Anyone want to play Poker?

Several months ago I started to get an urge to play poker. A weekend game of poker is hard to come by more than a frequency of 3-4 times a year due to busy schedules and other responsibilities. To get over this and to feed my need to gamble, I signed up for an online poker membership at PokerStars.com


I was intrigued at the possibility of taking real money from complete strangers. I played a lot of poker in high school (those stories could take up three more blogs) and consider myself a skilled poker player. I was taught poker on cash games and never really played the tournament style that was made popular by the World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour on television. I signed up online at PokerStars, made the minimum deposit, and started playing. I had also seen the greatest poker movie ever made, Rounders, about 28 times. This had to count for something right?


After I signed up, I transferred the minimum amount to start an account and started looking for games or tables to play . At first I was overwhelmed at the number of choices available on the PokerStars.com site. I started on the cheapest cash table for Texas Hold'em (which was kind of a joke calling it a "cash table" since we were playing the small blind $.01 and the big blind $.02 ) The playing style was much different than the weekend basement variety with your buddies. There are 9-10 people at very virtual table, which makes the odds that someone has an excellent hand very good. Someone always had the high pair and bluffing was hard to come by. I failed to realize this the first few times and paid because of it.


Then I got smart and started playing in the large Texas Hold'em tournaments. My favorite is the $.10 buy-in with the $100 add on by PokerStars.com This tournament usually draws between 4,000 and 8,000 people depending on the time of day it is run. Payouts usually start in the top 10-15%. The first time I played it, I kept thinking "Hey, I only need to finish in the top 850 to win my money back! Then I realized that I have to beat out 7,500 other people to do this.


Another fun thing about PokerStars is that you play against people from around the world. Once in awhile I'll log in the afternoon and realize that I'm playing with a lot of Germans. This is mainly because that Germany is 8 hours ahead of our time. While I'm relaxing and just started playing at 4pm in the afternoon, it is midnight for the Germans.


To be honest I haven't won alot of money playing online. However, it has served its purpose.
It cures the poker fix any day at anytime.