I’ve started getting back into playing Poker online – I used to play it a reasonable amount, though not online, about 10-12 years ago, when it first started being shown on UK TV, on the Late Night Poker show (hence the slightly obscure title to this post; they used to say that on EVERY programme much to our amusement).
At the time I didn’t have broadband (obviously) or a decent computer, so playing poker online wasn’t a possibility. As soon as my poker buddies moved away, the thrill of playing for matches faded and I kind of forgot about it really. Only recently did I, for some reason, pick up on Zynga poker on Facebook, and this has reignited my interest.
Zynga – if you’ve not played it – is pretty easy to get into, particularly if you have an iPhone or (as I play it) on Android. You can of course play it on Facebook, but I prefer it on the phone as the interface is loads better, clearer and easier to use. You also don’t get as many flashing things trying to catch your attention, which is pretty annoying when you’re trying to play.
The advantages of Zynga are that it’s not real money; you get credits every day you log on and it’s a nice way to get back into it. You can move up the rankings the more money and hands you play, and it feels nice. The disadvantage is that it’s not real money; you get players throwing thousands on hands and bets which they would never do in real life, unless they were completely nuts. This makes it pretty hard to play sometimes if, like me, you actually want to get better at playing poker. It’s not impossible though, and it’s certainly a good place to get back into the swing of things and experiment a little as you’re learning. One good way of minimising the ‘throw all the money in’ aspect is to play the tournaments, rather than the tables. It’s harder to build up a chip count on the tournaments, but it’s slightly more realistic a game, as you have a limited chip stack to start with, and can’t buy back in. So you start with £1k of chips, and have to eliminate the competition to finish in the top 3 to win something. There’s a habit of people to go all-in immediately on the game, but notwithstanding those people it’s pretty good.
For real play I’ve been playing on 888.com; I’ve no idea whether it’s the best or not, it’s just the one I’m on at the moment. I stuck a bit of money in, and am just playing the 5p/10p tables so I can’t lose that much. Even at that small level it’s surprising the difference between that and Zynga; play that you could sometimes get away with on Zynga you’ve no chance on 888. At the moment I’m trying to read a bit about the game, then play a bit, and try and keep making small advances money wise. (Though I did lose a fair bit to start off with, as I went in rather gung-ho, flushed with my success on Zynga. Ooops).
To learn I did a little research and picked up a book on my Kindle called The Theory of Poker: A Professional Poker Player Teaches You How to Think Like One
The weird thing is that the strategy I’m learning about in the books seems to be directly relating to other things in life more and more; bluffing, semi-bluffing and raising all seem to have links in life quite a bit when dealing with certain situations. I’m sure there are books that someone’s hacked out to link these two more – Management and the art of War Poker or something, but it’s not as weird as it seems. I haven’t had the time to properly formulate some thoughts on that yet, but I’m thinking about it.
Anyway, there you go. Poker. It’s fun.