Choosing a site article

Thought I would try writing an article. Any critiques are welcome (my punctuation sucks for one) and I hope it can be used.

So you are new to online poker and not quite sure how to start. This is a guide to help get you started by giving you some insight into choosing a site and starting your bankroll. I am going to assume you already know the basics of how to play poker and deal with just getting you to the site that may be best for what you want to do.

If you don’t know how to play, there is lots of great info to be found here at Cardschat in the threads and articles posted. Also, just about all the sites have free tables to play at. These are great to learn the rules, get comfortable playing online and get a feel for a sites software. However, I wouldn’t try to develop strategies at the free tables. There is nothing to lose on them so people are to lose and reckless and it’s difficult to develop sound strategies and practices against players who don’t play a quality game.

OK, the first thing you consider is how you are going to start your bankroll. Three ways that I know of are by depositing, winning freerolls or free signup bonuses.

Depositing: If you going to make a deposit you will find that your Credit Card will probably deny any payment to an online casino. You are going to have to use an online wallet or other methods. I am going to suggest using Neteller, as an online wallet, and not even go into the others. Neteller is a reputable site and is accepted by all the poker sites worth mentioning. They also allow you to hook up to your bank account and do EFTs (Electronic Fund Transfers) for free or Instacash for a charge. Now that you are ready to deposit, which site? Many sites offer a first time deposit bonus that can be quite worth while and if you sign up through one of Cardschat’s links you can do even better. The following is a link showing bonuses at the major sites; http://www.cardschat.com/poker-bonuses.php. Most bonuses have to be earned by playing x amount of raked hands or earning point or something along those lines and if you plan on playing the micro tables (small limit tables) you probably will not earn the bonus. The following, not in any particular order are what I feel are some good choices for first time depositor’s:

Party Poker is a large site with a lot of players. They don’t have any penny, nickel and dime tables so if you are looking for micro limit tables they may not be the best. However if you like small buy in SnGs (starting at $5), I believe them to be some of the easiest to win.

Poker Stars is a monster site with lots of players. They do not have a standing 1st time depositor’s bonus but do offer the micro tables and they advertise so well that there is always new people there and some pretty easy games. They run some multi-table SnGs that can be pretty profitable.

Paradise Poker is another large site with a small deposit bonus. They have the micro limit tables. They are also the home of the $1,000,000 freeroll which you qualify for by placing in points satellites.

Full Tilt Poker is a large site with an excellent 1st time depositor’s bonus. They too, have the micro tables and a player can do well there.
The sites I have listed are large sites and it’s usually pretty easy to find the game you want, when you want. There are some other smaller sites with excellent deposit bonuses but you may have to swim the sharks to earn them or you can’t always find the game you like. Titan offers a great 1st time bonus and is Cardschat’s house site with the majority of our events being there. Personally, it’s one of my favorite sites. Also, good 1st time bonuses at Poker.com, Ultimate Bet (actually a larger site), and CDPoker (a clone of Titan).

Freerolls: Freerolls are tournaments that you can play for free and earn money if you place. Many of the members here have started their bankrolls from freerolls, me included. Check the threads and you will be amazed at how well some people have done starting with nothing. The downside to freerolling to start your bankroll is you may have a very hard time withdrawing any money you have won. Check the following thread out for details: http://www.cardschat.com/showthread.php?t=58703
The following are some good freeroll sites.

Absolute Poker is a good sized site with freeroll going constantly. They have recently changed the rules on their freerolls so you can only play one every three hours. They did this to cut down on the number of sit outs which used to be terrible there. Also I have noticed they are paying fewer positions. Good because you get more money when you do win, bad because you have to place higher to win.

Titan, Noble, and CD poker, I group these three together because they are clones of each other and you can find the same freeroll on all three. Titan is one of the sites I got my start off of. I did have to deposit to be able to withdraw but that was just to set up my Neteller acct. with them and I immediately withdrew after I did deposit.

The sites up above are probably my favorite for freerolls but all the sites have them and the nice thing about them is they don’t cost anything but the time and space to download the site. I want to mention a couple of sites you probably want to avoid if you are looking to play freerolls. Party Poker has big freerolls with thousands and thousands of people playing that you can play for hours in and make the money only to find out that they don’t have any tables with small enough limits to play what you have just won. Poker Stars also has freerolls with thousands of people that you have to play for hours and hours to make the top 27 just to qualify to play in another tourney with thousands of people to win some money.

Free signup bonuses: These are cash bonuses given away by sites to get you to join. This used to be a common gimmick but I could only find one site advertising they still did it and that is Crazy Poker. They will give you a free $10 for downloading and registering a credit card with them. Also Paradise Poker used to give $2 if you joined and didn’t deposit for three days. It was not something they advertised and I don’t know if they still do it.

I definitely like it so far Alon, but I feel that for it to make the article section there needs to be more of it (e.g on other things a player needs to consider like, reliability, support and the software).

P.S if anyone ever wants to write an article for the site, they can PM me or email me directly if they'd like it in the Articles section.

Nice article Alon,, you could also put in how the players are at different sites, bad, loose, fish, etc, but i like it so far>>>>>>>>>>buck