The tricky aspect of no-limit hold'em both in a tournament structure and in a regular cash game is that these hands can also lead to greatest rewards. They are extremely volatile, however, and much of skill of no-limit is knowing how to recognize when that starting hand is a liability and when it could potentially break an opponent. This requires a great feel for game after flop. Naturally beginners lack this experience and nuanced understanding of game, and so it is far safer for a novice to limit himself to playing premium cards only before flop. The problem then becomes one of predictability - if you only raise with big pairs you are unlikely to get any action, and when you do get action you're in trouble because rest of table clearly knows what you're holding to begin with.

If you are one off button or on button you should loosen your restrictions and play more starting hands, including those marginal ones, provided no one else has entered pot showing obvious strength. To vary your play effectively you should also consider raising with these hands as a semi-bluff tactic, but no more than one in four times.

As all poker sites on internet call themselves poker rooms so that is what I’m going to call them too.

The first thing you have to do to check out a room is to download their software. You should download at least five rooms but ten is better. Set up accounts in each one so that you can enter their rooms to get an idea of how they operate.

The first thing to look for is layout of “home page”. Does it make you feel comfortable? Is it easy to understand? These are not important points but they need to be thought about.

One very important point is ease of navigation inside room.

Can you find game schedule easily? Is help readily available? Do they break down free games from money games? Do you have to search through entire list of games to find what you want?

Write down your impressions of each room so that you can make judgments later .

Now play in some of their free games to get a feel for how software works. This will help you decide whether you want to play at room or not. There’s no use going any further in checking a room out if you don’t like playing there.

After you have done above you have probably eliminated one or two rooms. Now you have to decide what games and what type of games that you want to play.