If I had never played online poker before...

I actually do meet a lot of B&M poker players only, or just people who have a passing interest in poker but never played online. I'm jealous of them in a way, because there are so many opportunities for them. If I were them, here's what I'd do.

A Beginner's Guide to Online Poker

The first and easiest decision is where to play. I'd click on my Instant Bankroll Banner and get my free $75 at Party Poker and play at the Beginners Tables until I had played the 500 hands to release the $25 bonus and cash out the money to a Neteller account.

From there I would take the remaining money and deposit it into Full Tilt Poker using the Poker Source Online bonus code to get 6000 PSO Points. You might have to deposit some of your own money via Neteller to bring the total deposit up to $100 if you've gotten unlucky and lost any while playing at Party Poker. If your play is even halfway decent it shouldn't be much, and you'll see in a moment why it is definitely worth it. The Full Tilt promotion goes so quickly you can complete it in around two hours.

Then use the PSO points to get Poker Tracker. If I were a beginner, I'd probably also get The Poker Tracker Guide. That would leave me with 1000 PSO Points as Poker Tracker only costs 5000 PSO Points. (The equivalent of $50.)

Now that I have Poker Tracker in place, I would do one of the 9000 Point Promotions at Poker Source Online at a site that supports Poker Tracker. Absolute Poker is a good destination for this. When you've completed the Absolute Poker promotion, you'll have 10,000 PSO Points, which you can exchange for a Party Poker $100 gift card or an Amazon.com $100 gift certificate.

So far you've gotten:

$100 at Party Poker from Instant Bankroll
Poker Tracker for free
$100 Cash or GC from PSO via Absolute Poker

Even the WORST poker player should be at least even at this point, with the added benefit of a couple thousand poker hands of experience along with three different online poker room experiences. Plus you've got Poker Tracker, which is the best money making poker tool available, and you've gotten some firsthand experience with it.

From here, the sky is the limit. There are a dozen online poker rooms that have promotions with Poker Source Online, and most of them are supported by Poker Tracker.

So you newbies get to work!