Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

short stack strategy_applied_update 5

Sunday, August 31st, 2008 | Poker Articles, Poker Projects | 2 Comments

“Easy come easy go” seems to be the story of my life when it comes to reaching the magical 200$ poker bankroll. I was so close 3 sessions ago when I hit 197$, but I’m now down to 135$. As usual I have made a graph which clearly shows my dismal last 3 sessions.

Here’s how it happened (posts taken from my bankroll building thread on the PokerBRB forum)

Took a beating tonight

Not my best session hour ever. Lost 3 buyins (-24$) and my bankroll is now down to 171$

Lost with QQ against AK (turn and river were AK)
Lost with AA against AKs (turn gave my opponent the flush)
Lost with 910s on a A52 board (2 of my suit) against KK

Instead of playing on, I decided to stop for the evening. No point in continuing when I am mad about my losses.

Perfect example of the short stack strategy in action

I look down at KK in early position and raised 7xBB to 3,5$. I get 2 callers.
The flop is 10 8 K, two spades. I go all in with my remaining 4,5$ and get one caller with QJ
Perfect, I get the money in as favorite which will make me a winning player in the long run.
Not tonight however since the river was an A
My bankroll is currently free-falling….

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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Projects

The “only” call

Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy | 1 Comment

Before I go on with this post, let me introduce myself as I am new to the Poker Bankroll Blog team of bloggers. My online name is McTap03 and I’m a Poker-holic. There, I said it, and now that I have that off my chest I feel much better. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery. But then again, why would I want to recover? So nevermind, I’m not addicted.

Anyway, if you really want to know more about me, check out my blog.

Now onto this blog.

Have you ever called a bet (tournament or cash game) where you had a good feeling you were behind but the amount was “only” a little bit and well worth it to see another card to maybe hit your miracle card to win?

Before I go on about this topic, let me give you a little insight into where I started thinking about this.

My wife went shopping yesterday and I knew before hand that this was going to be an expensive day. This morning I wake up and see all the items she purchased. There is plenty but I brush it off as I have only a short time to get ready before commuting (1 hr) to work. As I’m leaving, she wakes up and asks if I like the purchases. I make a comment about item X that I felt was really not necessary, which she replies with “it was ‘only’ X dollars” and heads back to bed. So while collecting my thoughts during my commute, I come to this conclusion: I say the same thing when it comes to poker and totally feel it to be justified.

So getting back to my original question, ask yourself the following: Have you ever called a bet (tournament or cash game) where you didn’t like your situation but the amount was “only” a little bit and well worth it to see another card to maybe hit your miracle card to win?

If the answer is yes, then how many times have you actually hit your miracle card? And did you win the pot? My guess is that you hit your card far less than the ‘good’ odds you were given to see the card. And then, depending on what the card was, you probably didn’t get paid off for it. The reason I say this is that, if the card made a flush or straight, most observant opponents would put you on it and then either not bet before you, or not call your value bet. So unless the card made you trips or top 2 pr (which are easier to disguise), then you won’t get much value on your river bet. Plus you still might lose if your opponent has you ‘out kicked’. So what do you do? Poker is at times a gamble, so you can’t stop calling the smallish bet on the turn/river, but you can minimize when you do, therefore controlling your ‘leak.’

Too many players, especially at the lower limit games, like to chase cards as they figure they will win a big pot if they hit, but in reality this is a HUGE flaw in their game. They are throwing away money/chips for a chance to hit it big. This is where outs and odds really make a difference. If you are chasing a flush draw/OESD then you might be getting good odds to call the “only” bet, but if the draw is to trips, 2 pr, or even worse top pair, then your odds are probably not in your favour to call. The good players know their odds and outs, while the ‘fish’ don’t, or don’t care about them. The good players have a better understanding of when to call the ‘only’ bet and when to let it go. So if you want to become a better player, really start focusing on this aspect of your game (mostly odds and outs), control your leaks (especially if you hear yourself say “it is only X more to call”, then don’t do it), and over time you should become better.

Good luck at the tables.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy

Poker Bankroll blog update

Friday, August 29th, 2008 | Poker News | No Comments

Here’s a quick update on what’s been happing behind the scenes on the Poker Bankroll Blog lately. As you might have noticed we have been looking for poker bloggers to write on our blog. We have had great response to our add and are proud to announce that we already have 4 new Authors writing on our blog:

• Brian will be writing on Sundays
• McTap03 will be writing on Saturdays
• William will be writing on Thursdays
• JGiles will be writing on Tuesdays

We hope you will enjoy their posts as much as we do.

They will also be writing about their blogs and poker experiences on the PokerBRB forum.

Remember to sign up to the PokerBRB forum to qualify for entry into the Poker Bankroll Blog freerolls.

Your PokerBRB team

Tags: Poker News

Malta News

Friday, August 29th, 2008 | Poker and Life | No Comments

So a little update from Malta. As you may know we have committed ourselves to different projects by moving to Malta and starting a business. Until now it has resulted in PokerBankrollBlog, PokerBRB and WOSB. But we can’t keep working on those projects 24/7 so I have decided to socialise a bit more. This can be done in many ways – and the obvious would be to get drunk, go party and meet new people down here in Paceville – a street with disco’s and bars partying every day of the week.

But lately I have chosen a different path – which is salsa . Okay it may not sound so masculine and many of my friends tend to agree with this – but when you think about it is quite to the contrary – there are lots and lots of girls, you will normally get to dance with 10 girls each night (NOT MEN) and the majority of the people there are English language students for 3 weeks and therefore more open to new people.

Now I have been for this beginner class a number of times and I am starting to know the basics very well so I thought why not get good at it. So I decided to go for this advanced class yesterday and see what happens – it can’t be that difficult I thought….but it was. When I came up there people where doing crazy dance stuff so I backed off a bit. But the teacher kept shouting “If you never jump in the water you will never learn to swim”….which sounds true though I have never learned to swim actually – but that’s a different story.

So I decided to jump in the water and started dancing with this experienced lady in the 40’s. And damn it was difficult – the teacher just kept adding new moves to the routine. And it didn’t help that the teacher – which was a big black man from Jamaica – was a bit intimidating and that he had no problem shouting in your face when you did something wrong. But actually we got the hang of it in the end and I can now call myself advanced salsa student…..if that is something to be proud of.

— Join the Poker Bankroll building community on the PokerBRB forum and get support and useful hints from other bankroll building poker players.

— Get a PokerBRB rakeback deal to maximize your revenues.

Tags: Poker and Life

The Importance of Bankroll Management

Thursday, August 28th, 2008 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Management | 1 Comment

Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is William and I run a poker blog called Willy C’s Poker Blog. I will be writing weekly on PokerBankrollBlog on thursdays, I hope you enjoy my posts!

The Importance of Bankroll Management

One of the most important aspects of being a successful poker player, (apart from being good at poker obviously), is having good bankroll management skills. This part of poker is largely over-looked by a lot of poker players, and the simple fact is, if you are good at poker, then there is a higher chance that you will not be as successful as you could be unless you take care to play in the correct games.

So what are the guidelines for good bankroll management?
Personally, as a guide I only like to play with 5% of my bankroll at any time. This rule applies to both cash and tournaments. (You will find from most other players that 5% is the normal amount, some however are even stricter and use a 2% or even 1% rule!).

Cash Games:
If you are playing $0.05/$0.10 NL cash games, then you want to have at least $10 (100 x Big Blind) on the table. This means that you must have about $200 (20 x $10) in your bankroll if you follow the 5% rule.

Tournaments:
With a bankroll of $200, this will allow you to play in $10 tournaments.

Whats the point in being so strict with the bankroll?
Well this is an easy answer! If you have $200 in your bankroll, you could obviously play in a $200 tournament. But if you get knocked out without making the money, then boom, your down to $0. If however, you only play in the $10 tournaments with a $200 bankroll, it will be quite hard to go to $0 because you would in effect, have to lose 20 (or more) games in a row!

When to move up/down the stakes?
Just stick to the percentages as a guide for which games to play at! If you are playing tournaments, then usually, the next level up from $10 is $20. So going on the 5% rule, this means you can comfortably move up once you have got to $400.

The 5% rule works a treat for making sure you don’t go broke aswell. If your bankroll happens to drop from $200 to $100, then just move down to the $5 games until you get back to $200. (It is VERY important to stick to this rule because if you do lose half the bankroll in the current level, then chances are, you might not be ready for that level).

This ‘5% rule’ just makes playing poker boring!
I’ll answer that statement with a question:

Maybe it does, but what is more satisfying, having a steadily growing bankroll or just going broke all the time?

Poker success is determined on how much you have won/loss over periods of months/years, not hours.

I hope you enjoyed reading my first post on the PokerBankrollBlog, see you next week! Don’t forget to check out Willy C’s Poker Blog!

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Management

Poker Bankroll Blog Freeroll

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | Poker Freeroll | No Comments

Poker Bankroll Freerolls

First of all we are happy to see that we are getting decent traffic to our blog now. Actually we are absolutely thrilled about this. I hope that everybody enjoys at least some of our posts;)

We will arrange a number of freerolls in September for the readers of this blog and the members of our poker forum only. Mark, Anders and I will of cause also play, so it should be great fun.

The tournaments will be held at Titan Poker (does not accept US players) and Poker Nordica (accepts US players).

To dates so far are:
September 7th (Sunday), $50 prize pool
September 13th (Saturday), $50 prize pool
September 19th (Friday), $50 prize pool
September 27th (Saturday), $50 prize pool

The rules for participating in the freerolls are quite simple. You have to be a member of our poker forum. So if you are not already a member, visit our poker forum and sign up. It is that simple!! Once you have made your first post you will automatically be moved to the active users group in which all the members will receive a PM with the tournament passwords.
I will post a new blog entry when we get closer to the date.

By the way, we have made a news feed so that you can receive an email when we publish new posts.

Subscribe to the Poker Bankroll Blog!!

Michael, August 27th.

Tags: Poker Freeroll

Workout disaster

Monday, August 25th, 2008 | Poker and Life | 2 Comments

Alas!! I discovered a giant moth lying in my protein powder tonight. I don’t know how long it’s been there and more importantly I don’t how how many moth larvae I might have consumed.

The whole experience has left me with a rather negative attitude towards the moth community.

Tags: Poker and Life

Bankroll Skyrocket – $10 to $2000 in 24hours

Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Tournament | 2 Comments

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Bankroll Skyrocket - $10 to $2000 in 24hours

Let me tell you a Story of Luck and a little Skill

I’ve always been a believer and attempter of bankroll management. My difficulty seems to be that bankroll management and TILT are often not well mixed, like prescription meds and alcohol. I will later discuss my bankroll beliefs but for now to tell you about my intense bankroll building that I accomplished on Friday August 22.

I had recently cashed out my bankroll on Full Tilt after a rocky month, but a nice profit. I had been playing some cash games on another site but was itchy to return to Full Tilt for some tournament play after watching a good friend of mine place second in a $26 token KO taking down over $2000. It was early Friday morning when this tournament ended. This friend had owed me $10 from a week before and he transferred it to my account. I seem to be nocturnal these days so I decided to play a little poker. I played a $5 tournament and took first place, boosting my bankroll to $170. Being that the sun was up when that tournament ended, I slept through the majority of Friday. I dabbled around Friday night after I woke up and ended up playing two tournaments, an Omaha token tourney and Full Tilt’s $10 Midnight Madness. I busted out of the Omaha early but after a rocky start in the madness, seemed to be sticking around. I wasn’t hitting cards but was building a stack slowly, holding about half of the average throughout most of the tournament.

It wasn’t until the bubble burst that cards and luck seemed graced me. I won some races and had my Kings and jacks hold up to make the final two tables with an average chip stack. I had to endure a marathon before I busted the tenth place player and the final table was set. This was a memorable hand as I was dealt pocket aces in late position and finally busted the final table bubble. I put in a minimum raise with my aces to trick the loose aggressive players on me left. Both blinds called and the flop came low and paired. The blinds checked and I put in a standard continuation bet of about half the pot. The small blind instantly pushed in his average sized stack. I called and he showed K10 off suit, drawing almost dead. I knocked him out and the final table was set, with myself holding a nice chip lead over the field, about 500K of the 2.5 million chips in play. Sitting in this position I now felt that this was my tournament to lose.

Screenshot from the final table

End result

This feeling was inspiring as well as scary. Being that first and ninth was a $3000 difference I played conservative at the starting of the final table. I experienced one suckout to double up an opponent and faded my way to four handed play. I was still holding my 500K stack and a dominate chip leader had emerged. The difference between fourth and first was over $2000 so I didn’t want to risk playing against the chip leader before knocking out the short stacks. The leader was amazingly loose and proceeded to suckout out to get us heads up. I played heads up well but could not seem to get ahead of my opponent. I made a nice bluff, betting the turn and the river on an ace high board but lost almost half my stack when my opponent called with king high. At this point I still had about 300K to my opponents over 2.0 millions chips. The last hand was my A4 suited all in pre-flop against my opponent’s pockets fives. I lost this hand and took the juicy second place prize of just under $2000.

This tournament was only $10 to enter but offered a high payout due to the over 1700 people that entered. In 24 hours I had turned my bankroll from $10 to over $2000. This was not done by following any set bankroll management. I only practice bankroll management if I have a big bankroll that I want to protect. I see no point in trying to build and protect $10 to $50. I cannot play well at micro limits and by risking small deposits give myself a chance to build a big bankroll to start managing. I now have over $2000 in my account which I am protecting. I never put more than %5 of my bankroll at risk in wither a cash game or a tournament. This way I can safely handle bad beats and runs of bad luck to push my bankroll higher. Don’t worry about using any math equation to figure out how to manage your bankroll. To be a good manager, just play what you like but make sure not to risk enough of your bankroll to take a hit to your poker funds. If you play limits where you feel comfortable losing, you will be more relaxed and play better, helping build your roll higher and higher.

Send my any question you have about bankroll management or tournament play and I will be glad to answer them or add them to my next post.

Open a new account at Full Tilt Poker using referral code 2008BONUS to receive a %100 deposit bonus up to $600. I also offer rake back for Full Tilt Players signing up with this code. Contact me at 2008BONUS@live.ca after you have registering with your Full Tilt ID, email address and name to verify your account. Rake back is a portion of the rake that the poker room takes from tournaments and cash games that you will get deposited in your account every month. Get your money back, use code 2008BONUS

(Rake back can only be awarded to players who submit their information to 2008BONUS@live.ca)

I am working diligently to upload all of the newest 2008 WSOP episodes as they come out, visit my YouTube channel to subscribe and watch the latest episodes

http://www.youtube.com/user/briansuta

Remember AK vs. QQ isn’t a coin flip

- Brian Suta

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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Tournament

Poker bloggers Wanted

Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | Poker News | No Comments

Have you started your own poker blog but find yourself struggling to get decent exposure and traffic?

Have you lost your motivation to write about your poker experiences?

Do you want to share your poker experiences with others but don’t have the time to make your own blog?

If you can answer yes to any of the above questions we have a great opportunity for you:

Poker Bankroll blog is seeking qualified poker bloggers for featured weekly posts.

Here’s what we offer:

• Your own category on the Poker Bankroll blog
• A weekly post where you can write about your poker experiences and promote your affiliation links
• A blogging platform with solid and steadily increasing traffic numbers
• To be a part of a dedicated team of poker players

If you are interested send us a mail at support@pokerbrb.com with an introduction to yourself and an example of some of your writing.

Tags: Poker News

Poker memories

Friday, August 22nd, 2008 | Poker Articles, Poker and Life | No Comments

I was just thinking of my worst poker memory from my own game and it just took me on a mental rollercoaster ride from one bad event to the next. Why did I take this mental ride – I don’t know – it’s not making any sense. It’s not like the ride is expected to lift my spirits – but actually it did – some of the moments were quite fun when I recall the memories.

So which one was the worst? It’s not easy because you have to take many circumstances into considerations – the sum of money lost, the degree of the bad beat, importance of the event to my self-esteem as a poker player or the external elements making the event so much worse.

After the mental ride one event stood out hitting the head on the nail for the two last circumstances mentioned above. I was in Newcastle several years back – staying there for half a year with Michael who also writes here at the Pokerbankrollblog. One week we had a visit from Mark (Pokerbankrollblog) and a friend of mine and we decided all of us to go to this big tournament at a casino in Newcastle. My experience in live poker at the time was zero – I had never been to a official live tournament event before.

So we get to the tables and first hand I get is AJ suited. I see the flop and hit top pair of jacks second to act. I play it aggressively and make a pot bet, but I get a call. Turn is a low card so I keep being aggressive while thinking a lot about what to do. He ended up going all in with me calling – beaten to trips seven…ouch. OK that’s it I think and I get up of my chair when all the other players start clapping me out – beaten in the first hand and the first person to exit the tournament. Welcome to live poker tournaments .

OK it might not be in the category of a nightmare but remember: I was young, rookie and just starting to get a feeling for the game – I was vulnerable .

— Join the Poker Bankroll building community on the PokerBRB forum and get support and useful hints from other bankroll building poker players.

— Get a PokerBRB rakeback deal to maximize your revenues.

Tags: Poker and Life, Poker Articles