Your Ultimate Guide to Playing Online Poker 2023

Most historians believe the game of poker was born in America sometime in the 1800s. Most historians also believe the game of poker is based on the older game called Poque which reached American soil by French traders. Around the same time, German sailors introduced Americans to another game called Brag that shares some similarities with the modern game of poker.

When it comes to the history of online poker, the game was finally taken seriously back in 2003 thanks to the World Series of Poker tournament. At the Main Event, Chris Moneymaker took home $2.5 million and the game’s popularity has been on the rise ever since.

This leads us to the most popular poker terms used by avid and more experienced poker players. Learn these and you will be playing the game like a pro in no time.

• Action: In poker, saying action means raising or betting. The action also refers to poker gaming sessions with a lot of raising.
• Ante: Ante refers to a bet that all players seated at the table must make and ante bets are placed before the gaming round starts.
• Blinds: Big and Small blinds are also mandatory bets placed by players seated next to the dealer button on the left side.
• Buy-In: Buy-in usually refers to the cost of joining a poker tournament.
• Call: Call is a minimum bet made to stay in the current game.

In this section, we go over the most basic rules of playing poker and for this purpose, we will look at a typical Texas Hold’em gaming session. Keep in mind that the rules of other poker games slightly differ.

In many poker versions, the small and big blinds serve as forced bets that form the backbone of the game. The blinds system is used in the world's two most popular poker games, Texas Hold'em and Omaha. In poker games that rely on the blinds system, each hand starts with the big blind in one position to the direct left of the small blind. Before each hand, players in these positions must place predetermined stake amounts. The little blind is always on the left side of the dealer button.

Once blinds have been placed, players receive their cards and there are four options, to call or match the amount of the current stake, raise and increase the stake, fold or surrender their chance to win and check or pass the action to the next individual at the table. It should be noted that checking is only possible if nobody has raised. To have the most valued five-card poker hand, players can use all of the five community cards.

No matter which online poker game you play, you need to have some sort of strategy to boost your winning odds. We always recommend you choose your initial hand very carefully for obvious reasons. You also want to learn the basic math behind poker games and make sure you understand all the different rules that apply. If you just started your online poker journey, we also recommend you stick to playing smaller-stakes games to avoid overspending.

If you are new to the whole online poker world, we also recommend you start by playing free games, and thankfully most online casinos let you play poker in free play mode once you have registered for an account. We also recommend new players start their online poker journey playing at a single table and avoid multi-tabling at least at the beginning.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking things slow. Once you have mastered playing at a single table, you can start exploring winning opportunities related to multi-tabling but this is not a good idea for beginner players. We also recommend you look into different online poker winning strategies devices by more experienced players who know what they are doing.