Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

Learning Limit Texas Hold’em

Monday, June 28th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Cash Games | No Comments

Submitted by Cory, this article belong to the Poker Cash Games series.

Cory wrote a great article on why it’s a good idea to start by learning limit Texas Hold’em if you’re a cash game poker beginner.

If you’re just beginning to learn cash game poker, you should start by getting a solid grasp of limit games.  Sure, limit poker isn’t as exciting as no limit, it’s not as glamorous and they don’t show it on TV, but before you jump in to no limit cash games, you’ll want to have a strong limit game.  This is for a few reasons.

First, it’s easy to take a successful limit player and turn him or her in to a winning no limit player.  This is not true the other way.  People who start with no limit tend to have a much more difficult time adjusting and adapting to a fixed limit betting structure.  As we’ve discussed before, it’s important to have a working knowledge of as many of the games as possible, so since it’s easy to turn a fixed limit player in to a no limit player later down the road, start your poker cash game career in limit hold ‘em.

We recommend these poker bonus deals

The second reason is limit hold ‘em forces players to be far more competent with the mathematics of poker than no limit.  With implied odds being the main factor in big bet games, pot odds are often times a secondary consideration when you’re deciding whether or not to make a call with a drawing hand.  Fixed bet games have little to offer in the way of implied odds, so the main focus is on the pot odds of any call, or the pot odds you might be laying an opponent if you bet.

Another reason limit games are good to start with is in a small bet game you’ll need to learn quickly how to get that one extra bet of value with the best hand and how to avoid giving away that one extra bet when you’re behind.  Getting max value in a limit game can be a lot tougher than in a no limit game, that’s why plays like check raising are over rated in no limit, but essential to winning in limit.  In no limit, with you’re whole stack behind you and in play on any given hand it’s like trying to extract value with a chain saw, but in limit you need to get every little bit of extra money in the pot that you can, so it’s more like getting value with a razor blade.  You’re just chipping away at your opponents.

The best part is, when you’ve developed the ability to accurately read situations in a fixed bet game, once you start playing no limit, people’s obvious betting patterns become so much easier to exploit.  In limit games you have to train yourself to pick up on subtlety, in no limit games, most low stakes players aren’t savvy enough to use subtlety in their strategy, so their betting mistakes are large and obvious.  If you’re used to reading what each fixed bet means, when you play no limit, the betting tells will be so easy to see that your opponents may as well just turn their cards face up often times.

We recommend these poker school and poker tools

I was a winning no limit player for a while, but not exactly a big steady winner.  I took some time off playing no limit and spent over a year just learning and playing fixed limit.  When I returned to the no limit game I couldn’t help but crushing.  It was like I always knew when I was ahead and when I was behind just because I had trained myself to watch for all of the small signs and switching back to no limit all the signs of how strong or weak my opponents are got magnified exponentially.  My next couple of articles will give a basic strategy to beat low stakes limit Texas hold ‘em, then how to apply the concepts that you’ve developed from small bet poker to a big bet game like no limit hold ‘em.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Cash Games

Pro Poker Blog – Why you should have one

Saturday, June 26th, 2010 | Poker and Life, Poker Articles | No Comments

Submitted by Fubusama, this article belongs to the Poker and Life series.

If you’re like many aspiring poker players, you may have a few long term objectives in mind. Whether it is to make millions, live in Vegas, and play in the biggest tournaments in the world or more modest ones, like being able to make a steady income while living at home with your family. Regardless of your goals, it is likely that your plans are not to play at the tables 12 hours a day, everyday. A great way to become more involved in the industry, help build your reputation and to have another source of income is to run and manage a pro poker blog.

We recommend these poker bonus deals

It’s important as a poker player to stay abreast of what’s going on in the industry. Many poker sites and casinos hold all sorts of promotions that you can take advantage of if the channels of communications are open. The advantage of blogging is that these sites will often reach out to you to advertise these promotions, or even give you special perks for mentioning them. It’s not uncommon for a poker site to give you free entry into a tournament if you blog about a special satellite they are holding. It also opens opportunities to meet and interact with some of the big names in poker. The fact of the matter is the poker blogging market is not nearly as saturated as many other blogging markets. This leaves any decent writer and player the opportunity to become an authoritative voice for the poker industry.

This raises an important point about building a reputation. It’s difficult, even as a steady online winner, to get your name recognized. Have you ever noticed that many of the professional poker players you see on TV aren’t actually that good? How many online players do you know that would destroy Phil Hellmuth in a heads-up cash game? Probably quite a few. How many people do you know who actually know who Phil Hellmuth is? Probably more. Phil Hellmuth isn’t a big name because of his current poker skill – it’s his name that is worth the money. Joe Sebok, a great poker player, was made big by building his reputation on the website, PokerRoad.com, not by his amazing skill at the felt (although likely better than Phil Hellmuth!) With a pro poker blog, your opportunity to build this reputation will support you in moving up the ranks in the poker industry.

We recommend these poker school and poker tools

You’ve most likely heard the term, “residual income”, meaning have a stream of income, likely secondary, that accumulates with very little time or effort required. Your pro poker blog, over time, can become one of those sources. By offering your readers deals on poker rakeback, you’re able to make a small percentage of all the revenue they generate for that site, while still giving them a good rakeback deal. This situation is win/win/win for the player, the pro poker blogger and the poker site. For players familiar with game theory – it’s a no brainer.

Tags: Poker and Life, Poker Articles

Poker Bankroll Blog’s Betfair poker bonus and rakeback deal

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Bonus | No Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Bonus series.

Poker Bankroll Blog’s Betfair poker bonus and rakeback deal

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

• 10$ up front no deposit bonus
• Your own choice between a 50$, 500$ or 1500$ sign-up bonus
• Up to 40% rakeback

Introduction to Betfair poker

Betfair is the largest online betting exchange in the world with over 2 million clients and a reported weekly turnover of 50 million pounds sterling. As most other online bookies. Betfair also offers poker. What separates Betfair from the vast majority of other online betting sites is that their poker client runs on their own independent network. Betfair’s headquarter is situated in London and their game servers are located on Malta

The Betfair poker network comes in 17th place out of 32 networks on Poker Scout when it comes to player traffic, and since the bulk of Betfair’s customers are punters you can expect to find good soft games.

What I like about Betfair, is that they offer the whole range of gambling from sports betting to casino to games to poker. And they have integrated their bonus systems through Betfair points which are accumulated through any of the gambling disciplines mentioned above. This means that bets you place on sport games also generate Betfair points towards clearing your poker sign up bonus.

Here’s how you sign up for the Betfair poker bonus and rakeback deal:

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

10$ up front bonus details

To receive the $10 poker bonus a player has to:

• Open a Betfair account through the Poker Bankroll Blog

• Fill in bonus code: CYOX50, CTX500, CYX150″ on the registration form

• Download Betfair Poker client.

• Create Betfair Poker alias

• Register a payment processor and go through the age verification check

You have to complete each of the points above to get the 10$ free bonus.

If you are eligible to receive the $10 cash bonus, your account will be credited within a maximum of 72hrs of creating the Betfair account and Betfair Poker alias.

Sign up bonus details

• You are free to chose a 50$ (bonus code CYOX50), 500$ (bonus code CTX500) or 1500$ sign-up bonus (bonus code CYX150)
• In order to qualify you need to make a minimum deposit of 20$
• Bonuses are cleared in steps through accumulating Betfair Points (10 Betfair points per $ raked or paid in fees)
• The 50$ bonus is cleared in 5$ steps – for each $ cleared you need 30 Betfair Points
• The 500$ bonus is cleared in 50$ steps – for each $ cleared you need 24 Betfair Points
• The 1500$ bonus is cleared in 150$ steps – for each $ cleared you need 20 Betfair Points
• You have 90 days to clear the bonus
• Your sign-up bonus is deducted from your gross rake

Rakeback

• 40% rakeback until 31st of August 2010 for all new players signing up in June
• The standard rakeback percentage is 30%
• Your rakeback percentage increases to 40% if you rake more than 1500 pounds sterling each month
• Your rakeback is automatically paid into your account twice every month
• Your sign up bonus is deducted from your gross rake
• Tournament fees count towards your rake

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bonus

How to play poker best

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Cash Games | 2 Comments

Submitted by Cory, this article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Building series.

How to play poker best is an article written by Cory where he gives advice on how to determine your poker A game. Obviously, the best way to play poker is when you’re beating the game and winning in the long run. Read on to learn more with regards to identifying your best poker game.

Finding your best poker game can be a little tricky, but it’s something you need to work on and be honest with yourself about.  Your best poker game is the poker variant at which you have the highest hourly profit with a minimal risk of ruin.

Sometimes with variance being what it is, finding your best game can be a long and costly process, but the upshot is, you’ll get plenty of experience playing other forms of poker that you can use later.  Remember, just because you’ve had three big winning sessions in a row at no limit hold ‘em, it doesn’t necessarily mean that no limit is your best game.  You’ll need to get in thousands of hands before you really know how well you understand the finer points of no limit and how your level of understanding matches up against your regular competition.

We recommend these poker bonus deals

I spent over a year and a half just playing limit hold ‘em to see if my win rate would be higher than no limit and for a while it was.  However, I found around my hundred thousandth hand online, plus another thirty or forty thousand live hands I kind of hit a wall in my thinking of limit hold ‘em and had a difficult time progressing from that point.  The best part was, I got to learn a lot about limit poker and can hold my own in that game, so if the occasion arises where a limit game is my best choice for a particular night, I can take a break from what has become my best game, no limit and still have a positive expectation in limit.

Everyone has an opinion on whether a not poker players should specialize and I say yes and no.  I think it’s important to know what your best game is, play that one most often, learn everything you can about it and be the absolute best you can be at that particular variant.  However, neglecting the other games entirely can be a big mistake as well.

If the biggest fish you know wants to play Omaha Eight or Better and you’ve only ever played no limit Hold ‘Em, you’re giving up some pretty good money.  You don’t need to be the best Omaha player to beat someone who’s terrible at it, but having a solid understanding of it will sure help give you the best chance to separate them from their poker bankrolls in whatever game they wish to play.

We recommend these poker school and poker tools

One of the best things about online poker is for just a few bucks you can get tons of hands in playing games that you’ve never or rarely played before.  PLO is probably one of my worst games, but today I played for 1 cent and 2 cent blinds and managed to hold my own.  This is a chance I couldn’t take if the only PLO games available to me were the $1-$2 PLO game that my local card room spreads.  That’s a pretty expensive way to learn.

So start your journey to find the most profitable game for you and along the way enjoy learning all of the games for very little investment.  That way, you make your bread and butter at your best game, but you can be flexible to collect easy money when it shows up somewhere else.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building, Poker Cash Games

Poker as a business

Monday, June 7th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy, Poker Tools | 1 Comment

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

This is a guest post written by AceUnchecked, read the blog here.

Let’s face it. We play poker to make money. We play because we want to turn a small amount of money into a larger part of money. Now, I understand that there are many reasons that we play poker, but I believe that pretty much every player can agree with the fact that we play poker because we, at least in part, want to make money.

We recommend these poker bonus deals

This basic assumption means that poker is business, and we need to start treating it as such.If you don’t look at poker as business, let’s look at some of the jargon used in both worlds of poker and business. The first and most obvious is profit. When we walk away from the poker table, we look at our net profit. Sometimes we have gains and other times we count our losses. Another common term in poker is pot equity (which is the relative value the pot has to your chances of winning.) Often times we look at our poker winnings as ROI or Return on Investment, which is obviously from the business side of things.

So, if poker is business, what does that mean to our playing? What is the practical application here? Well, if we treat our playing like business we can do a few things.

First, limit your liabilities. As we have discussed in this blog at length, bankroll management is the key to minimizing risk. When you minimize your risk and regularly perform above 50% of the time, your bankroll will grow.

Second, we can analyze our strengths and identify niches. Playing online poker is all about finding the table that you play the best at. With so many options you have to find the game that suits your style. I cannot tell you how many sessions I have fouled up by moving from 9 handed tables to heads-up. If you are in a rhythm that is going well at a certain table, changing the game you play will only hurt you.

We recommend these poker school and poker tools

Finally, if all goes well, we can treat poker as an hourly job (or profession). I’ll admit it, even though I have been up at the tables lately, I am not to this level yet. But rest assured, I am analyzing and re-analyzing my game so that I can become a more disciplined player so that I can rely on poker as a source of income. We all start at the hobby level but moving to that intermediate level of profitability is a long and arduous road.

Go get ‘em!

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy, Poker Tools

Calculating poker odds – Don’t misuse the rule of 2 and 4

Friday, June 4th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Mathematics | 1 Comment

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

One of the first things we learn about the mathematics involved in poker is figuring out our chances of winning by using the rule of four and two.  For those of you who may not be sure exactly how that works, if you have an open ended straight draw for example, you count your outs, the unseen cards that make your straight, which is 8 and multiply your number of outs by 4 on the flop and 2 after the turn.  So on the flop you’re about 32% to make your straight with the turn and the river yet to come and on the turn you’re about 16% to make your straight with just the river to come.

We recommend these poker bonus deals

Basically is what this means, is the odds of you completing your straight are just over 2:1 against it with 2 cards and just under 5:1 against it with 1 card.  This information is used to measure the likelihood of you hitting your draw against the price you’re getting on a call compared to how much is already in the pot.

If I’m playing a pot with $80 and my opponent bets $20, he creates a pot of $100 and it costs me $20 to potentially win that $100, or I’m getting 5:1 on the call.  We’re all good so far right?

The problem is, I’ve recently run in to a lot of players who are completely misusing the rule of four and two to try and justify some pretty bad calls.  You really need to be thinking about what your chances are of hitting your draw on the next card because very often, you’re going to be faced with another bet.  The rule of four and two was designed for when you’re facing an all in bet on the flop or turn and you have a draw.  If you go all in, you’re guaranteed to see all five board cards, but if you and your opponent still have chips behind, it changes the math drastically.

Let’s say you’re in a $1-$2 game.  You and your opponent each have $200 stacks to start the hand.  Your opponent opens from middle position to $8 and you call with 8C7C from the button and take a flop heads up.  The blinds have probably been taken out for rake, so we have a pot of probably $15.  The flop comes 9H, 6S, AD.  You have no clubs, but you have an open ended straight draw.  Your opponent bets $10 creating a pot of $25 and you’re getting 2.5:1.  Using your rule of four and two the odds are 2:1 against hitting your hand so this is a profitable call… if you can guarantee that you’ll see both remaining cards.

You can’t forget about how much you’re probably going to have to call on the turn.  If you call this flop bet there will be a pot of $35, so if you miss the turn, you may have to call a bet somewhere between $20 and $30 to see the river card which you counted on with your rule of four.  So really, your flop decision has to be whether or not you’ll be willing to call somewhere between $30 and $40 to see both the turn and river.

This is where implied odds come in to play.  Since you and your opponent are both playing $200 deep, it makes sense to call his bet on the flop and call a reasonable bet if you miss the turn.  Let’s say you call this $10 on the flop creating a pot of $35 and your opponent bets $20 on the turn and you missed.  Now you’re getting $55:$20, or 2.75:1 pot odds, which is not a good price, but if you call, the pot will be $75 and your opponent will have $162 to pay you off with if you hit the river.

We recommend these poker school and poker tools

If your opponent should decide to bet the river when you hit, it’s going to be somewhere around $50 in to a pot of $75, in which case you’re going to be able to stack him enough of the time to make the call on the turn where you were getting slightly the worst of it profitable in the end.  Big bet poker games are more about implied odds than pot odds.  Limit games focus more on pot odds since implied odds in a limit game are reduced to maybe one or two extra bets.

Never forget when deciding whether or not to call on the flop to factor in how much that call is really going to cost you.  Always be aware of the effective stack size in the hand so you can calculate your implied odds.  Don’t make calls where you’re taking the worst of it if either you or your opponent has a shorter stack.  Stop using the rule of four and two to justify flop calls when you can’t call a bet on the turn and get that river card that you promised yourself on the flop.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Mathematics