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Why is online poker better?

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Online poker is often dissed, especially by players who were playing well before the online poker craze struck in 2004. It is often considered tactically inferior, and since players are deprived of most of the tells they grew used to in real poker, it seems a bit chaotic and more luck-oriented than its real life counterpart.

Although these things are probably all correct, you need to consider that there are some things at which online poker beats real cardroom play anyday.

I'm not going to run he usual yapping about how nice it is that you don't need to go to a real cardroom and learn the possibly intimidating etiquette there, and how nicely you can play from the comfort of your own home, although all that is true too. There are, however, other things that give online poker a definitive edge.

The organizing you need to do. Just think about it: you decide to organize a poker game at your house. You need to get a poker table ( buy one or prepare the one that you already own), get snacks and beverages ready, call up all your friends and invite them over. Deal with the issues of one or the other not being reliable and not showing up and so forth and so on. If you decide to play online poker, all you need to do, is turn your PC on, log in to the room and start playing. Sounds quite a bit simpler, doesn't it?

Let's suppose you are ina home poker game, and everyone shows up on time. Everything is ok, until the time you decide you've had enough and you're just about ready to go to bed. Can you really do that without offending your guests? Nope, you're there stuck with them, and if one of these guys feels like he could play on all night long, you're just about cornered. On the other hand, if you're the one who's on a roll, and want to keep on playing after all the others have long had it, you'll be at loss again.

Online poker spares you all this trouble. You go to bed whenever you want and you play exactly as long as you feel like it ( or till your bankroll lasts)

Choosing the time of the day and week when all your poker-buddies are available can be something of a logistical nightmare. Jim and Angela can make it on Friday but they could only come around noon, Rob and Stu, thoughm, they could only possibly consider it on Wednesday evenings. Wednesday it is, then, oh wait, Kurt said Wednesday was absolutely out of the question for him.

Online poker will never present you with such issues. You log in whwenever you want to, and leave whenever you want to or have some spare time.

Another tough thing about home poker is that - even though it all goes down in your own house - you can find yourself in a way-too-tough game in not time. Being a reasonable poker player, you know there's not much to hang around in such games for, but you have no choice. That's the only game and only table where there is action so you're stuck with that. Table selection is one of the most fundamental poker skills and by virtu of not playing online poker, you'll have your hands tied when it comes to this fundamental problem.

Online poker offers a myriad of different bonuses and promotions, all available at the touch of a button.

Even with your bankroll gone there's plenty to do in an online poker room. There are freeroll tournaments, ( some you can enter for poker points, some are completely free of charge) and different other promotions ( like magic hand promotions, bad beat jackpots and so on) most online poker sites offer some kind of rakeback.

You get none of these, when playing poker at home or in a card-room.

Bottom line is: online poker is indeed an entirely different game from real-life poker, though that doesn't mean if offers less than the latter, as far as play experience is concerned. As I've shown above, in certain areas, it just downright outperforms the real game.