Are you the kind of Sky Poker player who logs onto the website, clicks to their favourite choice of game and begins to play? If we are honest with ourselves, the majority of online poker players follow just such the same routine when they visit their particular poker site of choice.
Of course, there’s lots of reasons for this. You may be pressured for time, or just want to maximise the time you have to play poker. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but if you restrict your use to the Sky Poker website simply to the Cash Games, Sit & Go or Tournament tabs, with the odd click on the Promotions tab to see what offers are available, then you could well be missing out.
You see, there is a whole lot more to the Sky Poker website than simply a selection of outstanding poker tables, tournaments and promotions. While these features may be the main reason many users access the site, on a path less-well trodden lies a whole host of features that could be of invaluable benefit to the poker novice or improving player.
In this article, we’ll take a look at these less notable aspects of the Sky Poker site and we’ll explain to you exactly how they can help you gain a lot more from your visits to the site, as well as helping you to potentially become a much better and well-informed poker player than you are at present.
So let’s begin our look at these features with the fourth tab on the Sky Poker home screen and that is the Sky Poker Community section.
Sky Poker Community
The Sky Poker Community tab is the gateway to an incredible resource for Sky Poker players, the Sky Poker Forum and Blogs section.
Within this Forum, there are a whole host of topics and information about Poker which can provide you with hours of informed opinion about every last nuance of the game.
Whether it is offering advice on how to play a hand, offering their opinion on a new Sky Poker product or feature of the site, or even just posting a regular notice as to how a particular challenge is progressing or a strategy tip, the forum is the place to find it.
There are thousands of posts throughout the forum, ranging from the deadly serious and informative, to more light-hearted amusing posts. There’s a place to offer feedback to Sky Poker about their sites, products and promotions, as well as dedicated sections for Cash Game and Tournament strategy, where top players on Sky Poker will give you the reasons why a hand should be played in such a way.
There is so much information within the forum that to do it justice in a few paragraphs is impossible and yet the best thing about it is that it is entirely interactive; you can place a query on the forum and get insight from many of the top players on the site.
The terms used at times may confuse the beginner, so don’t be afraid to ask for clarification if you are not sure what a term or phrase means but in terms of value to the typical Sky Poker player, the forum is an invaluable resource and one that is all too often underused.
My Sky Poker
The My Sky Poker tab is a link to everything on the site to do with you and your account. Here you can access information about the last tables you played at, as well as have a look at your hand history.
The My Tables tab simply lists which tables and tournaments you have played in most recently. You can see any tournaments you have registered for but are yet to play in, any that you are currently playing in and those that have finished.
More useful is the Hand History tab, which gives you detailed information about all of the hands you have played most recently on Sky Poker.
You access these by using a filtering system where you can filter out the different types of games to find the particular hands you want to review. You can filter by time, game type, format of game (cash games or tournaments) hands where you won or lost more than a stated amount or if you know the hand ID, you can search via that too.
Reviewing your hands, particularly those that you won or lost is a great way to gain feedback about your game and can help you iron out mistakes in your poker strategy that are costing you chips. Good players spend a lot of time reviewing their play and their decisions to see if their strategy is proving profitable.
You can do that easily from within this menu on Sky Poker and it is a powerful tool for novices and improving players who want to analyse their game in more detail and learn from the mistakes that they made at the table.
TV
This link bring you a live link to the Sky Poker TV Channel and if you are visiting the site from a desktop or mobile device, it will open up a window which will stream the TV channel direct to your device.
The Sky Poker TV Channel is linked very strongly with the website and each depends on the other for its continued growth and success. Popular presenters on the site include TV personality Richard Orford and Sky Poker’s resident Poker Grandad Tony ‘Tikay’ Kendall.
There are a large number of programmes shown on the Sky Poker TV Channel, including reviews of hands played on the Sky Poker Channel, reviews of tournaments, live tournament play and tutorial programmes to help players improve their game.
Sky Poker TV is a decent resource for poker enthusiasts, especially those who play on the Sky Poker site.
How to play
Given that most people think they know how to play poker at least adhering to the basic rules when they join Sky Poker, it is surprising how many people don’t even bother taking a look at the How to Play tab. That is a shame as there is a lot more to this tab than simply a regurgitation of poker rules.
The first thing to note here is that you’ll load up the Getting Started section which lists a large amount of information about Sky Poker, playing via a mobile, how to open a poker account, using the lobby and poker tables etc etc.
Usually, if you have a question about the site then there will be an answer to your query to be found in this section. Typically, you can find the answer to any question you may have, however complicated, in the Help section.
The Poker Promotions, Latest News and Tournaments tabs are somewhat self-explanatory as they bring you all the latest information about Sky Poker on each of these three issues. The TV Schedule is useful as it will show you a list of the forthcoming programmes on Sky Poker TV.
The key thing to note in the How to Play section for beginners and improvers however is the Sky Poker Strategy tab.
This is a fantastic and much under-appreciated resource. From here you can gain access to a host of video demonstrations about Poker strategy. The videos are organised into different sections, such as Tournaments, Cash Games, Double Your Money tournaments, and Maths in Poker. We took a look at these videos in more detail in a previous post, click here to read this guide to strategy videos on Sky Poker.
The videos in each of these sections will highlight to you the importance of a key strategic element and how it manifests itself in Sky Poker. Using real life examples from play on the Sky TV tables, this is a fantastic resource which can really sharpen up your game, with particular emphasis on the games you are likely to encounter at the Sky Poker tables.
All the videos are made by Sky Poker TV’s resident experts who explain in clear, simple English the strategic element of the game on display in the video.
In addition to these very useful strategy videos, there are also direct links to some Sky Poker TV shows, such as The Cash Game, as well as highlights of the UK Poker Championships and interviews with top poker professionals, such as Julian Thew.
The How to Play section is a very valuable resource for any new or improving player and is well worth spending a few hours in checking out all the videos and wealth of information that is available.
So if you are considering joining Sky Poker as a beginner and want to take advantage of this wealth of resources, check out how you can join and take advantage of the Sky Poker free £10 no deposit bonus by clicking here.
Image Courtesy of Daniel Chodusov via Flickr.com
