It's Sunday morning and you wake up to the faint smell of empty beer bottles in your recycling container. There's pizza on the counter and pretzel crumbs on your carpet. It's the morning after your Saturday night Texas Holdem poker tournament. As you clean up the mess, you aren't thinking what slobs your friends are. Instead, you have a feeling of sadness because you know it's 3 long weeks until your next tournament. Never fear!! Online Holdem is here!!
Every day more and more people join the online community of Texas Holdem fanatics that just can't wait 3 weeks, or even 3 days to play poker again. In recent years, poker sites have been popping up all over the internet with the more popular ones hosting as many as 40,000 players at any given time. These poker rooms offer a wide variety of playing options from limit games, to no-limit tourneys that can have as many as 1000 players.

Playing both limit and no-limit Texas Holdem can offer a wide variety of thrills and challenges. You may find yourself up against players of varying skill levels ranging for the player that goes all-in on hand 2 of a tournament with an inside straight draw, to the player that knows how to maximize their earnings with each hand they play.

As you may expect, the higher the stakes for the game, the better the competition ...usually. At every level, you will find people that are just looking to throw their money away. If you play smart at the lower level no-limit Texas Holdem single table tournaments, you can find yourself routinely making it into the money. At the lower level limit games, it may be a different story. At the lowest level limit games, don't be surprised to find 7 or 8 pre-flop callers for your raise. And post-flop, your bet of top pair with a good kicker may find 5 or 6 other players that just won't go away. You bet. They call. And, another card flips that could spell doom for your quality hand as players who called the pre-flop raise with 7-10 offsuit are just waiting for the miracle 9 to make their straight. But, that's OK. You'll learn from them, and as you improve, you'll find yourself moving up to the games with better players. It's all part of the learning experience. It's all part of the game. It's all part of the excitement. And, there is a game out there for everyone.

If you haven't tried playing online, give it a shot. You just may find it makes it a little more bearable to wait for your next home game. And, you may even learn a thing or two that will help you beat your friends.