Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

Poker tournament bonus search

Saturday, February 28th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Bonus, Poker Tools | No Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Tools series.

Repeating the same thing doesn’t make it less true, therefore with no further ado, my words of wisdom: “when playing online poker you should always have either a bonus or rakeback deal associated with your deposit or your account. This will maximize your earnings, increase you bankroll and provide a faster route to higher limits.”

For all you tournament players like myself, finding the right bonus for your limit of poker tournament play and poker site  requirements can be a tedious task. Fortunately my buddies at WOSB  (World Online Sports Bookmakers) have created a poker tournament bonus search page to aid you in your bonus hunting (see screenshot below).

On this page you simply enter your preferred deposit method,  jurisdiction requirements, poker network and the amount you wish to deposit and then press “Find best tournament bonus”. The  poker tournament bonus list below is automatically updated to show you the best tournament bonuses available matching your criteria and ranked by the bonus rake back percent (the percentage of your tournament fees that is paid back to you as a bonus).

If you want to rank the poker tournament bonus list by one of the other columns in the table such as “Bonus Amount” or “Bonus Percent” simply click on the column header and the table will automatically be updated.

Remember that some poker sites offer both bonuses and rakeback at the same time. We have a list of rakeback and bonus deals available through the PokerBRB website.

FYI the poker tournament bonus search page looks best when viewed in Firefox, but the people at WOSB have promised me that the IE version will be improved as soon as possible,

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bonus, Poker Tools

Poker Bankroll Blog’s bankroll building project update 1

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | Poker Projects | 2 Comments

It’s been a couple of weeks since we started our Fulltilt poker (FTP) SNG and MTT poker bankroll building projects, so we thought it was about time with an update on our progress (or lack of the same).
We were off to a slow start, both being busy with the re-design of the pokerbrb website, but then things cleared up and we were able to put in some hours on the FTP tables.

Here’s a quick overview of the tournaments we’ve played:

• Two 3$ MTT’s
• Two 2$ 180 player SNGs
• One 2$ 9 player SNG
• Four 5$ MTTs

We didn’t have any high finishes ITM so our roll on FTP has dropped 13$ to 137$ 

We have experienced quite a few suckouts during our first hours on FTP which has confirmed our hypothesis that all online poker is rigged:-)

As for the opposition; tournament players on FTP seem to be of an overall higher quality compared to Titan poker. You rarely see preflop re-raises on Titan poker, but they happen quite frequently on FTP. Higher quality opponents doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing; their feel for the game means that higher poker level bluffs tend to be more likely to succeed, which is definitely an advantage during the later stages of tournaments. On the other hand, better opponents require that you play your A-game at all times and watch your back. Playing tournaments on auto pilot until the later stages simply won’t cut it on FTP.

We vow to come back stronger this week and get our BR over the original starting mark. At the least, we will go down swinging and embrace the risk to our grave:-)

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

Mark and McTap03

Tags: Poker Projects

SNG (Sit and Go) poker bonus search

Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Bonus, Poker Tools | 5 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Tools series.

When playing online poker you should always have either a bonus or rakeback deal associated with your deposit or your account. This will maximize your earnings, increase you bankroll and provide a faster route to higher limits.

However with more than 357 online poker sites available with their own individual bonus programs, finding the best bonus for your limit and type of play is a daunting task. Fortunately my buddies at WOSB  (World Online Sports Bookmakers) have created several bonus search pages which are a great help for you bonus hunters out there.

The first page I want to mention is the SNG poker bonus search page (see the screenshot below). On this page you simply enter the SNG limit you play, the amount you wish to deposit and other details such as deposit method, jurisdiction and poker network and then press “Find best sit and go bonus”. The SNG poker bonus list below is automatically updated to show you the best SNG bonuses available matching your criteria and ranked by the bonus amount earned per 100 SNGs played.

If you want to rank the SNG poker bonus list by one of the other columns in the table such as “Bonus Amount” or “Bonus Percent” simply click on the column header and the table will automatically be updated.

In many cases it turns out that clearing poker bonuses by playing SNG tournaments is much faster compared to playing cash games and often corresponds to rakeback percentages in excess of 50%.

Remember that some poker sites offer both bonuses and rakeback at the same time. We have a list of rakeback and bonus deals available through the PokerBRB website.

FYI the SNG poker bonus search page looks best when viewed in Firefox, but the people at WOSB have promised me that the IE version will be improved as soon as possible,

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bonus, Poker Tools

Poker freeroll/MTT tournament league on the PokerBRB site

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | Poker News | 6 Comments

As you may have noticed the activity on our blog has been dwindling lately. Rest assured this is not due to blogging fatigue. Unfortunately there are only 24 hours in a day and since sleeping, working full time as a project leader, working out in the gym, eating and taking care of other life necessities take up roughly 22 hours that only leaves 2 hours for poker related work. Currently much of our poker time is spent re-designing the PokerBRB website to accommodate a freeroll/MTT tournament league.

Our freeroll/MTT tournament league will be free to enter and revolve around a monthly leaderboard based on a clever (of course:-)) point system. The top players on our monthly leaderboard will be invited to join in restricted monthly freeroll and tournament finals.

Other improvements to the PokerBRB website will include a new front page, a poker article database page with the best articles from this blog together with a revamped poker rooms section which will hopefully manage to present the information we have collected in a better way than the original (shouldn’t be too hard I think, since we’ve hired our friends from Codus Software to implement the changes:-))

Feel free to visit the PokerBRB site from time to time the next couple of weeks to check out the changes that will be taking place.

Hope you enjoy the league when it’s up and running.

Best Regards

Mark and McTap

Tags: Poker News

The art of poker deception

Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy | 2 Comments

Submitted by Rakewell, this article belongs to the Poker Strategy series.

I recently read this post on Rakewell’s PokerGrump blog where he continues along the track of learning poker from things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with poker.

A friend had free tickets for any Regal Cinema feature, so we hit the one at Fiesta Henderson to see “Slumdog Millionaire” today, curious as to why such an apparently unlikely movie racked up 10 Oscar nominations. Well, the reason becomes obvious after seeing it–it’s simply magnificent. It’s completely original, moving, well written, well acted, well edited.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about the most salient poker-y scene without spoiling a key plot point. Here’s what I can tell you without ruining things: At one crucial juncture, our hero (shown above on the left) has to decide whether somebody is telling him the truth or lying–and everything rides on getting it right. There is some suggestion that he picks up physical tells, but we are led to suspect that his main tool is consideration of the other person’s motivations. When he does that, it leads him to the right answer.

Back in December, 2007, I told this story:

I was on the bad end of another skillful bit of deceptive revealing by an
opponent a couple of months ago. I started with a strong hand (can’t remember
exactly what it was), but hated seeing three hearts on the flop, when I had
none. The turn brought a fourth heart to the board. I bet, my tricky opponent
took a long time to decide what to do. While thinking, he turned over the 7 of
hearts. He finally called. The river was a blank. I decided that with just a
7-high flush, he must be worried that I had a higher flush, so I moved all-in.
He insta-called with the look on his face of the cat that caught the canary (as,
indeed, he had). His other card was the king of hearts. He had flopped the
king-high flush, and his showing the lower card tricked me into thinking exactly
what he wanted me to think: that he just had a low flush and was in a difficult
spot, when really he had the second nuts. Well played, sir–you lured me in
perfectly.

I made a mistake by not considering his motivation. I assumed he was trying to get a read on my reaction to his shown card, and I frankly didn’t even entertain the possibility that he might have some other purpose in his evil little heart. But I learned from that encounter, and now when an opponent does something out of the ordinary, I try to remember to explicitly consider the possibility that what appears straightforward may be deliberate deception.

It’s a useful thing to keep in mind in poker.

Check out Rakewell’s Poker Grump blog

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy

Trash talking – is it really worth it?

Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Rules | 5 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Rules series.

Last night I finally had the opportunity to sit down and play a $10+1 6-person SNG on Mansion. It had been the first time since Sunday I got to play, I know not that long between sessions but still long enough for me.

Before a hand could even be played, a player named SHERWHYNOT was already being very belligerent to the other players, that by the sounds of it, he/she just played against in another SNG game. I just ignored him, as I mostly do with those type of players. First hand gets played down to the river where 2 players show their cards. I was not in the hand, but I was paying attention in hopes of picking up some information on the players. The player that won had bet a flush draw down to the river with A2 and hit, while the other player had played his flopped top pair weak kicker very weak by calling bets down to the river. Great, got some info on both. After the hand was done, SHERWHYNOT started to let loose on the player who lost, by commenting on how poorly they played their hand. He continued this for a while to the point where it was getting annoying.

The problem with this is there’s really no point in trying to teach someone how they should play their hands, especially by criticizing them, or calling them names. If a player wants to get better they should be reviewing their hands after each session to see where they made mistakes and where they can improve. Personally, I want the weak players to continue to play weak hands out of position, so that I may exploit them for all their chips. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made some questionable calls from good and bad positions, and I will continue to do so once in a while as I keep learning this game. When I do, whether someone calls me on it or not, I take the time after the game to review my actions and try to learn from my mistakes, with hopes of becoming a better player. What I don’t want is for some idiot to play teacher to those who don’t know better and make them  better players, as this will lead me, and others, to eventually lose some money to them.

To make things even more interesting, a while later I was in a hand with SHERWHYNOT where I had raised pre-flop from the BTN, only to have him/her move all-in from the SB. In all honesty, I was tired and really didn’t feel like playing any more, so I made the call with 87s! Not a great hand to be calling an all-in with (I was, he had some back), but in reality I was just a little under a coin flip behind and I spiked an 8 on the turn to take it down. Yeah, odds played in my favour. This tilted him, and he proceeded to criticize everything about me. I then proceeded to comment on how I knew an 8 would hit. Super Tilt now! My buddy was railing me and we were having a good laugh about it on the side. A few hands later, I again pick up 87s (different suit), this time from the SB and push the BB (SHERWHYNOT) all-in (he was very short stacked and I was the big stack). He calls with A5 and I hit a 7 on the flop to knock him/her out. Huge TILT now and for the next few minutes, we at the table had to listen to him/her rant on how bad I play. I admit my first call was donkey-ish, but my second was not as I had him chip dominated and I was first to push (I would push 99% of time from that position with those cards under those circumstances). After the game (I finished 2nd BTW) I didn’t get the chance to review my play or to see what % I was ahead/behind in those situations, but plan to eventually (yes I’m a slacker/donkey somethings when it comes to learning from my mistakes).

The next time you are at a table and you see some questionable calls/raises/moves/whatever, instead of trying to point out the mistakes, make a note of it (all sites have note taking capabilities associated to the player) and use these notes to exploit this player every time you play against him. Bottom line is sit down, shut up, observe, and take it down for all it’s worth.

Good luck at the tables.

McTap03

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Rules

Dusk Till Dawn monthly 2 day poker festival

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Tournament | 1 Comment

Submitted by Dungbeetle, this article belongs to the Poker Tournament series.

 An amusing tournament write up from a tournament played at the Dusk Till Dawn poker club’s monthly poker festival in Nottingham, UK. I especially liked the last part of Dungbeetles recollection where he sets up a trap for the table bully, only to find….I won’t spoil it for you keep reading and you will know why this post made me laugh inside when I read it.

Myself, The Baron, Dev, Fluke, Jalfont and Volcano all made our way up to Nottingham this weekend, to play the Dusk Till Dawn monthly festival. After a fairly heavy Friday night plus some gokarting, we made our way over to the venue.

And what a venue it is – if ever there was an example of how to run a poker club this was it. Efficient, friendly, spacious, good structures and a great spread of cash games. It’s pretty much the best place I have played outside of Vegas. In fact, it’s only real negative is that it is almost too popular, as at one point on Saturday the lists for the cash games were closed due to sheer volume of players.

Myself and Jalfont ponied up £330 to enter the deepstack 50k guaranteed, with 10k in starting chips and a 45 minute clock. I think there were about 300 runners (so the guarantee was easily surpassed), and here is how it panned out for me:

LEVEL 1
The table is relatively passive pre-flop, so I play a lot of hands in position, and take pots away from the checkers, generally on the turn. I am up to about 11,500 using this strategy, and feeling pretty good about building a good stack. I didn’t really play any big pots, just a lot of 300 wins came my way.

LEVEL 2
An alternate arrives at my table, after someone made a pigs breakfast of a flopped 2 pair, managing to stack himself. The alternate is an older gentleman, but plays completely unlike the older player passive stereotype. In short he is a bully, making huge overbets/overraises on the flop/turn/river, several times getting younger opponents to lay down fairly big hands (overpairs etc). His style is working, but I quickly target him as a player to trap with a big hand at some stage.

My stack actually dwindles down to 9k in this level, as I get a bit out of line against two solid players, and burn away a few chips splashing around.

Interesting hand:

Small blind completes and I check my option with 33
Flop arrives 3, 3, J ………..oh brother!
Small blind leads for 100 into a 200 pot, I flat call.
Turn is a blank, and SB checks, as do I.
River is another brick and SB leads for 100.
I figure I can do a small raise and might get paid, but hope to pretend to make a cock up of the betting my doing a ludicrous raise. I say “raise” and reach for chips without looking down, and bang three thousand denomination chips in. This is a huge overbet, and I try to look nervous as if I’ve done it by mistake. Alas, he doesn’t fall for it (or had nothing) and folds. Flopped quads, and only a 500 pot

LEVEL 3
I find AA under the gun, and raise it up to 500 (blinds are 75-150). Bully old guy above calls and is my only customer.

Flop arrives: Q, 8, 8

I lead for 1k and Bully calls.

Turn is: 8 giving me full house.

I lead for 2k and Bully calls.

River is a 6.

Right Mr Bully, time for you to do what I know you will do on the river. I check, Bully shoves, I FISTPUMP call for my whole stack and thump down the Aces. Two of the guys at my end actually shout “yes!” when I call, as they realise the Bully has been trapped.

Unfortunately, celebrations on the East Wing are cut short as Bully shows down quads. Sigh. Only 2 hands beat me in this hand, and he’d have raised QQ preflop. I’m sure he’d have done the same move if he had some weak house like pocket 7s or a lone Queen. Just bad timing I guess, but fairly embarrassing to thump down your hand triumphantly, only to realise you have trapped yourself.

Jalont fared much better in this tournament, unfortunately bubbling in about 38th spot. He lost a 90k coin flip at this point, and if he had won that would have been able to have a decent run at the serious money.

More DTD reports to follow……….

Check out Dungbeetle’s blogMagical Mystery Poker Tour

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

P&L GBP 2009
Live Tournaments (70)
Live Cash 142
Online Tournaments (1,367)
Online Cash (285)
Poker Festivals (525)
Rake (283)

Total (2,388)

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tournament

Poker Bankroll Blog’s Fulltilt SNG and MTT tournament bankroll building project

Monday, February 9th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Bankroll Management, Poker Projects, Poker Tournament | 9 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Project series.

To celebrate our new collaboration on the Poker Bankroll Blog and PokerBRB sites, McTap03 and I have started our own bankroll building SNG and MTT (multi table tournament) project on Full Tilt Poker. Our starting bankroll is 150$ and we will be posting regular updates on our many wins and hopefully fewer losses.  It goes without saying that we expect our bankroll to increase significantly in no time.

 Here are our rules for bankroll management and sharing of winnings

• We will start playing SNG’s and MTT’s with 5$ buy-ins or less. If we play re-buy tournaments, we are allowed to re-buy up to a total buyin of 5$.
• Each time we double our bankroll we will add another buy-in level
• All levels must be played for 1 week before moving up. This avoids any *rush* playing (where you only move up because you are on a winning rush), and allows some time to get use to the current level. Weeks start Monday morning.
• All SNG winnings will go to boost our bankroll.
• MTT winnings will be shared according to the scheme below with the winning player getting the bigger amount:

- MTT winnings below 100$ will go to boost our bankroll

- MTT winnings between 100$ and $500 will be split 45/45 and 10% to the bankroll. 

- MTT winnings between $501 and $1000 will be split 55/35 and 10% to the bankroll.

- MTT winnings between $1001 and $2500 will be split 60/30 and 10% to the bankroll.

- MTT winnings between $2501 and $5000 will be split 70/20  and 10% to the bankroll.

- Anything higher than that will be split 80/10 and 10% to the bankroll.

Winnings can be withdrawn when agreed upon by both of us.

Our screen name is ‘pokerBRBblog’ and our motto will be “Embrace the risk” which hopefully will make Mitchell Cogert proud of us:-)

Wish us luck!

Mark and McTap03

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Bankroll Management, Poker Projects, Poker Tournament

Step SNG

Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy, Poker Tournament | 7 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Tournament series.

I recently stumbled upon the step SNG concept through an article I read on a Danish news website. Here a Danish SNG expert, Allan ‘Sifosis’ Bække, wrote some good tips on winning plays to beat the SNG steps. After investigating the step SNG system in more detail I decided to write a small review about it and include some of Allan ‘Sifosis’ Bække’s tips on how to beat the SNG steps. 

After reading about the step SNG concept I came to realize that it is very similar to the cash table limit rush which I have mentioned in another article. Typically there are 6 steps in step SNG systems with each successive step having a higher buyin. You can buy in directly to any step you want and then proceed to play a 10 person SNG. The top finishes (usually top 2 or 3 depending on the step and poker site you are playing on, see tables below for more details) receive a ticket to the next step and lower finishes receive tickets to play another SNG on the same or lower steps. 

The similarity between the cash table limit rush and the step SNG system is that you can start with a very low buyin and have a chance of winning big. The things I like better when comparing the cash table limit rush to the step SNG concept are for one that there’s no cash game play (I suck at this) and secondly that you get another chance at the same or lower steps if you don’t win and therefore potentially a lot more play for your initial buyin.

I have found the SNG step system on two poker sites so far (mind you I haven’t spent a lot of time searching so I’m sure you will be able to find more poker sites offering step SNG’s ) namely on Party Poker and Pokerstars. On Party Poker you win 2000$ cash for a 1st place finish on the final step whereas on Pokerstars you win a WSOP package worth 12500$.

The rake you pay for the Party Poker step SNG’s is reasonable compared to the regular SNG rakes whereas on Poker Starts the rake is somewhat higher than the regular SNG rake (see below for more info).

I have gathered together all the information you will need regarding Party poker and Pokerstars SNG step structure, prize pool distribution and rake in the two tables shown below.

Party poker step SNG structure

The regular rake percentages for Party Poker SNG’s vary from 20-25% for low buyin SNG’s (<10$), 10% for medium buyin SNG’s (<100$) and down to 0,2% for high buyin SNG’s (over 100$).   

Pokerstars WSOP qualifier step SNG structure

At Pokerstars the regular rake percentages are similar to those at Partypoker and vary from 20-25% for low buyin SNG’s (<10$), 10% for medium buyin SNG’s (<100$) and down to 0,2% for high buyin SNG’s (over 100$).

As promised here are some tips from Allan ‘Sifosis’ bække on how to beat the Pokerstars step SNG’s:

Steps 1-3

• Play tight aggressive; don’t get into trouble with marginal hands and play your premium hands hard. Don’t be afraid to overbet the pot, there are plenty of fish on these levels who will call you.
• Play tight on the bubbles if you have a small stack that is still larger than 10BB.
• Start pushing with more marginal hands if you have less than 10BB but adjust your pushing range to your position and the previous action on the table.
• If you have a big stack on the bubble put pressure on your opponents.

Steps 4-5

• The basic approach from level 1-3 still applies here.
• However, at these levels the quality of your opponents will increase, therefore it is very important to identify the weaker players at your table and play some hands against them. The chips you accumulate here will be their weight worth in gold later in the SNG to put pressure on your other opponents.
• Select your tables carefully. Find out who plays the higher steps regularly and try to avoid tables with many regulars.

Step 6

• Doubling up early is the key to winning step 6 especially if you choose a table without too many regulars. In this case many of your opponents will be money scared and thus easy to bully if you are the chip leader at the table. You should play your opponents more than your cards on this level.

Good luck on the steps…let me know how you do:-)

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

If you’re looking for a free poker bankroll, check out our review of PokerRoomSchool.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy, Poker Tournament

Poker Bankroll Blog is now a true article database

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | Poker News | 9 Comments

I’m happy to announce that we have recently finished a project to greatly improve the organization of articles on this blog. If you haven’t already noticed it, all category pages listed in the right sidebar now have automatically updated lists of the highest rated articles in that particular category.

This gives you a quick overview of the the most popular poker articles on our blog and perhaps more importantly an opportunity to influence the placement of poker articles on the individual lists by rating your favorite articles.

Remember that you have the opportunity to submit your own poker articles on this blog and perhaps get them placed on the highest rated lists.

Thanks to Codus Software and Sergei Fisenko for programming the plugin that made this possible.

Tags: Poker News