Poker communities started to develop quickly after the poker boom initiated in 2003, when Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP Main Event after qualifying through an online satellite, beating numerous professional players in the process. Suddenly playing poker online became very popular, and players were looking to connect with each other also outside the online felt.
If you want to improve in poker, gambling or any type of strategy games, it’s very useful to share thoughts and discuss with like-minded players. For improving as a player, you should be looking for a poker community with high-quality posts, hand histories and people who are actually very skilled and willing to give advice. Here is a list of poker forums covering the top 10 poker communities that can help your improvement as a player:
Beasts Of Poker describes itself as community where poker loving entrepreneurs and poker professionals share a vision of helping and inspiring players in the game we love so much. Although they are a quite new & fresh website, they already have some interesting blogs and articles to help you become a winning poker player. Besides covering the strategy and mindset needed for winning poker, they have a bunch of great reviews of the different online poker rooms to help you choose the softest poker games online in 2019. Their pro team includes some of the top online & live beasts, who might actually drop a comment if you post hand histories on their forum, which is a huge plus! (disclosure: I’m a content producer at beastsofpoker.com)
As the largest poker forum on the internet by far, TwoPlusTwo aka 2+2 has something for every type of player. They have sub-sections for all imaginable game formats and active discussion — however, the trick is to identify which posters know what they talk about, as with a large forum there is always trolls and posters who can mislead you if you take them seriously! All the hot topics in online poker and generally in gambling and online casinos can be found first at 2+2, and some of their top sections include gossip and news, strategy and bad-beats and brags.
Being mainly a coaching site, Runitonce.com aka RIO offers some of the top coaching materials available from top coaches like Phil Galfond, Jens Kyllönen, Jason Koon, Sam Greenwood, BenSulsky and Joni Jouhkimainen. It’s hard to match the level of their coaching, as some of these coaches are also among the best players in the world in their game formats! However, RIO does also have articles and active forums where poker students discuss different game formats and hand histories.
4. PokerVIP.com
PokerVIP is a website that covers all the important aspects of improving as a poker player: Poker strategy articles, coaching, reviews of poker rooms and poker forum for members. Their forum sections includes poker blogs, hand histories, marketplace and even a lifestyle section! Generally their members are very friendly and helpful, and you can sell pieces of your action at their marketplace.
PokerStrategy was once maybe the most active strategy forum available for online poker players, but nowadays other forums provide more active discussion. Nevertheless, you can find tons of good content on their forums, as well as many active members from different countries. From their articles, you can learn the basics of short-stack no-limit holdem, which can be an easy way to start trying out online poker and learn the basics of winning play.
The home for many tournament players, PocketFives is a long-standing poker community aimed for those who enjoy playing multi-table tournaments. You can find the top rankings globally and by country in online tournaments on PocketFives, and also some reviews of online poker sites. Many of the hand histories posted by their members are in a format of question, which makes it more likely that forum members will give their opinion on how the hand should have been played.
The Reddit community is quite active in almost any topic you can imagine of, and their poker subreddit makes no exception. They have a total of 115 000 members with a few hundred being online at any time of day, so you have plenty of friends to discuss all aspects of poker with on Reddit! Some of the posts are very humorous, and others are quite serious — finding your favourite posters might prove quite difficult when first joining the subreddit, but will become easier in time.
With 287 672 members, Cardschat is one of the biggest poker forums available online. Their members post regularly on topics including live poker, tournament and cash games, how to start out in poker as a beginner and where to play online. They also have community hangout section, where you can discuss anything off-topic with other players.
9. Donkr.com
Donkr forum has been connecting players from all over the world for many years, but has seen a steep decline in active discussion during the last few years. However, you can find some good quality posts by searching through the forum. Donkr covers also reviews of multiple online poker rooms.
10. Husng.com
Husng offers a special community and coaching for Sit & Go players, and their website is run by some of the successful players in that poker format. They offer advice for SNG players of all levels in format of free videos, and you can also discuss hands and different tools that can improve your play in SNG’s on their forums.