Poker novice - which game do I play?

This article gives a few simple things to kick you off when joining an online site for the first time. Even if you've played live tournaments some of this is worth noting, but especially if you are completely new to poker there is important stuff here.

Which games to choose?

This is a vitally important decision to make in the first week. You'll probably play round in a few different games, so it's best not to bust your deposit in a week. In general stick to free or the cheapest games early on, to learn the site or your playing style. Generally, you shouldn't step up a level until you are comfortable that you are consistantly beating your current limit. The best way to tell this is to check your bankroll, if it's increasing steadily then you are doing well, if it's not wait until it is before moving up.

While the rules are the same each game is played differently as there are different requirements. For example blinds go up in tournaments, so stealing the pot becomes more important than cash games where every hand has the same blinds. Generally speaking a good player at one is a good player at another, but you will most likely be stronger in one than another.

Here are some of the No Limit Holdem games available at most sites:
9 max ring/cash game - If full these tables are full you are playing 8 other players, with a known blind limit
6 max ring/cash games - Same as above with up to 6 players
Tourney - A tourney has unlimited players, and can blow out to over 10,000 people in certain cases.
Sit N Go (SNG) - Has a limited number of players commonly between 2 and 180
Turbo - Just means a tournament or SNG where the blinds go up quicker

9 max ring game

This can be the tightest of online games. Because there are a lot of starting players, it can be difficult to know if you hold the only ace, or the best cards, so you have to choose your starting hands well. A good rule of thumb for a newbie is to only play hands where you have 2 high cards like Ace/Queen (AQ) or King/Jack (KJ) or most pairs above 88. This is a good place to start in my opinion, because the blinds don't come around too often, you can play very patiently to make your money. Just remember that at really low limits it's not really worth it trying to steal blinds, so play down your bluffing early on in a hand.

6 max ring game (or 9 max with some seats open)

Because the blinds come around more often these games tend to be a little looser. It can also atract bigger betters. It's still a profitable ploy to wait patiently, although betting with slightly worse cards than normal doesn't hurt here.

General ring game information

A good poker site will show some stats on each ring game before you enter. Pokerstars for example shows these:
Average Pot: This is how big each pot gets. It indicates more aggressive players when it's bigger
Flop %: How many players saw the flop each time. If this is high the players are playing loose. If pot is also big therefore it's loose/aggressive. If the Av Pot is small and Flop % is small it's tight/weak, and so on.
Hand/Hr: The amount of hands the table has played per hour. A big number might indicate there were fewer players playing a while ago, so the stat is not all that useful sometimes (unless I'm missing something)

Note that a table noted as "fast" is not something to avoid, unless you plan to take long times making each decision, or have a very slow connection to the online site. It actually helps very tight players as you don't have to wait as long to fold your next hand :)

Tourney

So far I'm loving tourneys. For $1.10 or even free entry, you can get hours of playing in (or minutes depending on how you go), and get a good amount of tournament and general poker experience with each one. It's usually a lot looser game, but a very tight game early on can still get you a long way. One very important key to remember with tournaments is value every chip. If you have just lost a big bet and are down to $200 early on, still don't throw it away on the next hand, play it all in with a big starting hand or where a lot of people are betting into a pot, you can get 3 or 4 times your money if you get lucky.

Sit N Go

SNG's obviously vary a lot depending on how many people are involved. A 180 person SNG is just like a tournament and can take hours, whereas a 6 person SNG can be over quickly with loose aggressive betting the whole way through. A good mix is a 45 person SNG, where you can get a couple of hours play if you play well, but also gets to an interesting point much quicker than a bigger tourney.

Turbo

A tight aggressive game plan won't work long here. As the blinds go up you have to loosen your game and start trying to steal pots. Don't do it too early though.

Play or Real money

When you first start, you'll want to play for play money, even if it's just to get used to the site and the buttons. But as most will tell you it's a huge difference between the play tables and the 1c/2c tables. Because it's not real money people tend to go all in with just about anything at the smaller limit tables, so you'll find it far different once you sit at the 1c/2c table. That said, you should still spend a little time here.

Good online sites have a good mix of free games including SNG's, tournaments and ring games. Some sites offer freeroll tournaments, which means you pay nothing to enter, and yet have a chance to win money, either at that point, or in another tournament if you finsih highly enough. For example PokerStars offers a freeroll which ends up with over 10000 people in it sometimes, where the top 27 are entered into a real money tournament. Other sites off freerolls with cash prizes also.

However once you are comfortable enough, you should move to the real money games as soon as possible. All play money games I've played are a little crazy and won't teach you much at all about real poker betting.