If you’re completely new to online poker, you probably shouldn’t deposit a lot of money in your new player account and play at the high stakes. It may be thrilling, and yes, you can win a lot more money, but you can also lose a lot more money a lot faster. As a beginner, it would be a shame for you to be turned off to poker right away from a few bad sessions. What you probably should do is deposit a small amount of money and start playing the smallest games that your online poker room offers. This will get you used to the way people play for real money and you can test out your new strategies and what you’ve learned without a huge financial risk. There are plenty of cases of players with discipline who deposit $25 in an online account, play nothing but 5 and 10 cent no-limit games, and end up $600 ahead in a few weeks. It happens. You can even start off with play money at any online poker site to get you comfortable with playing online and to test out the poker room software.

Building a bankroll and choosing online tables is sort of climbing a pyramid. You’ll usually notice that the most players play for the smallest stakes, and the fewest players play at the highest stakes. To climb each level, you need to first master the level you’re at. Before you even start on a level, you need to have the sufficient amount of money to back the limits you’re playing. Limit players can play for a while on 50x the big blind, but no-limit cash game players won’t last too long if they’ve deposited $100 and only play $1/2 games. You’re going to run into streaks of bad luck and bad beats. Hopefully you’ll always bounce back from it, but you need to have enough money in your account to ride out the storm.

Stick to a small-stakes game at first. Keep playing it and be patient and disciplined. Over a few days, weeks, or even months, you may finally feel like you’ve completely mastered a certain level (25c/50c for example) and can win consistently at those limits. At this point, you will probably have enough money to move up to the next level. Take a seat at a bigger game and try it out. Keep in mind, however, that as you play in larger games, the players’ skill level will also increase on the average every time you move up. Keep playing well, master your limit, and keep moving up. Hopefully you’ll be at the top of the pyramid faster than you think.

One alternative to even making a deposit at all is to try and test your skills by playing lots of freerolls at your online poker room. This is another way to get familiar with online poker without a monetary investment. Freerolls and tournaments that don’t cost you anything to enter, but you can win real money. You can either withdraw this money, or use it as a start to your bankroll. Since freerolls are free, you’ll be up against a lot of crazy players who don’t really care how well they do. Freerolls also typically have a large number of entrants. You’ll need to play a tight game, especially early on in these tournaments, to avoid the early gamblers.

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