Free online poker is definitely easier to win at than real money games. I get a kick out of people who boast about how good they are because they won over $300,000 pretend dollars online. The action is easier to beat because the play is so loose. Most pots have five or six players still in the hand for the river card, so even the smallest amount of starting-hand selection strategy will give you an advantage over the game.

It’s loose because it doesn’t really matter to the players whether they win or lose. When the game has your money at stake, it takes on a whole new attitude. Your opponents care about how they play and they work hard at being good players. So to compete, you must try and improve your game as well. If you don’t, the real money games will be difficult for you to beat.

“It’s done,” says Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. The it being the Jason Kidd trade, which was reportedly approved by the league on Tuesday afternoon. That makes both the Mavericks and Kidd’s former employers, the New Jersey Nets, solid fade candidates for the next few days.

The Nets are hosting Chicago on Wednesday night, while Dallas is at New Orleans. There are three players leaving New Jersey and four active players (plus Keith Van Horn) coming off the Mavs roster. Both teams could be stuck with very short benches Wednesday, depending on how quickly players report and pass their physicals.

Then there’s the matter of these two clubs becoming acclimatized to their new players, and vice versa. Dallas looks like the better fade prospect after what may prove to be a downgrade from Devin Harris to Kidd. But the Nets are rumored to be shopping Vince Carter, which would create even more chaos in East Rutherford.

Online poker tells are not like live ones. The only things you have to go on are betting patterns and time intervals between actions. If you notice that a player always acts fast, and suddenly they are pausing on the river before betting, they’re usually trying to induce a call and have a good hand.

Another common one is when the player decides to start using the auto-play buttons. You make a bet and they have the raise button already pressed, to make it look like they have the nuts and will raise anything. If the player hasn’t been using these buttons prior to this, they are most likely bluffing.

The old “I have to leave” after the all-in move is a classic. A guy gets pocket aces and goes all-in after he writes in the chat that he has to leave the tournament, like he’s giving away his chips.

If you had the pleasure of surfing the Internet in 1993, you might reminisce about dumb terminals, Usenet and Lynx. But even the most old-school Web curmudgeon has to prefer the way things are today. Technological advances have made the Internet sizzle with video, graphics and applications galore.

The online betting experience is no different. Graphic design has improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade. The content itself is sharper as more and more people turn to the Web as their information provider. Security measures are savvier, and performing financial transactions online is now par for the course, even with the UIGEA running interference.

But let’s get back to the graphics for a second. The Internet of the 1990s reminds me of the television of the 1950s: clunky, minimal and accident-prone. Now sports betting is a virtual casino experience, and the casinos just keep getting swankier. How soon before online martinis are served?