In a recent article at casino.com, journalist Andrew Glazer stated that ‘the (second-) biggest mistake you can make playing poker online’ is to play when you know you only have time for a short (10-20) minute session. (Incidentally, in case you are wondering what he put forward as his choice of biggest mistake - it is playing at a cardroom where there is a very real chance that you won’t get paid whether you win or not.) Glazer believes that short sessions should be avoided if possible, since when you are up against the clock you are liable to flout one of the basic poker principles: ‘Don’t play too many hands.’ Although you could of course run into a sequence of great starting hands, it is more likely that you will receive a string of junk hands that you would normally dump without a second thought, but instead you end up playing some of them just to get some action out of your short time online. In all likelihood you will lose money with these hands, but as Glazer astutely points out, it could be even worse in the long run if you were to win with them, since this may encourage you to pick up bad habits and play even more of these junk hands in future.

Of course, it can be just as damaging to play for too long. Once the weaker players have left the game, you become too tired to play a winning game, or perhaps you sense that you are starting to go on tilt after a few bad beats, it is important to stop right then, before your bankroll starts to suffer. One thing is for sure, even if you have booked a loss for this particular session, you will have a chance to repair the damage - there will certainly be another suitable online game running somewhere or other the next time you log on to your computer.