Playing poker on sites such as PartyPoker can be very different from playing poker in a brick-and-mortar casino or card room. There are some very distinct advantages and disadvantages to either mode of play, and you may need to adjust your habits and strategies accordingly.

We believe that you should be aware of these differences, both positive and negative. Some of the factors you should consider are included below:

Part One: The Positives of Playing Online

(1) You don't have to travel to or from your game. This not only saves you time and effort, but also helps to ensure that you don't keep playing on a night you should quit, just because you drove an hour to get to a card room. This also allows you to play very short sessions, even ten or fifteen minutes while you're waiting for a friend to arrive or a spouse to get ready to go out.

(2) You control your environment. You don't have to worry about smoke, noise, players who never cease talking, uncomfortable chairs, or the food menu. You can set up your poker "workspace" in any fashion you choose and you don't have to worry about dress codes. You can play in your underwear or dressing gown, without anyone knowing the difference.

(3) You don't need a "poker face." Many players, especially new players, unintentionally give away a great deal of information about the cards they hold with their facial expressions, nervous gestures, and vocal tones. These clues are called "tells" in the poker world, and if you are prone to smiling when you see you made your straight, you won't get many callers on your good hands. When you're playing at home, no one can see you or any of the nervous habits you might have.

(4) Learning is easier. Because of the automated prompts you get in a virtual card room, it's almost impossible to make some of the mistakes a beginner can make in a real card room. For example, PartyPoker automatically reads the hands at the end, so if you have a straight and didn't see it because you were concentrating on your chances of hitting a second pair, you will still win the pot.

(5) You don't need to know as much of the etiquette. If you've already visited the "Etiquette" section, you might have noticed how many more points of etiquette we listed for real world poker games than we did for the Internet variety.

(6) The game moves faster. Because PartyPoker shuffles the cards, collects the bets, and distributes the pot much faster than any human dealer can, you get to play more hands per hour than you can in a regular game.

(7) You can play at more than one table at a time. We don't necessarily recommend this while you are first learning.

(8) You can play in safe anonymity. If, for whatever reason, you don't want people to know you play poker, you can play using a screen name that guards your privacy. No one knows how much you win or lose, either. And if you win a lot of money, keeping your winnings in your account is a lot less risky than carrying a wad of cash home.

(9) You're protected from going broke in one emotional outing. In most real card rooms, a player who is "on tilt" can easily get additional money to lose from ATM machines, credit card cash advance machines, friends who will lend money, or even a quick trip to the nearby bank, if it's open. One day of poor emotional play can cost a player far more than he would be willing to lose were he in his right mind. At most Internet card rooms, there is a daily limit on how many chips you can buy, ensuring a cool-down period must occur before you jump back into a game.

(10) You're protected from certain types of cheating. In real world games, sometimes you run into players who mark cards, hold cards out of decks, and perform other "creative" acts far outside the letter and spirit of the rules. Many of these cheating techniques are impossible in online poker (but make sure you read below about one form of cheating that still is possible).

(11) The card room never closes. In most parts of the world, casinos and card rooms close during certain hours, or don't have games running when you'd like them to be; that's doubly true if you play in private home games. At PartyPoker, our players literally come from the entire world, so no matter what time of day or night you're looking for a game, you're likely to find some players from a time zone where it is "prime poker playing time."

Part Two: The Negatives of Playing Online

(1) You can't spot other players' tells. If you have a good "poker face" yourself, and are adept at reading other players' body language, one of your most valuable skills is not available to you.

(2) It is easier to fall victim to partnership play. Partnerships (two or more players who pool their winnings and who agree to help each other out by raising and building bigger pots when one of the partners has a strong hand) happen in real world casinos too, but players who try this run the risk of physical retaliation when caught, and they have to develop carefully crafted, subtle signals to inform each other when they want their partner to raise, so the partners can't always exchange all the information they'd like. On the Internet, if two or more players in a game get on the phone with one another and share information, it can be difficult to prove. PartyPoker carefully monitors game play to help track such activities, and performs reviews of betting patterns by suspected colluders. But even with these safeguards, the risk of collusion is higher online than it is in a real world casino. Players who worry about this probably should play only in lower stakes games, where the smaller pots make the game not worth the colluders' efforts.

(3)You don't always know who the casino management team is. Many Internet sites are based in unregulated or loosely regulated countries, and some players fear that they might not get paid their winnings, or that the casino's software is not fair. This is not a problem at PartyPoker, where some of the world's best-known players and industry experts are tying their reputations to the card room's integrity.

(4) If you are a problem gambler, the easier access makes it harder for you to use self-discipline. This is the negative to "easy access" feature; the temptation to play is never more than a few mouse-clicks away. As we have mentioned, though, at least there is a limit on how much you can lose in one day. The team at PartyPoker encourages responsible play, but recognizes that - as with anything - there is the risk of compulsive behavior.

(5) Poor Internet connections may occasionally cost you some money. If you have a very powerful hand, and somehow get disconnected from the Internet in the middle of that hand, you'll only win as much as was in the pot when you got disconnected. This won't happen often and is, to some extent, counterbalanced by the occasions when you get disconnected in the middle of a hand where you would have lost more money.

(6) The game's camaraderie is a bit different. Many players enjoy poker for reasons that go well beyond the wins and losses; they like the time at the table and the exchange of friendly banter. While the chat feature allows this to some extent, no one suggests that typing is a perfectly equal substitute for talking, smiling, and laughing.

(7) It can be too easy to treat "virtual" chips without the proper respect. People tend to be more free with real poker chips than they are with cash, and freer still with virtual chips. In a real world poker game, every time you put chips into a pot, you have to remove them physically from your stack and let go of them. It's easy to stay connected to the idea that when you make a bet, you might be saying goodbye to some money. When all it takes to make a bet is a click of a mouse, the connection of that mouse click to your bank balance isn't as clear, and some players play much too loosely as a result. The other side to this "disadvantage" is that if it isn't a weakness for you, you'll end up profiting from this tendency among other players.

In sum, each venue offers the chance for a very different game. If you're like most poker players, you'll probably enjoy both, participating in each at those times when it outshines the other. And each will build your overall understanding of the game, and will develop your skills in different ways.