At least three players who have already won bracelets would come under the umbrella of being an online player. Although British pro Praz Bansi, winner of a $1,500 no-limit Hold’em event, now plays predominately live poker, he first started to play poker online before the lure of big money live tournaments became too much.

Simon Watt, a New Zealand based player stated that he mainly plays online and that the experience gained from playing a large number of hands helped him win another of the $1,500 no-limit Hold’em events, a tournament where he had to defeat the iconic online poker star Tom “durrrr” Dwan heads-up in order to win his first WSOP bracelet.

Another British pro who has won a bracelet this year, James “Flushy” Dempsey, said in his final table bio that he prefers to play pot-limit Omaha cash games online and that the majority of his income stems from playing online poker from the comfort of his own home.

There is an age old debate that is still raging where the online poker players say they are better than their live counterparts and vice versa. Whilst the live players have the advantage over physical tells and reads, the online players are much more used to navigating huge fields in tournaments and thanks to the ability to play multiple tables simultaneously, many of the big name online players have played many more hands and tournaments in just a couple of years grinding than some of the big live players have in their entire careers.

With the likes of Paul Foltyn, Chris “Moorman1” Moorman, Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, David “Bakes” Baker and David “Doc Sands” Sands all taking part in numerous events at this year’s World Series of Poker, it would not surprise me if online poker players do far better than the live players by the time the entire 57 events have been completed.

Below is a guide to the very best ‘starting hands’ in poker. Starting hands are the cards you are dealt at the beginning of the game – the strength of these hands could weaken or improve after the flop. Remember that your position on the table and your table image could have a big effect on how you play these strong hands. Limping in with Aces or Kings (slow playing) can leave you open to players looking for a straight draw or flush draw, bear this in mind when playing strong hands, push out those players with cards that could hurt you.

The Best Starting Hands

These are the very best hands you can see before the flop in texas holdem poker, with any of these hands you should come out raising before the flop – Hopefully this will drive those on ‘drawing hands’ out of the game. If you’re playing on low-limit tables you may not be able to push those on flush draws or suited connectors out of the pot, so watch the flop careful. Having said that you will nearly always be ahead with these cards.

Strong Starting Hands

Whilst these cards aren’t as good as the ‘Best Hands’ they still remain very, very strong starting hands. If you’re in late table position then you should be raising these hands, many of the ‘Strong Starting Hands’ also carry good flush or straight potential – you’ll still need a little help from the table with these cards before you could consider them a sure thing.

These starting hands won’t always win you a pot, and as all poker players know you will always get the odd bad beat holding pocket aces. But if you stick to playing these hands then over time you will come out on top. Now take a look at the worst poker hands!

How to set your Poker Wallpaper as a desktop

To set the wallpaper as your new desktop background just click on one of the images below. Once the image has opened in a new window, right click with your mouse and select the ‘Set as Background‘ option from the list – hey presto your new poker wallpaper background will be display on your desktop – easy! I’ve just added two new Poker Wallpapers, one features the lovely Shana Hiatt from the old World Series Of Poker TV show and the other features Evangeline Lilly otherwise known as ‘Kate’ from the hit TV Lost. I’m always adding new wallpapers so check back soon for more.

I’ve just added three new Eva Green poker wallpapers, they have a cool retro feel to them.

Over-valuers do exactly that – they over value the cards that they are holding. Players like this tend to place far too much weight in suited cards and will quite often play bad hands such as 10 and 3 simply because they are the same suit. They don’t consider the fact that flushes are relatively uncommon (given the number of overall hands played during a game) and that even a top pair of 10′s (should the second one flop) is still not great given the over-pairs that can still beat them.

Over-valuers like the big cards and so while most of us would throw away a Q 2, over-valuers will play it simply because they hold the picture card Queen, believing that a second Queen will flop and win them the game. Of course they are forgetting one simple thing – not all big cards were created equally so even a pair of Queens is no good if the King or an Ace flops. What’s worse is that even if their opponent only holds Queen high as well, a 2 is no good as a kicker!

Of course knowing this can help you spot an ‘over-valuer’ at the table but be wary because like the ‘Fish’ they do over call and as such you will need a winning hand to beat them. Be careful, players like this will play anything that is reasonably connected so if the board flops low cards then there’s a good chance that they could win as many will play low connected cards.

On the upside though, you can loosen up your play against them – you know that they will play low pairs or low connected cards so it pays to go to the river with them. Also, they don’t tend to bluff, they call and raise because they believe they have the best hand which is not necessarily always the case!