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Poker play is one of the greatest things you can experience in life. The thrill of the game; the joy of seeing your friends go down in laughing defeat; the great feeling you great from pulling all those chips out of the pot and massing them around yourself. There's no better way to play.
Unfortunately you can't always organize live games of poker. There are plenty of pressure in the outside world that regularly keep groups of poker buddies from mixing and getting together to engage in poker play. Luckily for all your card fans out there, though, there's always a ready alternative: online poker.
It's true that playing Hold'Em or Five Card Stud online doesn't give you the same feeling of joy. More, it deprives you – strategically – of tells, or the ability to read an opponents bodily signals. Playing online can drastically change the game for a lot of players. But it's still one of the most convenient – and enormously fun – ways to engage in Hold'Em out there today.
And you do have some natural advantages. For one, the physical presence of the opponent isn't going to bear down on you nearly as much. Poker is very much a game that relies on image. If your opponent is a huge, tough guy, then you can be expected – if he's a pro, anyway – that he'll try to stare you down in an attempt to get you to make a mistake. You needn't worry about that online because you can't see the guy. And he can't see you or the way you play your cards, so he won't be able to read your body language and figure out if you've got a good hand.
Do you rely on watching the opponent, though? There's still ways to do that online. You just need to keep a keen eye on the timing of their plays. How long it takes to bet, how aggressively they bet, when they fold, how they talk if there's a chat function, that sort of thing. Online play can be just as revealing about a Hold'Em hand as offline.
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