Poker Online. Play or Earn?

Poker Online. Play or Earn?
Ilgizyar Akhmetzyanov

Is it possible to make money on poker online? If so, then how? Are you on it? What is there to know? Special techniques, tricks and nuances of poker rooms – all you need to know you will find in this book.

Poker Online

Play or Earn?

Ilgizyar Akhmetzyanov

© Ilgizyar Akhmetzyanov, 2019

ISBN 978-5-4496-1889-4

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Introduction

Welcome, dear readers!

To begin with, let me introduce myself in a few words. I used to play chess having qualified as “Candidate Chess Master’. I am a big fan of logical brainteasers, which probably contributed to my becoming a poker player. I am currently employed by a Russian airline, and that generally brings me sufficient income to maintain my family. So what made me become a poker player? The answer is simple – it was for the same reason every one of you might have – the excitement of and the thirst for easy money. However, it is important to understand a big difference. Some of you may have had a sad experience of playing poker online, as I used to have. Now you are the one who plays poker from time to time but not a professional poker player. I deem this profession a complex one, requiring a long time to learn and practice. In other words, a poker player earns on poker, hence the difference between a professional poker player and someone who just plays poker for fun.

I had lost a few hundred dollars before starting to analyze and study poker. Despite a series of failures, I set myself on this difficult path of becoming a professional poker player. I had wasted a lot of time and health – yes, my health, before being able to outline a certain framework and rules for myself, before I began seizing win prizes and earning real money.

As of now, there exist several “online poker rooms,” but as far as I am concerned, I have been using only one – for an apparent reason. It’s because it is the most popular and easy to use and therefore it’s highly unlikely that its administrators would cheat, since they may gain millions a day without that. However, all written here is perfectly acceptable for other websites. I’ll start my training exactly from this one as a more affordable in my country, if not in other countries as well, if one sees the number of users from them.

Many people think that only particularly lucky ones can earn on poker and not always, but it is not so. I believe one really can make money on poker, although it is the lot of only a few – very smart and reserved people. What concerns luck, my personal experience brought me to a conclusion that 90% of your earnings in the game depend on human and surrounding factors, the latter yet depending on the person, with the remaining ten per cent being your luck.

I would also like to point out that gambling (poker being a gamble), including online gambling for money, is prohibited in Russia. How it is possible that the poker room under discussion and other similar ones are operating in Russia, I just do not know, but it is something one needs to be aware of.

Decision Taking

It is very important that you choose whether you would play poker for your entertainment or earn on poker – it’s crucial to understand the difference between these concepts. You ought to be very honest with yourself. Just playing chips sooner or later may turn into gambling, yet leaving open the question whether this gambling would eventually grow into earning. This manual you are reading is not for amateur players but for future professional poker players who can earn money. I hope it will help you make a right decision in future.

In order to earn on poker, you should determine whether you will afford investing a certain amount of your money, even when you play by all the rules, with an iron self-control and common sense. It may happen so that you will lose that amount – no one has yet been able to immediately up and become a champion. You need practice and its outcome may from time to time be rather sad, on your way towards professionalism. During my own practice, I had lost about $350. Whether it’s much or not, it’s up to anyone do judge. What really mattered to me was that I was on it. Are you and your family ready to your going to invest your money into this thing and put up with your absence when you go away to stay in a hostel, a hotel or elsewhere where no one can distract you with their presence or calls? This is one of the decisive conditions and a very important factor at work: your surroundings, the possibility to get concentrated, to think and make decisions. Are you willing to spend from eight to twelve hours for this per cycle? It is also important when you take part in a tournament and other poker games.

A person who begins to play poker, initially thinks he or she can and will most certainly win, because he or she is surely not worse than others, having been trained on conventional chips for an hour. Then he or she takes up playing for real money – this is exactly what happens to most players. It’s a passion, and let God make you strong enough to stop in time and make the right decision. Deciding not to go on with that might perhaps only mean you are a firm and reasonable person. After all, today no more than five per cent really earn on poker online (my conclusion is derived from my own calculations). It is also crucial that that you have nerves of steel and be in good health, since this occupation consumes lots of nerve cells and can seriously affect your cardiovascular system. No matter how paradoxically it may sound, it is really true.

As you have read this book, you will learn many things you’ll find useful that will save you a lot of money and time, but only provided you do everything as described herein. Unfortunately, not more than five per cent of those who will have read the book will be able to perform everything as prescribed. It is because knowing and applying are two different notions. So I am honestly asking you all to think it all over once again. Keep in mind that this is hard work and hardly a lottery. Only if and when you abide by all the terms, you will be able to start earning. So if you have decided anyway, then let’s proceed.

3. Proper registration

First of all, I want you to start the registration process from your desktop or laptop computer which have most features, while the iPad or phone versions are different. You will most likely be unable to upload an avatar or take notes when using the iPad. After the registration though, it is up to you. As for me, I prefer iPad.

I would recommend you to create a separate email account to be used for registration, as you would expect quite a lot of letters from the administration. Some messages will be quite useful to you, therefore I would advise you to do exactly as I say – this will let you have all of the messages in one place and not to be confused with the other mail sent to you. You will be likely to receive various attractive offers. For instance, when a crisis arrived in Russia recently, some poker rooms were nearly doubling the money the residents of this country invested, which is very nice, you must agree. Also, you will probably be having questions to Support and you would rather have the answers kept in one place, as well as extracts from tournaments available.

Now for the registration. Many of you may have already signed up in the poker rooms. As for me, I have one account. I should say in this connection that if you get yourself another account or even more, you will first be warned and then expelled from the website, as having more than one account is against the rules. It is because those who play poker and earn on it, as well as the administration of the website believe that knowing opponents is an important part of the game. The more you play against someone, the more you know about his or her style of play and the reactions. If any of the players changes his or her user name, the other players will think they are playing against someone new, while that player with the new identity will well know his or her opponents. This will give him or her a significant advantage against the other players. You can create more than one account though, but you should do this with due care – by using a different email account and various different devices to play. You might say this is sheer nonsense and there is no problem in using the same account and the same device. Yet, believe me, you may be identified by your parameters anyway – at least by your IP address. Most annoying will be when you have earned your first hundred dollars, but you will be issued a ruling that you are a malicious violator, hence the administration has to ban you. As a result, you lose your account along with your money. Thus, you should not underestimate the security services of serious organizations, take my word for it :-).

So back to our registration. There are two options: If you aim for becoming famous in due course, I would recommend you to come up with a big nickname spelt in all capital letters, so it would be better impress the minds of your opponents. If you win at this table in World Cup, your name will be familiar to almost everyone present there, and you will be duly treated as a man of success – hence you resulting connections and relationships with other players. This is still far away. As for me, at this phase I prefer using under a modest and hardly memorable nickname made up of a set of random letters and numbers that gives very little information about me. It will hardly be remembered by the players, unless they take some notes, as I usually do, but we’ll come to that later.

Now, regarding your avatar. I would recommend to google for most annoying images, because in poker much depends on self-restraint. That who sooner loses control, will most likely become at outsider and will most likely lose. Perhaps you should consider remaining rather unnoticeable.

Normally, all the images are submitted to testing before being attached to the user. The administration reserves the right to reject any image that they deem inappropriate. The time taken to test the image depends on how many new images are downloaded. It may take up to five days to get the image approved.

Please note that you can easily change your avatar from the list in a gallery as often as you wish, with a restriction of using only two different avatars. Any new image chosen automatically deletes the previous one.

Well, I think, you will have no problems with the registration. Let’s move on.

4. Settings and their Peculiarities

Having signed up, you get to the main page. Here you can see the photos of famous poker players, who are members of the professional team of this particular poker room. It is worth reading their biographies.

I would particularly like to mention the best of all poker players who have ever lived, in my opinion – Daniel Negreanu. This man is a walking proof that one can earn on poker, and this is no accident. Why should you read about the poker stars? The answer is simple. You need to know about them, so as to be aware of their capacity and who they actually are, should you happen to face them. And at this stage of becoming a professional, it is better not sit down with them at the same table at all, to be on the safe side. If however, some of them happens to sit down at yours, its is safe to get “lost” as soon as possible. The nicknames they use to play and earn are well known – there is no problem to find information about their biographies on special websites, or at least through googling. It’s unlikely that you will happen to face them at this stage, with the stakes being rather small, but in the future, when you have developed your skills and start to play for high stakes, do not forget to do this, and the sooner the better. It is the same when you learn the history of your state and its heroes. You, as a future professional, are simply bound to know the history of the emergence and evolution of poker and its “heroes”, because this game is going to be your daily bread.

The main page of the poker rooms usually has a link to a kind of a “competent”, or “safe, or “responsible,” game. Let’s try it and see what interesting things there are. Be sure to read what is written here as it will certainly be of use to you. To the left you will see the Setup Menu (by all means, take it seriously). I will outline the most important settings related to the poker room I have selected:

* Automatic currency conversion. When this option is enabled, all the funds will be converted from one currency to another at the average exchange rate, thus letting the player not have to bother to approve each buy-in. This feature applies to those players who reported multiple currencies in their accounts. The winnings will be automatically entered after the game and converted into the initially selected currency upon leaving the game.

Besides, you can be sure to have chosen the currency you want in the Cashier. To do this, open the Cashier and click on the left-hand “Menu” button. Next, you will see the “Deposit” button, your Balance and the “Cash Currency” buttons. By clicking on the latter, you can choose your preferred currency. This is necessary when you are not sure which currency to choose first and to avoid confusion each time when translating it into yours, when calculating your profit and loss.

* Time zone. Be sure to pick up your actual time zone and check the program time with your watch – it is important, because in the future, many of you will get registered in the tournament in advance, and it would be rather upsetting if you happen to confuse the time and will be late. By losing your time at the initial stage of the tournament, you will put yourself in a very disadvantageous position.

* Get yourself hidden from being found through search. The Administration offers you an opportunity to protect yourself from the players you feel uncomfortable with at the tables, by using a function of the client software letting you be hidden from the search. It is necessary to ensure that you could not be found by other players. I recommend to tick it.

* Idle time. This function is well described, but I would recommend you to put more time, because it often happens so that you are taken out of your account earlier than you would expect.

* Disable automatic deregistration in tournaments like Sit-and-Go. This option will help protect you should the connection be lost before such a tournament – the system will automatically cancel your registration in this particular tournament in case you have lost your connection for more than a certain amount of time. The connection loss time depends on the type of a Sit-and-Go tournament, and will be set separately for each specific event.

This options aims to protect the players who signed up for the Sit and Go