Top 5 tips for playing online poker

Online poker is a very popular pastime - and can also be a very lucrative one. Most people who make money from it are doing so by leveraging their advantage over the novice players. The following tips will hopefully redress the balance - although results are not guaranteed and everything you do in life is at your own risk! These are general tips but are mostly aimed at the Texas hold 'em variation of the game.

5. Know your hands.
It is extremely helpful if you know which hand beats the other. For example, it's no good thinking you've won with a straight if the cards on the table also represent good odds that the other player might have a flush.

4. Learn how to read you opponents. 
Online poker is still a game of skill (even though luck does help!) and to this end you should try to develop a sense for the cards a player has. For example, see if they like to raise before the flop (ie before the table cards have been laid out) to try and scare away players - or do they only do it when they have a good hand? People with little money left are more prone to going all in attempts to double their money easily - but a lot panic and will attempt to do so when holding only marginally good cards - can you spot the difference?
It's never easy to master - and will never be as successful as face to face play where nervous ticks can give a player away - so be careful.

3. Bluff wisely.
A well timed bluff can reap big rewards - you are trying to represent a better hand than you have so it's wise to wait until the table cards show that a straight or three of a kind is possible and that the other players are simply checking rather than raising the bet. You then obviously bet like you have that hand.
Beware: it's a dangerous move with no guarantee of reward but often times if you raise big you will scare the other players into folding.

2. Don't bluff too much/bluff too much
If you keep your play simple and fold whenever your hand is risky, you increase your chances of winning when you do have a good hand. This works with the logic that the other players will notice that you only bet when you have a great hand and be less likely to risk betting against you - which also means the winnings will be smaller too, so it has it's trade off - but also means they are far more likely to believe you if you bluff.
Conversely, if you play more hands by bluffing and folding (but only on hands with small pots) and then continue that pattern of play when you have a good hand, it increases the likelihood that they will assume you are always bluffing and raise you, thereby increasing the size of the pot.

1. Only play with what you can afford to lose
This is the most common tip - and also the hardest one to adhere to as it's easy to get carried away and keep ploughing money into it thinking your luck is bound to change soon. If you are in it for fun then playing the low value tables for pennies is the safest option - but if you're in it for big reward then you have to be prepared to bet big - which means you have to be prepared to lose big too.

Top 5 tips - free graphics programs

Free stuff is always good, and there's plenty of it out there - if you know where to look. we'll start by listing the top 5 completely free graphics programs for all you budding artists and designers out there.
As an aside, although these are all completely free, they all offer you the option of donating - which is something anyone who enjoys using the software should consider.


5. Gimp
This is the open-source equivalent of photoshop and is highly recommended - the interface is a little different but there is a build which mimics the look of photoshop more closely gimphoto.


4. Inkscape
A free vector imaging program which is undoubtedly the best free software in this particular sector - it does however have a slightly high learning curve - but plenty of help and tutorials online.


3. Paint.net
A really nice free paint package with an active community that helps add lots of functionality through plugins - visit their forum to find out more.


2. Picasa
Ok, it's not really a graphics program (it's google's free photo editing and sharing tool) but it does have a few nice retouching tools and is an excellent way to organise all your photos.


1. Pencil
Free animation software, great for those of you with a tablet (or just a dab hand with a mouse!) and a desire to animate.