2. Whether or not online poker is clearly legal, clearly illegal, or somewhere in uncharted and muddy waters where you live. The answer varies from country to country and from state to state, and in quite a few places the answer is not at all clear. As a subsidiary issue, if you live in either a “clearly illegal” or “uncharted and muddied waters” jurisdiction, you need to make a personal decision about whether or not you’re willing to play. To this point, the only people who have gotten into trouble are site operators and/or owners, and in a couple of rare cases, where the activity was used as a “back door” to go after someone wanted for far more serious crimes (a variation on arresting Al Capone for income tax evasion).

3. How comfortable you are with a site’s customer service, including but not limited to how proactive the site is in seeking out and barring colluders, abusive players (usually a removal of chat privileges is enough on this one), and players who are clearly abusing the all-in maneuver when they want to see their hand to the end but don’t want to invest any more money in it.

4. What you think your poker strengths and weaknesses are: a player whose winning talents are based almost entirely on what seems to border on a preternatural ability to “read” opponent tells is probably much better off playing brick and mortar; someone who lacks a good poker face and realizes that his technical skills far outweigh his people skills is probably much better off playing online.

5. How far you live from legal cardrooms, and/or how much easy access there is to private games where you are comfortable with the stakes, the variety of games played, the probability of facing cheaters, unhappy spouses, cleaning up arrangements, the probability of a loser’s check clearing, and the probability of the game getting hijacked (robbed) or busted by the authorities. (If this sounds like a long list of things to consider before entering a private game, it’s because I played in private games for 20 years before I started playing in cardrooms, and at one time or another had honest-to-goodness problems with each and every item on that list at least once.)

I’ve raised some questions here that don’t always have easy answers, but online poker has much to offer even if you decide you don’t want to play for money, and I’m not writing about the free games, either.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ONLINE VIEWING AND B&M VIEWING

When you visit a brick and mortar cardroom, it’s often difficult to get a seat with a good view of the action. Usually if any player objects, you’re gone; the angle you get for seeing the cards and action isn’t typically good; and most players will object if you seem to be taking notes. Even if you get through these first three problems, you usually get to witness only 30-40 hands per hour, and you’re probably not going to be allowed to move from game to game to witness different styles at different stakes.

In online poker rooms, though, you’re virtually always allowed to watch any game, with a view that’s as good as anyone playing in the game, and you both can and should take notes. If you think you might play at that site for money at a future time, you can take notes about individual player tendencies, as well as general strategy notes, but in most cases the beginning player is better off focusing on general strategy and tactics. Further, in most online rooms you can watch roughly twice as many hands per hour as you can in a brick and mortar room.

One strategically useful exercise you can engage in online is to watch and get a feel for how different the play is between a $2-$4 game, and a $20-$40 game. The lower stakes games tend to have many more players seeing the flop, which means that usually you need to flop something pretty strong to stay in, and your chances of running a successful naked bluff into six opponents isn’t very good.

DIFFERENT STAKES REQUIRE DIFFERENT STYLES AND TACTICS

In the $20-$40 game, fewer players will see the flop, meaning that it won’t take as powerful a hand to win a showdown, and that properly used bluffing and semi-bluffing can be a much more effective weapon.

Unfortunately, unless the bluffer is foolish enough to show his bluff—and foolish is usually the right word, because the extra money you collect on your big hands isn’t as significant as the pots you win outright with cards that shouldn’t entitle you to anything—you normally won’t know that a player who wins with a successful bluff did so. You can spot attempted bluffs if the bluffer backs down and his hand goes to the river, unless the bluffer has—as you should—selected the “automatically muck losing hands” button.

In other words, you will learn how to play a given stake level pretty well. If you know yourself to be a $3-$6 player, I wouldn’t recommend spending much time watching $20-$40 games, even if you accept the premise that you are watching and learning from better players in the $20-$40 game. The style that works at $20-$40 isn’t likely to be particularly useful at $3-$6. Watch the action in games between $2-$4 and $4-$8, and you’ll learn much more about how to succeed in the lower stakes games, even if you are watching less skilled/experienced players go at it. You’ll be learning how to face the kinds of foes you will actually encounter.

A CHEAP WAY TO PREPARE TO MOVE TO HIGHER STAKES GAMES

From the “having your cake and eating it too” department, you can also spend time watching those higher limit games if you have been thinking you’d like to move up the stakes ladder in your regular cardroom. You won’t have to pay for your $20-$40 education the old fashioned way, by losing a lot at first.

Poker lessons are everywhere: in newsletters like WNP, in books, in private lessons, in advice from more experienced friends who are willing to mentor you (and you’d be surprised how often more experienced friends or even acquaintances will be willing to do this: sometimes it’s because they like you, sometimes it springs from a feeling of duty to give back, because someone mentored them once upon a time, but probably most frequently of all because of the ego boost players get from being admired as the teacher), from actual playing experience…and the one that, before you read this article, probably wasn’t as obvious to you: a great seat watching your future opponents while taking notes about them, without spending one single nickel.

Poker is far more complex than most people realize. If you want to be a winner, you ignore ANY available learning route at your peril.