by Chris Hester

Created on: November 22, 2008   Last Updated: November 23, 2008

For years poker has been played in homes and casinos across the country. Recently online poker sites have become a major player in the poker world.

While anyone who plays the game always enjoys the thrill of sitting at the table in a casino playing the game they love. When you are playing live poker, you have advantages that do not present themselves when playing online. At live tables you have the opportunity to read people, if you become good at this, you will be able to know if someone has a strong hand or if they are bluffing. These are called "tells". By reading people, you have the opportunity to maximize your profits and minimize your loses.

For many, online poker is what we play the majority of the time. All you need to play online is a computer with an internet connection. When playing online it is much harder to get tells on other players. You can no longer look for physical clues such as facial expressions, now you must learn to read your opponents based off of their betting patterns.

Online poker does have its advantages though. If you are new to a certain game, you can always improve your skills by playing games with play money also referred to as fake chips. Most poker sites have free roll tournaments which are free to enter and offer either prizes or small amounts of money to the top finishers.

Online poker also offers satellites, these tournaments give players the opportunity to pay a small amount of money to enter one tournament and have the chance to win a seat into a more expensive tournament. These satellite tournaments give you seats to tournaments ranging from twenty-six dollar satellite tokens all the way up to seats at the "WORLD SERIES OF POKER".

Most poker players have a preference on which type of poker they like best but to become a GREAT poker player you can't limit yourself to one style of play. If you feel like you are better when you are playing traditional poker, you need to spend more time playing online so you can improve your skills there and vice versa.

Many of the top poker player seen on television in the high stakes no limit tournaments can be found throughout the week on severa top online poker sites. If you go to casinos on weekends to play, it will not hurt you to play online during the week. Truth be told the more hours you play in either area the better you are going to become as an overall player.

There are many players out there that are known for their great play and wonderful reads on others hands. The one thing we must remember about these players is just like us we all started playing poker with little knowledge of the game and no matter how good the player is they will always be a student of the game.

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