Online poker rooms (not unlike other online businesses) have a few options to provide this support to customers:

E-mail Support:
For general questions and inquiries that aren’t of real urgency, e-mail support is generally adequate for getting help.  Of course, that depends on the competence of those answering said e-mails, as well as the turnaround time on receiving a response.

Most rooms at a bare minimum offer some kind of e-mail support, either through posted addresses or online forms that can be filled in to contact support.

Telephone Support
Support by phone is always a good thing.  For more urgent concerns it gives the player the opportunity to get a hold of someone quickly, without the wait of an e-mail response.  Many poker rooms have a call center to handle these inquiries, and the better support lines are available 24/7 for their clients.

Hours of operation are important to bear in mind, as well as the competency of the people on the other end of the line.  Some venues may outsource their support center, which can result in timely, but not always the greatest of help. 

You should verify that telephone support is available in your specific area as well.  The majority of places will have a toll-free option for the U.S. and Canada, but is there an 800 number for your region, if not – is there an international number posted at all?

Live Online Support
Chances are if you’ve been surfing the ‘net for a while, you’ve probably seen one of these ‘click here for live help’ button once or twice, usually accompanied with a picture of an operator.  This type of live support is basically a quick chat application that allows you to type and receive text messages in real time with a support operator.  It’s quicker than e-mail, and provided you can type at a good pace it’s not a bad option, also allowing the operator to pass along URL’s easily if there’s anything they would like to refer you too.

While you’ll hopefully have a smooth playing experience wherever you get your game on, knowing beforehand that solid customer service is available can save you a lot of heartache if problems should ever arise.

Loyalty programs at online poker rooms are normally based of the number of raked hands played, as well as at what limits.  This isn’t unlike what casino patrons may have experienced at the gaming tables – being ‘rated’ by a pit boss for free comps, though instead of show tickets or free rooms and meals – an online room can’t easily offer much to their customers other than cash back or free chips.

Because the software based rooms have easy access to player data, keeping count of raked hands is an automated process, and the amount earned can usually be seen through the poker client updated in real time, along with any release requirements should they exist.

If you’re the kind of player that likes to play the majority of your games at the same location, you should definitely be patronizing a room that offers some kind of loyalty rewards (provided all other things measure equally). 

While not typically advertised as prominently as sign-up bonuses, you can usually find information on what’s available through a poker rooms Web site.  When in doubt, don’t hesitate to ask the customer service department, who should be all too pleased to discuss the matter with a potential long-term player.

While credit cards are still the most popular depositing method, many issuing banks have begun to block gaming related charges due to legal concerns.  If your card(s) won’t allow direct deposits, there are alternatives.  Listed below are some of the more popular methods for moving your money.

Credit Cards
Many US players will have a hard time using them thee days, but Visa and MasterCard are still accepted at some venues, and are the most commonly accepted card types. Beware that although the casino (or its e-cash merchant) will usually record the transaction as a purchase, your credit card company may see the transaction as a cash withdrawal and apply their customary transaction fees.

NETELLER
NETELLER is an online service not unlike PayPal, but with no restrictions on deposits and withdrawals from online gaming companies.  Deposits can be made to your account via credit card or bank account, then funds are easily transferred back and forth from poker room to customer in real-time.

FirePay
FirePay is a personal payment account that you fund with your credit card without revealing your credit card details or payment history. Because of industry-wide credit card restrictions, most casinos recommend that players user FirePay instead of credit cards. FirePay accepts Visa, MasterCard, or Check. With FirePay, your casino bankroll can be credited in minutes.

PrePaid ATM
PrePaid ATM works like any ATM card, except the balance on the card has been pre-paid.  You can fund these ATM cards with credit cards, wire transfers, and most other methods.

Western Union
You can send cash via Western Union to most online casinos to fund your account.  While WU transfers carry higher transaction fees, casinos will usually compensate with a bonus on your deposit.

Direct Bank Transfer (Automatic Clearing House, or ACH)
This is simply a transfer from your bank to the bank account (or e-cash merchant account) for the casino. This is usually accomplished by entering all the necessary data into an electronic form in the Cashier section of a casino’s Web site. ACH transfers are restricted to US bank account holders, and processing can take up to 7 days.

Wire Transfer
Like an ACH this is also a transfer from your bank account to the casino’s account. But with Wire Transfer, you usually need to FAX or e-mail to the casino a form that will allow them to request a wire transfer on your behalf. They make the request of your bank, and you must then give your bank authorization to wire the money. This method typically takes quite a bit longer because of the extra processing times required.

Check or Money Order
This method is necessarily slow because the check or money order must be mailed, processed by the casino, and cleared by both banks before your account is credited.

A new player bonus doesn’t necessarily have to be chips.  Free tournament entries are becoming more common, raffles are starting to pop-up, and even physical gifts are mailed to new customers on occasion.  These bonuses offered vary from room to room, and are constantly changing as the marketing department sees fit.

If you’re new to the world of online poker, there’s nothing wrong with taking these rooms up on the incentives they are offering.  It’s certainly not uncommon for people to play at more than one venue as well, meaning it’s possible to rack up multiple bonuses from a handful of rooms.

That said, there are some things you should bear in mind when taking a new player bonus from an online poker room:

There are always terms and conditions.
If there weren’t, people would simply make a deposit, take the bonus, then cash out ahead of the game without so much as having played a hand.  To prevent this, bonus terms usually state that you must meet a ‘play-through’ requirement before either receiving the bonus, or being permitted to cash out said bonus.

It’s most common for poker rooms to have a separate ‘bonus account’ that they will place your extra chips in, which will be released to your regular bankroll after you have played a specified number of hands.  This allows the room to collect on rake fees from your play, essentially compensating them for your bonus.

These play-through requirements will vary from place to place, but will generally be more stringent the better the bonus.  If someone’s offering a 400% sign-up bonus on your first deposit, you can bet you’ll have to play a lot of hands before you’ll get it.

How to get your bonus:
Once again, not all rooms have the same procedure when it comes to actually claiming your bonus.  Sometimes it’s automatically credited to your account after you make your initial chip purchase, sometimes you will be required to enter a ‘bonus code’ along with your deposit, and sometimes you’ll have to enter a code somewhere after you’ve bought in for chips.

The only way to know for sure is to check the terms and conditions on the Web site first.  Make sure you know how to receive the bonus, as well as what you’ll have to do to get it.  If you’re not sure, utilize the customer support options given to you to find out, and once again do it first.

New players incentives are often a great deal, just be sure to read and understand the fine print so you know what to expect.

Finding a Table:
While it may not take thousands of players to get a single game going, online poker rooms have a lot more table variety than a typical brick and mortar casino, which results in more dilution across each table.  A wide variety of table options such as the game you’re playing, no-limit, pot-limit or fixed limit, and the stakes of the game can all spread out a smaller rooms player base quite thin. 

When you’re looking for a table with a respectable number of players, the more active patrons at the poker room at any given time the better.  This is especially true when you’re playing games other than Texas Hold’em, or at higher limits where there are generally fewer opponents available even at more populated venues.

Playing ‘Other’ Games:
Texas Hold’em is by far the most popular game played today in poker rooms around the world, and online is no exception.  Unfortunately, if you’re someone that prefers to play 7 Card Stud, Omaha, or other variants, that’s won’t help you find a game.  A relatively small percentage of people are playing Omaha and Stud at any given time, and fewer still if you’re trying to play Razz or 5 Card Draw. 

That said, a larger player base makes that small percentage of players significant enough to find a table that suits your tastes.

Tournaments:
If you frequent sit-and-go tournaments (those pick-up, single-table tournaments that start as soon as the table fills), less activity generally means more waiting. In a busy room there is constantly new tournaments filling in less than a minute, in a smaller room you may have to sit-and-wait. 
Once again, this is especially true when you’re playing anything other than Texas Hold’em, and/or when you are looking for a game with higher buy-ins.

If you enjoy playing in larger multi-table tournaments and events with big prize pools, player activity is even more important. The fewer players as a whole a room has the less participation you can expect in any given tournament, and the fewer players means smaller prizes because there’s less entry money to go around.

Recognition:
If you have a style of play that can be identified and countered, it’s best that you know as much as you can about other players while they know as little as possible about you.  It’s easy to get lost in the crowd when there’s tens of thousands of other players, but much trickier in a smaller poker community.  On the flipside, if you’re the kind of person that needs a reputation to be successful (perhaps an aggressive no-limit player), you may prefer to play at a smaller venue where your name will more often be recognized.

Unlike the local card room, when you play online you never have to wait in line for a seat, so with a few exceptions - the bigger the crowd the better.

Don’t Curse Or Swear.
When you are accustomed to playing with friends on a weekend you might also be accustomed to talking like a sailor – but don’t forget, these aren’t your buddies online.  Because of its accessibility and the ever growing popularity of the game you never know who you’re playing with, so talk like you’re playing cards with someone’s grandmother, because you just might be.

Make Sure You Know How To Play First.
It might sound obvious, but before you sit down to play for even the lowest of real-money games, make sure you understand what you’re doing.  There are plenty of instructions and tutorials out there to help you get started, and most rooms will have either in-game help for each poker variation or instructions on their Web site if you need them.

The vast majority of online rooms have free play tables as well, which play the same as their real-money counterparts but with ‘play chips’.  While the betting is certainly looser because there’s no real stakes involved, these can be a good way to learn the mechanics and get a feel for new games.
 
Don’t Talk About A Hand In Progress.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve folded, nor does it matter if you don’t think your comment reveals much information.  Remaining players could be waiting for any card in the deck to make their hand, and what you reveal can change their actions accordingly.  Generally, there’s not much reason to talk about your hand while you’re at the tables ever, but if you must, wait until the hand is complete.

Keep Up A Good Pace.
Poker software usually has timers for each player when it’s their turn, both to prevent them from taking too long and to prevent them from having their time to act cut short.  These timers can range from 15 to 60 seconds depending on where you play, and most have an additional timer if it detects any connection problems on a player’s computer, allowing them extra time to recover/reconnect. 

Using the maximum amount of time allowed for each hand really slows down the pace of the game, so you should do your best to act promptly when it’s your turn, and use the provided buttons to ‘pre-act’ when possible.

Any five of your seven cards may be played for a high hand, and any five can be played for a low (Aces can be used as both a high and low card).  Straights and flushes do not count in a low hand, so the best possible low is A, 2, 3, 4 and 5, regardless of their suit.  High hands rank the same as in all normal poker games.

When considering what hands to play, the most important thing to keep in mind in split pot games is the big profit difference between winning half the pot and “scooping” it all (winning both high and low hands). 

Scooping the pot usually builds a healthy addition to your stack of chips, while winning half of the pot often results in a player being barely ahead of where they were before they started playing the hand (depending on how many other callers played and lost the hand). The thought that winning two split pots is equal to winning one full pot is not true from a profit point of view, because you will have largely funded your own half of the pot when splitting.

The best starting hands in Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo are those that have a good chance of winning it all, such as:

• Three low cards to a straight flush – such as (7d, 5d) 3d.
• Three low cards to a straight – such as (4s, 2c) 6h.
• Three low cards to a flush – such as (2c, 4c) 6c.
• A low card with an ace – such as (8, 4) A.
• A low pair with an ace – such as (6, 6) A.

Other good starting hands include good high hand starters such as:

• Any trips – such as (7, 7) 7.
• A high pair (aces to jacks).
• A pair of nines or tens with an ace.

Three unpaired low cards are a good start for a low hand and should generally be played.  One  exception would be when holding an eight (the ‘worst’ of the low cards) and facing an opponent who is raising what appears to be a better low draw, in which case you may opt to fold before fourth street is dealt. 

Two or more unpaired high cards are usually an easy fold, because you won’t have an opportunity to draw out a low hand, and have nothing more that high hopes for catching a pair or better for high.  In fact, any unpaired High-Low combinations should usually be folded based on the same premise.

In a nutshell, you should generally only play starting hands that stand a chance of winning one side of the pot when they are very strong (and there is more than one other caller on the table).  Hands that are capable of scooping the pot should almost always be called to fourth street to see how they develop.

Some things to keep in mind when analyzing your hand pre-flop:

• Aces count as both the lowest and highest value cards.
• Middle ranking cards (7 to 10) are typically of little value.
• Your hand should offer potential for both a low hand and a high hand win.
• Remember that the pot can be split several ways if more than one player has the same high or low hand.
• While there will always be a high hand winner each hand, there may not be a low hand winner (there will have to be at least three low community cards for a low hand to be possible, and a player must still have another two low cards to make a 5 card hand).

Bad Omaha Hi/Lo starting hands include:

• Any hand with four cards of the same value. (Remember; you can only play two of them from your hole cards, so if they’re not in the deck you can forget about improving.). 
• Any hand with three cards of the same value. (By the same logic, there’s only one card remaining in the deck that will land you three of a kind.)
• Most hand that contains three or more middle ranked cards. 

Fold these cards right away and save your chips and energy for a better hand.
Good Omaha Hi/Lo starting hands include:

• Hands containing two aces with other low cards (The lower the value of the other cards the better, and better still if you have cards suited with one or both aces.)
• The hands 2AAA, 3AAA, 4AAA(S), 222A(S). (While trips in the hole is normally not a good thing, in this case an ace on the board will give you a strong 3 aces, with no other opponent able to have the same.)
• Hands with three unpaired high cards and an ace if the ace is suited to one of the other  cards held (such as Ad K Q Jd).
• Hands that contain four good low cards (2 to 5) have potential, but you should be prepared to fold if the flop doesn’t turn up an ace. 
• Hands that contain at least two high cards, both of which are suited with a second card.

Keeping the above in mind, the best starting hand would be an A2 suited along with an A3 of a different suit.  These cards have great potential to lock in the best low hand, but also have a good chance at the high hand between the pair of aces and two nut flush draws.

Generally, a good starting hand in Omaha Hi-Lo is any hand that has the potential to take both halves of the pot. 

Great Starting Hands:
No hand is infallible, but these have a good chance to take the pot once the deal is done. Generally speaking, a great starting hand should be raised pre-flop, and even re-raised if given the opportunity (except for the lower pairs, which may be better off just called if you are re-raised).

• Pairs of Aces
• Pairs of Kings
• Pairs of Queens
• Pairs of Jacks
• Ace-King Suited

Good Starting Hands:
These hands stand a good chance of improving once the board cards are up, but are less likely to win without some kind of improvement. These type of hands should generally just be called, and sometimes even folded pre-flop if it’s getting too expensive to stay in.

• Pairs of 10’s
• Pairs of 9’s
• A,Q Suited
• A,J Suited
• A,10 Suited
• K,Q Suited
• K,J Suited
• K,10 Suited
• Q,J Suited
• Q,10 Suited
• J,10 Suited
• A,K Off-suit
• A,Q Off-suit
• A,J Off-suit

Respectable Starting Hands:
If you can see a cheap flop, these hands have enough potential to play (sometimes). Never to multiple raises, and be prepared to fold once the flop is up if it doesn’t go your way.

• Pairs of 8’s
• Pairs of 7’s
• J,9 Suited
• 10,9 Suited
• 9,8 Suited
• 8,7 Suited
• Ace and any other suited card
• K,J Off-suit
• Q,J Off-suit
• J,10 Off-suit

Other playable hands may include connected suits (like a 7,8 of hearts), or any other pair. If you don’t have any of the above hands, chances are pretty good you should fold.

Bear in mind this is just a guideline, and what you do with your starting hand depends on a number of other factors, including the number of opponents, their previous actions, your previous actions, and the limits you’re playing.