I have always found poker to be a cyclic game. I usually know within an hour if I will make any money. If your not catching any cards or your hands are not holding up, change games. If you change games two or three times and still cant get anything going, quit for awhile. I almost always make my money in spurts. I'll get hot for ten or fifteen minutes. When things cool back down, I'll tighten up and wait awhile. If the cards dont come back within thirty minutes or an hour, Im gone. I know a lot of people say you have to put in the hours but that does not work for me. I seldom play more than a couple of hours at any one time. You need to be fresh and you need to feel good when you sit in. If you get tired or mad go do something else for awhile. The size of the game does not matter for me. I go by what I usually win when playing a certain limit. I dont want to lose more than I normally win. Like trading, I keep my losses small and every once in awhile you get those nice runs where you make a killing in an hour.
Any thoughts on how common collusion/cheating between players sitting at the same table is? I've heard of people who have several puters setup and they all play at the same table at the same time, .....quite an edge if you know what cards are in 3 or 4 different hands at a table. My first thought is that teams like this would stick to high limit or no limit games which should mean the low limit games would have a better chance of being clean but who knows. I would hope the gambling sites do their due diligence to weed out this kind of stuff.
Them It would be pretty easy to set up multiple accounts and get two or three seats at the same game but the poker sites are well aware of this and watch for repeating patterns of same players in the same games. About the only way to collude is to trap somebody between your bots with raises and this kind of thing soon attracts attention. I really doubt there is much of this sort of thing. The lower limits would not be worth while and the people who play at the higher limits would spot something fishy pretty fast, imo.
Thanks to this thread I have been playing poker online for two weeks now. I have withdrawn my original funds and have three different accounts funded with winnings so I am in a no risk trade. I have seen no signs of cheating and had no trouble taking my money out of the sites. The low limit games can be beaten IF you are an experienced poker player. I have played poker for many years. Dont assume you can jump in and make money if you're just learning the game. Paradise.com is by far the best site, imo. Lots of games and fast software. Pokerstars.com is next. Good software but not as many games and players during the week. Pokerroom.com is slow. Dont know if this is a temporary thing or ongoing. Maybe somebody else can input on this. All in all it has been a pleasant experience but I am a little dissappointed. I had forgotten how boring limit poker is (If its exciting you are probably in too high a limit for your game) but it is better than sitting there twiddling your thumbs waiting for a trade to develope.
I have to thank this thread for getting me involved with online poker as well. Been playing with "play" money on several different sites to test out the software and am in the process of funding an account. The similarities between poker and trading seem to have made it easier for me to pick up on how to play correctly. I am sure I have a lot to learn but am confident I can hold my own on the low limit tables. I'll let you know how I do.
Have you really gotten your money back in less than two weeks. When I played around with this....they took 30 days to credit the bank accounts....but I did find them all to be honest, at least with me. Don
I too have been visiting the online poker rooms. Played some $5 - $10 funny money at Pokerroom. Was enlightning as to the speed and flavor of online poker, but I doubt the play is very realistic. Way too much calling. Got drawn out on a dozen times on the river card after I had made them all pay up big to get there. Order the Wilson software too. Figured if I were going to do this, I might as well do it correctly. I was going to try some real money ( $1 - $2) but could not get any money into Neteller. Tried 2 different credit cards, both were rejected. Called Chase and they identified "eshop" as a gambling site. I am setting up a second personal bank account to try the EFT route, but I am concerned that that might get blocked too. Any suggestions as to how to get some real money into the casino account? This pisses me off. I don't even consider poker to be gambling and I have all this trouble. Meantime the poor sap who wants to feed the rent money into a video slot machine can amble down the road here and go into any one of a dozen indian casinos. Make me almost mad enough to want to be a Democrat.... Anyway, if I ever do make it onto the real tables, look for me under the moniker "tuff_fish".