a short period of time, so you can start over). Be patient and try analyzing your moves. Do not rush, act as if the chips were real. One of the main differences between an amateur poker player and a pro is the way they perceive the chips. The pro only looks at them as tokens of different value, whereas an amateur thinks of the money he could get if he takes all these chips and walks right away. Once the “money” is big, the fear of losing is bigger than the ability to think and observe the opponent's actions. This leads only one way - towards the door with empty pockets. That’s why patience is very important in both live and online poker.

Learn and read

Read poker articles, watch videos, buy books by prominent poker authors. Learning all the time is very important. If you do not understand what happened in one or another situation, find an online poker community and ask some questions about your play. Learn from the other people's mistakes by analyzing their bad beats. There's no shame in doing that.

Wise men learn by other men's mistakes; fools, by their own. - Plautus

Start from Low stakes

Once you realize you're ready to play for real money you can start at low stakes. Choose a poker room and deposit up to $50 just to try. Play small stake games first so that you would not to lose everything in the first 15 minutes. Rooms usually offer low limits starting from $0.01-$0.02. Play some up to $5 buy-in tournaments and S’nG’s. Playing real money is a little bit different from play money games. Before making an all-in with 7-2, you'll consider is it really worth it.

Don’t have the money?

If you do not want to invest your own money, or do not have ways of depositing, but still want to try playing poker, find someone who would give you some money. It could be a friend who plays online and therefore could transfer some money into your account. Another option is to look for no deposit bonuses at the poker sites. They might offer some $5-$10 no deposit bonus. Unfortunately, the amount is too small to start with, therefore try looking for websites that would offer more. For example Pokernews.com gives $50 FREE at Partypoker for the beginning poker players to make their real money start. Poker learning sites also offer good money, but it will take you very long to get it as you will have to answer numerous quizzes and participate in various contests. Once you get the money into your account consider it as your starting bankroll. Either you lose it immediately, or will make it tenfold. Anyway it is a start of your real money player carrier.

Remmember, the WSOP champions also started playing online. They have turned their tens of dollars into millions. World Poker Champion of 2007 Jerry Yang qualified with $225 and won $8,250,000. Chris Moneymaker, the WSOP 2003 Champion, turned his $40 into $2.3 million. Greg Raymer, the WSOP 2004 champion (won $5 million) started his way to become a millionaire from a $160 satellite tournament. They were amateurs at that time, but they have learned by observing their opponents and by carefully managing their bankrolls. Just like you. So take $50 and make yourself a pro and a champ in the next 12 months.

About The Author:

More information how to get money for start, you can find in PokerNews.com and Partypoker $50 giveaway page.

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