Here are some miscellaneous Party Poker tips and tricks that are

related just to the actual Party Poker site.

Add fish to your Buddy List

This is a pretty popular tip used by many of the good players on
Party Poker. By checking your buddy list off and on, you can
see when your favorite maniacs are logging on to play. Though
you are unable to see exactly which table they are seated at, you
can manually search through the tables to look for your target.

This tip is mainly useful if you are adding maniacs to your

buddy list, as maniacs tend to create table dynamics that are
much better for you than say, a calling station. With a maniac at
the table and five calling stations for example, there will be
serious pots being generated, so you can score big if you hit
your cards. At the same token however, with so many drawers
in the pot, your chances for getting outdrawn are very high. Just
remember that.

Click between game tabs to refresh your table listings

This trick is useful mainly for SnG (sit and go / single table)
tournaments, which are notoriously quick to fill up. Many times,
you'll see "Wtng for 5 players" as the table status, but when you
click on the game, it will have already started. This is due to the
table status not updating quickly, which you can force by
clicking between tabs. Of note however, is that Party Poker has
recently upped the refresh rate of the tables substantially, so this
isn't a major issue like it used to be.

Keep player notes on opponents

I cannot stress this enough. So much so that I will be writing an
article on how to take some good notes in the future. While you
always want to be paying attention to how people are playing, in
online poker, players are always coming and going, which
doesn't give you time to feel them out. Taking notes cam help
you when you play these opponents again. Even if you aren't
going to play this person it again, taking notes makes it much
easier to keep a mental track of how each player plays and what
to expect from them. The big things to note are: smart or stupid,
aggressive or passive, tight or loose, straight up or bluffs, bets
out a draw or not and what kind of hands do they play or pre-
flop raise with. Yes, this is a lot of information to note, but it
will help you in the long run.

Use a four color deck

This tip applies not only to Party Poker but many other poker
rooms out there too. There's a reason poker sites offer four color
decks, because they are quite popular and for good reason. If
you play poker long enough, you're going to make mistakes.
Everyone who has played long enough has probably misread
their cards at some point or another (usually after a long stretch),
especially flushes. Using a four colored deck makes it much
easier to identify flushes (and more importantly flush draw
threats) and enables you to use your brain powers elsewhere.

Get hand histories when players don't show their at

the river
Great Party Poker trick that I'm sure many people have figured
out. Many times on the river, only the winning hand is shown -
but you are very interested in seeing what the loser was holding
too. Simply click on the hand number at the top right of the
screen and request the hand history for that game via email.
Depending on how busy Party Poker is at the moment, you
should get an email with the history in a matter of minutes.

Scroll to the bottom of the history and you can instantly find out
what the other player was holding. I normally do this in
conjunction with player notes, to get me a good idea of what a
player is willing to play with on a river. Showdown information
is always the most critical, as you can analyze their decision
making process from the ground up.

Wait a full table rotation before posting the BB

This tip is probably debatable by many of the players out there.
In my opinion, unless you know what you are doing, this tactic
will save you money in the long run by letting you not only get
mentally prepared for the game, but also gives you invalable
time to evaluate your opponents. The worst thing that can
happen is to get dealt a strong hand early and then get caught in
a massive raising war between two players you don't know.
They could be two maniacs for sure, but what if one of them is a
maniac and the other player is super-tight? Most likely, that
super tight player is holding the nuts while you are bumbling by
with top pair or two pair. Not a good move. So be patient, take
notes in the meanwhile and save money in the long run.

Turn on your sound, turn down the music

It's no secret that us humans work better using more of our
senses, otherwise we wouldn't have been born the way we are.
Yes, it may get annoying to hear the dinks, beeps and chip
sounds of the game after awhile, but hearing those audible cues
are vital to your play. You are much less prone to make
mistakes when you can hear and see what people are doing, as
opposed to just seeing it. For me, I notice it helps my timing
when I am trying to figure out if I am onto a online tell or not,
based on the delay during the other person's actions.

Show the avatars (people in chairs), but don't

stereotype them
This is probably the most debatable tip I'm guessing, because if
you've turned them off, you probably really don't like the avatars
to begin with. And if you do like avatars, well, they're probably
on already. I just want to get my two cents in about this Party
Poker tip by saying that even though avatars are computer
graphics, it's again human nature to easily identify faces. That
means we can more easily associate a personality to a face, so it
makes it easier to remember how someone is playing when we
can attach a face to a playing style.

That being said, I'm sure there is some negative influence of

these faces as well, because we probably tend to associate a
certain avatar with a playing style. For instance, I'll admit that I
used to mentally associate one of the avatar pictures with
bluffing. I think this was caused by a long string of
coincidences, when different players using that avatar would
constantly bluff, so I just starting linking that specific avatar
with bluffing. Don't let this happen to you.

Buy-in more than necessary at the poker table

If you've been doing your homework, you'll know that you
should always sit in with at minimum 20 times the big blind at
any poker table. In the realities of online poker, this should be
more along the lines of at least 40 times the BB. Personally, I
like to sit down with practically 100x the BB. You should think
about doing this too. Why? First, don't ever be in the position of
holding the nuts and not having enough money to raise the pot.
I've seen this happen too many times, where a guy will have
flopped a full house in a $3/6 game, but only have $12 in his
bankroll. He could have made a killing if it weren't for the fact
he was playing with a small stack.

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

If you are worried about losing your money, you should stop
playing poker, switch tables or take a break. Second reason to
buy more than is necessary, is for intimidation factor. Opinions
may differ, but faced off against a big stack, my feelings are that
a good amount of players (but not all) show a bit more respect
(read: fear) and will play accordingly - which is to your benefit.
Now, don't read this as buying in for $1,000 in a $1/2 game,
because then people will think you are just nuts, but $400.. now
we're talking.

Protect your computer!

This may sound like some paranoid or strange advice, but it
never hurts to take extra precautions when it comes to protecting
your computer and poker information. Anti-virus software of
course is nice, but in reality isn't as much a threat as spyware or
trojans. I recommend getting popular (and free!) spyware killer
that will thouroughly clean your system out of tracking junk on
your computer. Firewall software is great too and highly
recommended. Windows XP comes built in with it's own
firewall that you can enable, but other software like BlackIce
defender are even better. Chances are nobody will be coming
after you for your poker passwords, but why chance it?