Anyone play online poker?

[Reaver]

Hey everyone, I just started learning No Limit Texas Hold Em poker the other day and was wondering what people's opinion of online poker rooms were...

So far I like Full Tilt and Pokerstars, but was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

My ultimate goal is to play for money (small stakes)....nothing major...but extra income.....

Excellent cross training for trading in my opinion.....


I think it would be great if we had a separate dedicated forum for poker discussion..it is so similar to trading, and I believe the information is relevant for traders....seems as if we have quite a few poker enthusiasts here....

Just my suggestion....

[brownsfan019]

Reav,
I love PokerStars. It's just for fun for me right now. I seem to do well in the 5/10 no limit hold'em tables, but this is just play money and I realize that. I enjoy playing in local tournaments with a low entry fee.

I enjoy the rush of playing poker, esp when you catch that A high flush and need to extract as much $$$ from the table as possible.

There's some serious correlation between trading and playing poker as evidenced in the other thread, so it's a nice transition.

Let me know how it goes if you start playing for real money on there as I'd like to know how that goes. I'm tempted to give myself a little 'allowance' from my trading income to put into a PS account and see how it goes...

[Reaver]

	Quote:	brownsfan019
	Reav, I love PokerStars. It's just for fun for me right now. I seem to do well in the 5/10 no limit hold'em tables, but this is just play money and I realize that. I enjoy playing in local tournaments with a low entry fee. I enjoy the rush of playing poker, esp when you catch that A high flush and need to extract as much $$$ from the table as possible. There's some serious correlation between trading and playing poker as evidenced in the other thread, so it's a nice transition. Let me know how it goes if you start playing for real money on there as I'd like to know how that goes. I'm tempted to give myself a little 'allowance' from my trading income to put into a PS account and see how it goes...

I am with you on that one man.

Right now I like Bodog, and will check out pokerstars as well. I am definitely no expert, as I just started playing. But seem to be doing alright. See, I was thinking that once the confidence is there to start playing with real money, then we as traders will have an edge just for the simple fact that we have already cleared the "real money" hurdle for the most part...you know? We have learned to make decisions in spite of there being real money on the line....one of the main reason traders and gamblers fail, the money causes them to act irrationally....There are more reasons I think someone who has been through the Trading Crucible and survived can have a major edge on the other players...Of course at some of those sites, especially Bodog, since they're a sports book, you'll have a bunch of psycho gambling addicts who can really throw money around without batting an eye. lol So I guess it all depends. lol

I'll definitely let you know how it turns out. Like you said, I was thinking about in time giving myself a little allowance to see what happens...exploit the real money edge as a trader, if it can be found to exist...so far it's just a theory. But hey that would be a nice side income and just plain fun. Especially if we could get some of the guys here in a room and compete (play money or real either one would be fun).

[aiki14]

Some recent press about insiders hacking the site and the stories of Bots playing or teams makes me less sanguine about playing for real money. The offshore locations and lack of oversight also makes me a tad uneasy.

[Reaver]

Which site are you referring to? I heard about Absolute Poker getting hacked...but not anything else..

Bots don't even remotely scare me...no more than automated trading programs do in the market. A computer will never outsmart me.

You'll probably notice on most poker games, you can pretty much slaughter the bots with a little practice, at least on No Limit, playing limit has many more restrictions for creative thinking....people are harder at times....a bot is only as smart as the person who programmed it, and even the most powerful computers aren't sophisticated enough to actually "think" and rationalize, etc.....for computers, bots, etc it all boils down to 1's and 0's. yes's or no's.

[aiki14]

Reaver, I believe the Absolute poker is the one that I was referring to (run by some indian tribe in canada?). The bots are playing in the limit games I would guess, and if they are 5 of the opponents in your game working in concert it can be unbeatable. I am not a player so I don't pay close attention, but thought it relevent to point out to anyone thinking about it.

[brownsfan019]

Lack of oversight or regulation is always a concern for me as well. Kinda like the forex market.

[Reaver]

	Quote:	aiki14
	Reaver, I believe the Absolute poker is the one that I was referring to (run by some indian tribe in canada?). The bots are playing in the limit games I would guess, and if they are 5 of the opponents in your game working in concert it can be unbeatable. I am not a player so I don't pay close attention, but thought it relevent to point out to anyone thinking about it.

I appreciate your insight..yeah pretty sure it was the one run by the Indian Tribe in Canada...

yeah I totally agree with you...and if I ever started suspecting anything, I'd be out like the fat kid in dodgeball.

I wouldn't ever play for big stakes, like you said, no way would I risk big money on something that shaky....But small stakes, yeah no biggie...but if I do see anything, or if it turns out that I totally suck..I'll quit...not that big of a deal..just something I found fun and good cross training for trading...

[Reaver]

	Quote:	brownsfan019
	Lack of oversight or regulation is always a concern for me as well. Kinda like the forex market.

Ha ha you beat me to it on the forex comparison!

[AbeSmith]

Hey Reaver. You might also want to check out Ultimate Bet. It lacks the flare as some of the other sites, like having avatars for the players. But it works well and it is fairly popular.

There was a good point raised by aiki14. There may be teams of people working together. Even 2 teammates on a 6 player game can be a major threat. Or there could be one person who has created multiple identities through identity theft. But in the tourney games where you can win seats in the major tournaments I suspect it would be nearly impossible to get away with using multiple identities.

There was a forum about using bots in online poker, seemed like lots of people were doing it and talking about it.

I heard the poker sites have a program for catching cheaters, but I suspect people are able to get passed it. I'm not sure what it is but I guess it is a combination of IP addresses, which can be hidden, geographic location, and player patterns to see who is working together in a statistically significant way. But an identity thief might be able to create an army of identities which would make it difficult to catch patterns due to the high volume, especially if they moved from site to site to hide their impact.