What time is it Mr Wolf?

Poker Strategy / Matthew Pitt / 02 December 2010 / Leave a Comment

With land based casinos open all hours and online poker sites, such as Betfair Poker, open for business 24 hours a day, does it really matter at what time you sit down and play a few hands of poker? Many will say no but I will without a single doubt in my mind say yes it does.

The majority of humans are governed by time and the concept of time. We love to make plans, follow schedules and the like, so much so that when the reality TV series "Big Brother" was first shown on UK television, there were psychologists everywhere saying the contestants would go mad if the producers carried out their plans of not having a clock anywhere in the house. They didn't go mad but it affected the vast majority of them to some degree.

So why should the time have anything to do with your win rate? Well, some of the reasons should be quite obvious, whilst others not so. On every poker site there is a peak time where the majority of the site's players are online. This generally coincides a couple of hours after the "normal" working day is finished, so at around 1900-2000 during the week. This is because the vast majority of poker players are recreational, not hardcore professionals, and most have day jobs that they have to attend to, therefore the best time to play would be when the majority of the weak player base is online, though you need to be careful to avoid the sharks who like to come out to eat at these times as most pro also play during peak hours.

Players who are online very early in the morning, say 0400-0700 are usually made up of those who cannot sleep, those who are chasing their losses from earlier or those wanting to play a quick session before they head off to their day job for the rest of the day. Whichever of the three stereotypes they are, they are all ideal candidates for padding your bankroll with as they will either be very prone to making mistakes or going out of their way not to lose before they spend eight hours behind a desk!

Likewise, there is an increased number of weak players late at night, from midnight onwards, which is no coincidence that this is the time when most people have relaxed and had a few beers or a couple of glasses of wine. I have a friend who used to make a ton of money simply logging onto European heavy sites around 2300-0030 when British pubs closed and taking the money off drunken gamblers!

Other things to consider are days of the week such as the weekend attracting more recreational players, public holidays doing the same, basically any time recreational players are going to be online rather than working, is a good time to play poker! The festive holidays are superb as sites generally run a Christmas based promotion at the same time a large number of players are merry from a few drinks or generally in joyous moods because of the festivities! Do yourself a favour this Christmas and bag yourself a few fish!

Hook yourself some famous Betfair Poker fishes by signing up for a free account here and as a reward you will be able to choose your own bonus of between $50 and $2,500!