The rules of poker can quickly learned by anyone, there really is no reason not to try, online access and interface are easy. The success of online poker is vast. Gambling sites always offer poker games. A player who is dedicated becomes o part of a community and acquires friends.

All or most poker game varieties are available for download for free. They offer safe practice for the novice. You get to try your hand against p.c. opponents and may adjust difficulty so as to easily experience successive winning, feeling the pleasure of addiction spread through your system like a shot of good liquor.

You are seated cozily in front of your computer to play all online games. There's no reason to worry about your body language or trying to read the faces and gestures of your opponents, each with his or her make-up, ticks, and poker-face tricks. Despite this fact, although extremely fun, perfecting your strategy against software is not comparable to live action, it's rather like doing your best at tennis against a wall or shooting up cardboard targets. Technically, there is not much comparison between a poker game and a gun fight, and unless you are in a Robert Rodriguez movie you can depend on a professional not having a sawed off shotgun pointed at you from across the table. But since both gun fights and poker for real money (as opposed to virtual) involve a constant sense of danger the parallel is warranted.

And this is precisely what makes games against a human opponent not merely lifelessly fun, but eerily fun, - the kind of fun which makes for the most powerful addiction. Somebody who has never handled anything more dangerous than Spider Solitaire on their laptop in the lecture hall may well wonder whether poker is anything more than a game of patience. And it is important that he or she realize that besides skill, chance (or luck, however you might choose to evoke this deity) is the essence of the game. And hence, a live poker session without the possibility to reset, and only the possibility to Fold, is pervaded by danger.

This is precisely what turns many people off. But which also makes as many people feel irresistibly "alive" while betting on the value of their hands. You must have the money, the time, and the energy to spend - but these are controllable factors. You had better be willing to make the effort to learn strategy, but you must also have a lucid and refined appreciation of the element of Chance. A player who does not, and who perhaps approaches the game simply in the crude hope for a few good quick wins will loose and will grow tired of trying. The taste of danger then is sour and one wishes to rinse it out as quickly as possible.

To the real player danger is delicious. That's why he is at the table/computer. The player knows his stuff and his bluff, knows what is practically within his power, and does not indulge vain fantasies. He or she is there for the chance just as the rock climber is there for the sheer height. One must learn to hear the music of chance in the game; then, even an unlucky session will have been worth the effort.