The great thing about playing poker online is that you can pretty much play whenever you have some free time. Got 30 minutes to spare? Then just sign on, find a game you like and start playing. Its really that simple.

The only problem as I see it, there are so many different places to play online, how do you choose? By whoever offers the biggest bonus? The fanciest looking site?

When looking for a place to play online, consider how long the card room has been in business for 4-5 years is a long time in the online gaming world. Sites associated with professional poker players also are more likely to be reputable the theory being that they dont want to be associated with a shady outfit. The pro players do not want to put their reputations on the line.

You can belong to more than one online casino or poker room as I do. Some poker rooms offer a better sign up bonus, some have better or more frequent freeroll tournaments. Another may have easier ring games. There is no limit to the number of poker rooms that you can join.

Do some research at a site that you trust which reviews online casino and poker rooms. Start out by making a small deposit. Try out the software and see if the site fits your needs. Does the site offer games at the limits that you want? Is it easy to withdraw cash? Are there enough players online when you are likely to play so that youll always have a good game available?

By checking out the lobby of an online site you will get to see who the players are in a particular game, the percentage of flops that they are seeing which helps you find a tight or loose game, the number of hands being played per hour.

The most profitable games will be the ones that have larger than average pots and a high percentage of players that are seeing the flop.

Because of the relative ease that players have in switching tables, playing during lunch or before dinner means that at times you will be playing in shorthanded games.

When you are playing in a shorthanded game you should expect to play in a greater number of games. You should expect to play more hands as the value of low pairs now increases. The value of drawing hands will also decrease because there typically not enough players in the hand to make the pot large enough to chase.

Just about all online casinos have games that start out at limits as low as .05/.10 which are great for a beginner and increase in increments small enough so that you can slowly get acclimated to playing for larger pots. Of course if you prefer to go to the higher limit or no limit games, there is no shortage of these either.

One important note, if you are going to play on line, open an account with NetTeller (www.netteller.com) because most credit card companies will not allow you to deposit directly into an online casino account. Netteller will accept the credit card payments into an account and you can transfer in and out of it from there. Just about every online casino deals with them.