Seeking out the value in online poker

No matter how good a poker player you reckon you are, you always need to seek out a situation which offers you some sort of an edge over the long-run, if you intend to become a winner. Good poker players are all well aware of the fact that if you just settle in to the first poker room you happen upon without making any sort of effort to improve your odds over the other players, you’re probably not going to make headway. The nature of the game of Texas Holdem is extremely punitive on those who disregard this basic principle, as the high variance takes its toll on even the best of players.

There are several ways to secure an edge (or better put: a set of tiny edges that add up to form a big one). Thorough poker room selection is one way to get a good start. Every poker room features some kind of first-deposit bonus and some even give match-bonuses on subsequent deposits. Playing to unlock an advantageous bonus is the equivalent of playing with reduced rake. Therefore, you need to develop the ability to “read” bonus offers and determine exactly what sort of value they provide.

Different poker rooms employ different methods to calculate rake, and some poker rooms take less rake than others. Paying as little rake as possible should be the first priority for you and I suppose there’s no need to elaborate on where the advantage comes from in this instance.

Other methods of securing an edge include rakeback and cashback (cashback is basically the same thing as rakeback disguised under a different name). Rakeback is one of the biggest and easiest edges you’ll ever secure in online poker. While advantages that stem from careful game and table selection and different in-game situations require certain skills to obtain, rakeback is something that is accessible even to the newest of rookies and doesn’t really imply any sort of sustained efforts. All one needs to do is take the time to read up on the matter a bit, learn exactly how rakeback will affect his/her play and find the best rakeback deal out there. To learn about rakeback, a simple web-search on the subject should yield enough relevant results. Even though the vast majority of rakeback websites are mere portals which feature no information other than the actual deals offered, there are a few sites which spare no resources to make potential players fully understand what they’re about to get themselves into. You’ll know serious sites from dime-a-dozen ones as soon as you take a look at them.

You can use these same sites for locating the best available rakeback deals, or check out a rakeback forum where people discuss what’s hot and what’s not. There’s nothing better than getting instant feedback from actual players regarding the quality of a deal. As far as regular rakeback deals go, you need to know that the industry standard is around 30% but there are deals in the 50% range as well. Getting 50% of the rake you pay to the poker room back at the end of the month, day or week (depending on how your rakeback provider delivers) is a huge edge, one that you’ll only truly learn to value once basic poker strategy and notions about the nature of the game become clear to you.

If you thought that was generous, get a load of this: there are special rakeback deals which exceed 100%, called prop deals. These prop deals basically pay people to play and generate action at a given poker room. When you receive something like 120-135% rakeback, almost every move that you make at the table becomes a positive EV one.

As the key to beating online Poker in the long-run resides in playing as many EV+ situations as possible, you’ll quickly find yourself up at the end of the month, even if you already have yourself cataloged as a hopeless loser.