Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

PokerBRB and Poker Bankroll Blog’s tournament league in May

Friday, April 30th, 2010 | Poker Freeroll | 2 Comments

PokerBRB’s league in May takes place on PowerPoker with the following tournament line-up:

• Three 25$ freerolls on Sundays in May
• 9 buyin tournaments during a three week period starting May 6th
• Check out the PokerBRB league overview page for more details

PowerPoker:

• CakePoker Network – US players allowed
• A massive 33% rakeback deal combined with 110% signup bonus up to 600$ when you sign up through PokerBRB and the PokerBankrollBlog.

125$ monthly final held on Sunday the 30th of May:

• Top 5  on the PokerBRB leaderboard, when the tournament schedule has finished, qualify for the final.
• All players who sign up to PowerPoker through PokerBRB and the PokerBankrollBlog AND rake for more than 20$ in the period May 1st to May 26th, also automatically qualify for the final.
• There’s a 150$ total PokerBRB and Poker Bankroll Blog rake requirement for the final to take place. In other words, if the PokerBRB and Poker Bankroll Blog players do not rake more than 150$ in total during May, the final will not take place.

Practical information:

• Freeroll passwords can be found on the password page when you log in to your “My league profile page” through the PokerBRB front page. I will announce the freeroll passwords shortly before the tournaments start in order to avoid password leakage.

• You will need a poker account at  Power Poker this month if you want your tournament results to count towards the leaderboard.

• Remember that we need your exact Power Poker username on file on your “My league profile page” in order to calculate your points.

Tags: Poker Freeroll

The poker mathematics

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Mathematics | No Comments

Submitted by Steve, this article belongs to the Poker Mathematics series.

In this article, Steve gives a general introduction to the poker mathematics.

Poker is a game of fine psychology-based decision, betting and bluffing. There’s no math involved in it whatsoever, is it? Wrong! While in high-level poker the above named elements do indeed substitute the poker mathematical aspect to a certain degree, every poker player knows that there is quite of bit of math involved in the game indeed. Even players who never stop to think about the mathematical odds involved use them all the time, when making decisions which ‘feel right’ to them. “The poker mathematics” may sound a little daunting, but once one gains a grasp on what these odds are about it becomes pretty simple.

The bottom line about the poker mathematics aspect of the game is the comparison between the pot odds and the hand equity which gives the player a mathematically correct way to proceed. Basically, what one does is that he/she calculates his/her pot odds and then compares it to his/her odds for making a potentially winning hand. The first stage of the move is to calculate your pot odds.

Suppose you’re playing for a $40 pot and the player in front of you makes a $10 bet. It now costs you $10 to tag along for the ride, and to possibly take down a $50 pot. It basically costs you $10 to gain a shot at a $50 pot, which means your pot odds are 50-10 = 5-1. In order to find out your pot odds, always divide the current size of the pot (make sure you take all bets and raises occurring in front of you into account) with the amount you’re required to call to stay in contention. The bigger the pot odds, the better off you are, because  the bigger these odds are, the weaker the hand you can afford to make the call on.

According to Sklansky, the pot odds can be exaggerated in such a way that it becomes a viable choice for players to make the call on just about any two cards. Obviously, this can actually be proven mathematically too.

The next step of your odds escapade is to find out your hand equity. Suppose you’re looking to make a flush, a hand which you’re pretty certain would win the pot for you. In order to find out your hand equity (or the odds against your draw filling up), you need to take your number of outs into account. I’ll give you a simple example to make things easier to understand: you have a 4-card flush on the flop. You have the above situation on your hand, with the 5-1 pot odds. You know that a flush would win you the pot, what do you do? First, you calculate your number of outs: there are 52 cards in the deck, of which 3 are on the board face-up and 2 are in your possession. That leaves 52-5=47 cards. There are 13 cards of the same suit as your 4-card flush, 4 of which are already revealed. That leaves you with 9 outs. Of the 47 remaining cards, 9 will help you hit your flush and 47-9=38 will not. That means the odds against your flush filling up are 38-9. That leaves you with 4.22-1 odds (remember that these odds are against your flush), which are smaller than the 5-1 pot odds, which means it is mathematically correct for you to make the call here.

When counting your outs, make sure you take ALL your outs into account (you may have cards which could hit you for a straight or maybe even a set in the above situation), and to disregard all your anti-outs (cards which would hit your opponent for a better hand than yours).

Rakeback and poker prop deals are also parts of poker math. Sign up for a rake rebate deal (search a poker forum to find recommendations on a good one) and get 30-110% of the poker rake you generate back. You really don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see how that would help you.

You can also check out some of the rakeback deals on PokerBRB and rakeback deals on Poker Bankroll Blog.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Mathematics

Poker bankroll building with poker cash games

Sunday, April 25th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Projects | 8 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Project series.

I never play cash games because frankly I suck at them and probably more importantly haven’t had the motivation to play them. As a result my blog has almost no articles on poker bankroll building with poker cash games or cash game strategy. This is a shame.

Now however things have changed and I have a new-found motivation to start a poker bankroll building project where I will only be playing cash games.

My motivation comes from the fact that I unfortunately have to start paying my own money to keep my poker tournament league running on PokerBRB.com. My goal is to finance my league by increasing my current poker bankroll on Power Poker.

I haven’t set out any rules yet for my new poker bankroll building project but I’m sure they will appear along the way when my bankroll grows (currently I am severely under rolled, so it doesn’t really make sense with too many rules)

Yesterday I played for an hour on 0,10/0,20 shorthanded and full ring tables on Power Poker and increased my bankroll from 30$ to 80$.

As well as paying for my league, I also expect to be able to write some articles about cash game strategy once I get a better feel for the games.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Projects

PokerBRB league final results for April’s competition

Friday, April 23rd, 2010 | Poker Freeroll | 1 Comment

As you may have noticed the flow of articles on my blog has come to a standstill since the beginning of April. This is NOT because the blog is dead in any way, I’ve just been insanely busy fixing up my new apartment and moving from my old one. You wouldn’t believe how long it takes for a non-handy dude to do handy-man stuff. Now I’ve taken the consequence and hired some help.

Anyway the PokerBRB league April competition ended a few days ago and JamesDaBear finished in 1st place on the PokerBRB leaderboard (Well done James!!!). For his efforts, James wins another free monthly membership to the GrinderSchool.com poker school. I finished a decent third and more importantly took back my position as the player with most points overall.

Unfortunately April’s final will not take place since we came short of our rake goals on PowerPoker. I plan on repeating the league in the same format again in May, so if you want to have some fun and help us out getting to the finals, sign up for a user account at PokerBRB (it’s free) and check out our Power Poker bonus and rakeback deal.

Regards

A very busy Mark

Tags: Poker Freeroll

PowerPoker poker bonus deal by Poker Bankroll Blog

Thursday, April 8th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Bonus | 4 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Bonus series.

Poker Bankroll Blog’s PowerPoker bonus and rakeback deal

If you sign up for a  PowerPoker bonus and  rakeback deal through the Poker Bankroll Blog you will get the best PowerPoker bonus and rakeback deal available on the market:

• 110% sign-up bonus up to 600$
• A MASSIVE 33% rakeback deal

Here’s how you sign up for the PowerPoker bonus rakeback deal:

1. Clear all cookies on your computer
2. Create a PowerPoker account through this link: PowerPoker sign up

Introduction to PowerPoker

PowerPoker is one of the leading sites on the shared Cake Poker Network which has its head quarters and game servers in The Dutch Antilles.

The Cake Poker network welcomes US players.

The Pacific Poker network, with its average of close to 2000 cash players at any given time, comes in 10th place out of 32 networks on Poker Scout when it comes to player traffic. This means there’s more than plenty of players to win $ from.

I have played almost every network available and many different poker sites on each network and in my opinion PowerPoker excels in keeping things simple; both when it comes to their poker bonus and rakeback deal, their website and their poker lobby. In addition, PowerPoker has a very nice guaranteed daily tournament selection.

Deposit options for American players

• Credit card
• E-wallets such as E-wallet Express
• UseMyWallet for existing Usemywallet account holders
• Prepaid/Gift cards

Sign up bonus details

• 110% sign-up bonus up to 600$
• The bonus is NOT deducted from your rakeback
• The bonus is cleared by a rate of 16,67 FPPs (frequent player points) per 1$ and paid out in 10$ increments.
• You get 1 FPP for every $ your cash table rakes and 7 FPP for every $ you pay in tournament fees. This makes the Power Poker bonus deal is very well suited for tournament and SNG players
• You have to clear your sign-up bonus within 90 days.

Rakeback details

• 33% rakeback when you sign up through the Poker Bankroll Blog
• Tournament and SNG fees are included in the rakeback calculations
• Direct Payment of your rakeback into your poker account in the beginning of the following month
• The sign-up bonus is NOT deducted from your rakeback payments

Additional PowerPoker Promotions

When you sign up for a PowerPoker bonus and cash back deal through the Poker Bankroll Blog you automatically qualify to join the Poker BRB tournament and freeroll league.

Here we run a monthly tournament competition with great monthly finals.

You can find more information on how to sign up for the PokerBRB tournament and freeroll league here.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line at

pokerbankrollblog@gmail.com

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bonus

Strategy against short stack

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy | No Comments

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

If you’re interested in poker strategy against short stacks, you might also be interested in an article I wrote about Poker buy in strategy – full vs short stack.

Strategy against short-stack cash players

When we discuss playing strategy against a short-stacked player, we need to specify whether it’s a tournament or a cash game we’re talking about. The difference is quite tremendous and I’ll get into why that’s the case shortly. Cash game short-stacks are of two types: players who don’t know better, and players who try to capitalize on the fact that they can destroy their opponents’ implied odds-based strategy by taking a short stack to the table. When you play against a short-stack, you’ll enjoy a certain advantage over him, an advantage given to you by the size of your stack. There are certain disadvantages to this one-sided match-up too, which means that you will have to adjust in order to optimize your chances. The first adjustment you need to make concerns your starting hands. Against fellow large-stacks, implied odds hands like small pocket pairs, suited connectors and suited one-gappers are great. Such hands can make you a ton of money over the long-run, even though putting chips into the middle on such hands may not seem like a great idea from a strictly mathematical perspective. Because of the fact that the few times you improve your starting hand you stand to make much more money than what you lose over the hands in which you do not improve, the implied odds bail you out and give perfect sense to playing such starting hands.

Implied odds are irrelevant when you’re up against a short stack

In the case of a short-stacked player, your implied odds are killed. The whole point of playing starting hands like the ones I listed above, is to hit a set/straight/flush with them and to get your opponent all-in. If you get a short-stacked opponent all-in though, all that you’ll win is satisfaction, because his stack will simply not be large enough to make up for the money you lost playing implied odds hands. To find out more about the implied odds, take a look at some strategy articles or a poker forum. For the purposes of this article, knowing this much is well enough.

ABC TAG poker

You need to make your reads on your short stacked opponent, and what you can do basically is just to play good old ABC TAG poker against him. Try to get him to commit on hands in which you have the edge. Starting hands like high pocket pairs and A,K, A,Q should be fine, but you have to be prepared for flipping a coin with him for his stack. The reason why you need such solid starting hands against the short-stack is that in a cash game, the short stack can afford to be extremely tight, and that you will not play a whole lot of post flop poker against this guy. If he commits preflop, chances are high he’ll end up shoving all in, that is he doesn’t do it from the get go.

Strategy against short-stack tournament players

Against a tournament short-stack, the situation is as different as can be. This guy will be under constant pressure from the ever escalating blinds, and therefore, he will not be able to play it as tight as he would like to. He will eventually be forced to shove all-in on a sub par hand, and you should be there to pick up the proceeds. Tournament short-stacks (especially in SNGs) are often ganged up on, so they really need to get lucky several times to turn things around. Your starting hand selection against a tournament short-stack should loosen up. Sometimes, you want to make the call, if for no other treason than to just add another hand that goes up against the short-stack’s do or die one. Sign up for a rakeback or a poker prop deal too. Whether you’re playing short-stacked players or large stacked ones, rakeback will help you make the most of the time you spend at the poker tables.

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

Check out our Poker Freeroll and Tournament League.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy

PokerBRB’s April league is sponsored by PowerPoker

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | Poker Freeroll | No Comments

PokerBRB’s league in April takes place on PowerPoker with the following tournament line-up:

• Three 25$ freerolls on Sundays in April
• 6 buyin tournaments during a two week period starting the 8th of April
• Check out the PokerBRB league overview page for more details

PowerPoker:

• CakePoker Network – US players allowed
• A massive 33% rakeback deal combined with 110% signup bonus up to 600$ when you sign up through PokerBRB and the PokerBankrollBlog.

125$ monthly final held on Sunday the 25th of April:

• Top 3  on the PokerBRB leaderboard, when the tournament schedule has finished, qualify for the final.
• All players who sign up to PowerPoker through PokerBRB and the PokerBankrollBlog AND rake for more than 20$ in the period April 3rd to April 20th, also qualify for the final.
• There’s a 10 player minimum requirement on the final meaning that if we do not have 10 qualifying players, the final will be canceled.
• In addition the 1st place finisher on our leaderboard after the 9 private buyin tournaments have been played will win a one month membership to GrinderSchool. If you don’t know what GrinderSchool is, you can read my review of GrinderSchool here.

Practical information:

• Freeroll passwords can be found on the password page when you log in to your “My league profile page” through the PokerBRB front page. I will announce the freeroll passwords shortly before the tournaments start in order to avoid password leakage.

• You will need a poker account both at  Power Poker this month if you want your tournament results to count towards the leaderboard.

• Remember that we need your exact Power Poker username on file on your “My league profile page” in order to calculate your points.

Tags: Poker Freeroll