There are actually substantial differences between online poker gaming and conventional, in person gaming.

One obvious difference is that players do not sit right across from each other, removing any ability to observe others’ reactions and body language. Instead, online poker players learn to focus more keenly on betting patterns, reaction time and other behavior tells that can be not physical in nature. Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings.

Another less obvious difference will be the rate of play. In brick and mortar casinos the dealer must collect the cards, then shuffle and deal them after every hand. Due to this and other delays common in offline casinos, a typical rate of play is about thirty hands each hour. Online casinos, conversely, don’t have these delays; the dealing and shuffling are instant, you will find no delays relating to counting chips (for a split pot), and also on average the play is faster because of “auto-action” buttons (where the player selects his action before his turn). It is not uncommon for an online poker table to average sixty to eighty hands by the hour.

Another critical change results from the truth that online poker rooms, in some cases, offer online poker schools that teach the basic principles and significantly speed up the learning curve for novices. Many online poker rooms in addition provide free money play to ensure that players may practice these skills in a variety of poker games and limits without the risk of losing real money. Those who previously had no way to learn and improve since they had nobody to play with now possess the ability to learn the game a lot more quickly and gain invaluable experience from free money play.

On the flip side, tracking poker play online is easy. Most online poker rooms support “Hand Histories” text files which track every action both you and your opponents made during each hand. The capability to specifically track each and every played hand has several advantages. Many third-party software applications process hand history files and return detailed summaries of poker play. These not just include exact tallies of rake and winnings, which are useful for tax purposes, but in addition offer detailed statistics about the person’s poker play. Serious players use these statistics to check for weaknesses or “leaks” (mistakes that leak money from their winnings) within their game. Such detailed analysis of poker play was never available in the past, but with the growth of playing online casino gambling poker play, it is now commonplace among virtually all serious and professional online poker players.