Most players at the mid-levels and above have mastered the concepts of pot-odds, values, position, pocket strength and all the other basics. But how often do they really utilize one of the biggest advantages that online poker offers? Online cardrooms differ from live games in a multitude of ways, and most live players find transitioning to online to be a bit daunting, but the most glaring difference is one I think is too often ignored. When you see pros playing at the highest levels, it looks like they can see through their opponents’ cards at times, especially when they’ve played their opponents frequently. Most online players think that image and playstyle and all that are just not as important in online games as in live rooms, but that’s just wrong. You don’t need to be a pro at the WSOP to be able to utilize your opponent’s style to your advantage. Just observe a player’s patterns long enough and you can often anticipate certain tendencies and tells. All you need to master this aspect of poker is some patience and a notepad, maybe even an Excel spreadsheet if you want to get really fancy.

Recognize

The first step in knowing your opponent is to determine their style. There are countless bits of text on this topic and everyone has probably heard of the most common playstyles – tight-passive, tight-aggressive, loose-passive and loose-aggressive. Most online rooms offer some sort of “notes” option for specific players, so every time you play against a name you’re familiar with, write down what you see! By constantly jotting down quick notes on a player’s style, you can differentiate their real tendencies from their more rare actions. Most players also change up their playstyles over time, so when you keep a log on someone over a period of months, you’ll be able to know how they played in prior games, how their style has evolved or regressed, what their preferred style is in certain situations, etc. All this information is extremely important in recognizing a player’s strengths and weaknesses.

Observe

Although people tend to switch up their tactics in tournament play based on the blinds increasing, the size of chipstacks, the player pool and other factors, most people tend to stick to the same general strategy. If you notice that player A pushed heavy preflop just to show an A9 offsuit in the showdown, take note. Chances are they’ll do it again. If player B is always raising in late positions or on the buttons, make full use of this when the opportunity arises. Timing becomes important as well since many player’s have certain tendencies that come out in response to particular events. For example, some players may follow all their strong handed big-pot-wins with a bluff. These little tidbits are always useful in anticipating what a player will do.

Anticipate

By recognizing a player’s general style and observing them in action, it’s not unreasonable to anticipate a good chunk of their moves. The more data you’ve got on a player, the easier it becomes. Play with someone enough and you may even know exactly when they’re on tilt. It’s not often you hear of chip bullies turning into passive players, or tight-passive guys turning into loose maniacs. When there are just a few people left in a tricky hand, any and all information you’ve got on your opponents could help you out immensely.

History repeats itself at the poker table as often as it does anywhere else. Always be prepared with as much knowledge as you can gather – chances are it will be your most important weapon.

Turning pro in poker is not a decision to be taken lightly. There are plenty of great things that come with it, but there are just as many bad things. I’ll try to elucidate both sides so you can make an informed decision.

Pros

Probably the most glaring benefit of being a pro poker player is your freedom! By having poker as a source of income, you’re able to leave the daily routine that most people partake in. No more boss, no more appointments, no more making money for others just to get a small paycheck. If you’re a pro poker player, everything you win is yours and when/how you play is completely up to you.

Another obvious advantage is the fact that you get to play poker all the time. Not only do you get to enjoy yourself, but you’re free to focus all of your time and energy into improving your game to make sure you end up making more and more money.

If you’ve got what it takes to play at the high levels, there’s lots of money to be made. Once you’ve got a solid strategy and are completely comfortable with the game, it’s not unheard of to be pulling in $10,000-20,000 every month –sometimes into the six figures!

Becoming a poker pro basically means you’ve left the working world behind. You could make a lot more money, experience a lot less stress and have a lot more free time than before. This may seem like a dream, but there are downsides as well of course.

Cons

It’s just not easy going pro. Most people have to sit down and play nonstop until they’ve got headaches for them to play well enough to make serious. Poker goes from a fun pastime to a chore. This alone causes many players to burnout.

You’ve also actually got to make money. No longer will you be able to take advantage of some random sign-up bonus, make a few hundred bucks and then treat yourself to something nice before relaxing. You’ve got to play constantly to make sure you’ve got money for rent, food, bills and any other monthly expenses.

Downswings also become much worse. It’s one thing to go on a downswing on your $100 fun account, but a downswing when you’re dependent on the money to live is not as easily forgettable. My only suggestion is that all poker players should have at least a year’s worth of expenses stashed away for any possible downswings.

You’ll also want to think about the long-term. Will poker be a fulltime career? Are you going to save some cash to retire? What will you do if you decide one that that you want to work again? To most employers, “professional poker player” means nothing but “gambler” on your resume.

You’ll also have to consider how your friends and family will be affected. Making real money requires a real time investment and that’s simply not acceptable to a lot of people that have people that depend on them.

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Like all serious careers, poker requires dedication. If you’re considering going pro, make sure you’ve got a clear idea of every pro and con for your situation. Poker is not the same game when your meal depends on it.

Many online cardrooms are now offering “Double or Nothing” SnG single table tourneys as an alternative to the standard SnGs where just the top three players cash. In Double or Nothing games, you’ve usually got ten players, and five will double their initial stakes while the other five get nothing.

The best way to get started in “Double or Nothing” games is to be extremely tight in the early rounds. Position is very important and unless you’re seated late with a premium hand, the golden rule through the early rounds is to preserve your chips and make sure you stay in the game without any unnecessary risks. If the action is folded to you, you can try to nudge the blinds into folding, but always be prepared to fold if there is any resistance. Early game is a good time to develop a persona of being a very tight player.

In many games, an ante is introduced after only a few rounds. Although this is good if you’re wanting to steal a pot, it’s not wise to break your tight table image too soon, especially if you’ve got the chip leader or a short-stacked player behind you. Throughout midgame, you should still keep your high opening hand selection and make sure to identify the players who are employing a similar strategy. Lean on them when you’ve got a good opportunity, and build up your stack with small gains.

With this strategy, you should see yourself in a mid-position with shorter-stacked players only prepared to fold or shove as the end nears. You should also use this ploy to pick up what are becoming valuable pre-flop pots as now you can fully take advantage of that tight image you built up. If you’re well stacked, avoid calling the players who shove before you, even with aces. There is no point in taking risks to eliminate the final one or two players. Let the others do the work, and always avoid limping into pots. If your cards aren’t good enough to raise with, just fold.

Because of the very tight style of the early rounds of Double or Nothing SnGs, lots of players choose to multitable these games. You can also use this to your advantage as even the better players will be losing quality when their attention is divided between several tables at once. If you play enough and think you’re capable of the same, just keep an eye out and try to make sure you don’t play against too many “regulars” who could take advantage of you!

The goal of all poker players is of course to maximize their profits, but players should all also aim to move up the stakes as fast as they can. The reason for this is that the additional profits made from moving up the stakes are very disproportionate to the jump in skill level. What that means is, while moving up from $0.50/$1 to $1/$2 will yield double the profit in identical games, you don’t need to be anywhere near two times as good to go from the former to the latter.

When to make the move

Before you move up, it’s always right to be fairly successful at your current level. The easiest measure of success is the bb/hr or the bb/100 win-rate. To simplify, I think a good point to shoot for before moving up is an average of about 4bb/100 while multi-tabling, or 8/100 at a single table.

Build a bankroll

Lots of online players seem to obsess over the conservative 40 buy-in no limit hold’em bankroll management rule, that is, you need 40 buy-ins for your table to keep variance at bay before you’re able to move on up a level. I personally disagree with this rule. If you’re able to play with 30 (maybe even 25) buy-ins while getting decent profits, that’s just as good. As long as you move back down a level when you bust out lose 5 buy-ins, then you’re not really risking your bankroll too much.

Move up carefully

While the proportions of skill and profit aren’t in sync, higher level games are still always harder. You’ll probably need to make many adjustments to your play to match up. In my experience, someone wanting to from no-limit 50 to no-limit 100 would need to really work on their knowledge of positional 3 betting or 4 betting pre-flop.

A trick I’ve utilized for moving up without hitting a brick wall is to go between a range of levels, then adjust into the higher limits as carefully as possible. If you’re steady at no-limit 25, try a few hundred hands at no-limit 50. Go back if you can’t keep up. After every few sessions, try again. Eventually, you’ll be comfortable in playing at those levels as your lower end, then you can do the same with the next level.

Most of this article applies to all situations and should be relevant regardless of which exact level you’re at as it’s mostly general advice. Still, I think most average players are stuck in the no-limit 25-50 range, so once you plan on moving past that, make sure you do everything in your power to make sure you’re ready.

Poker players (especially the online variant) often complain about random chance and rigged games. They say that because a computer is shuffling, there must be some programming and therefore, true randomness doesn’t exist. In truth, what they mean is uncertainty, and in truth, there isn’t much randomness, if any, even with standard shuffling.

Poker games always have unexpected things happen. No matter how smart you are, you don’t know exactly what card will come next. Even if you’re a big favorite, you lose every now and then. Most would cite this as evidence that poker is ultimately a “random” game of “chance.”

Now let’s imagine a non-random scenario. Say you’re a dealer and instead of shuffling regularly, you come up with some intricate order of actions. Imagine you assign values to each card rank. You take the first card from a deck and then discard X amount of cards into a separate pile, based on the value of the first. You go through this procedure until you’re at the end of the deck. Now you repeat it five times.

Nobody would argue that this isn’t complex enough to mix up the cards well enough to play. Nobody would say that this is an unfair system that can be gamed. But above all, nobody would have to know.

Now you start dealing. Say a player that was marked as a 90% favorite loses. Is this because your dealing style was “random”? No. This happens because players will experience uncertainty. Uncertainty will occur in any situation where a player doesn’t have all the information, because at the end of the day, regardless of whether you run a standard shuffle or the complicated process described above, a player won’t know what card comes next.

Is there any difference between “randomly” shuffling, and our imagined scenario? Not really, because even “randomly” shuffling can be analyzed and written out as a complex set of actions that come out in an unpredictable order.

Online cardrooms often use very intricate algorithms for their shuffling. Some even have variables from outside their end affect the shuffling (such as a player’s keystrokes or mouseclicks). Essentially, as long as a system is sufficiently complicated to make it so every card has an equal chance of coming up in a given situation and players can’t predict what comes next, there is nothing to complain about.

Find a reputable online cardroom – the only thing that determines your long-term success will be your skill.