Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

3 betting in poker

Sunday, August 29th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Cash Games, Poker Strategy | 1 Comment

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

3 betting in poker by Cory the lead singer in corywilkinsband.com.

Poker goes through cycles and evolutions and the current state of no limit focuses a lot on pre-flop action.  Whether it’s tournaments with short stacks and fast blinds, or four bet bluffing 300BBS deep in a cash game how you’re playing pre-flop, notice I said, “how,” not, “what,” is going to set up your story for the rest of the hand.

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Right now, I just want to talk about 3 betting.  I know a lot of people watch shows like High Stakes Poker and just can’t figure out why Durrrr is 3 betting with Ten 7 off suit.  There is a rhyme and reason for different 3 betting strategies and the most important factors are stack size, position and opponent.

Importance of stack sizes

Let’s talk first about stack size.  If you’re 100BBS deep or less, your 3 betting range is going to include the top of your range, AA, KK, QQ, JJ as well as the middle of your range, hands like 88 and KQO.

When you’re deeper stacked, hands in the middle of your range become great implied odds hands, so you may not want to 3 bet them as often.  If you and your opponent are 200BBS deep, why 3 bet 88 pre-flop?  If you’re 15BBS deep, your shipping it.  Many people don’t account enough for stack sizes.  The problem with 3 betting a hand like 88 when we’re 200BBS deep is what do I do when I get 4 bet?  I have way more to gain and far less to lose by just calling a raise with a strong implied odds hand than I do by possibly getting 4 bet off of it or risk getting way too much money in the middle in a marginal spot.

However, when I’m deep I’ll need to polarize my 3 betting range so my opponents don’t know whether I have aces or not.  I’ve found that good hands to do this with are hands that I can throw away easily when I’m 4 bet, I can easily continuation bet and fold to a raise on the flop if I need to and when I do go to showdown I help my image be a little more crazy by showing that I 3 bet with jack 8.

Why 3 betting will make your decisions easier on later streets

Your next factor is position.  You’ll need a slightly different range based on your position.  I tend to three bet hands like AK, AQ, TT and 99 more often out of position than I do in position.  The two main factors I’ll need going to the flop are position and initiative.  Since I can’t have position, I’ll take the initiative and be the last aggressor pre-flop.  Also, sometimes my opponent will fold and I’ll take down the hand without any post-flop decisions.

By taking the lead with a 3 bet, I’m trying to negate my positional disadvantage as much as I can.  I can now continuation bet a lot more flops successfully since people play far more straightforward in 3 bet pots than they do in 2 bet pots.  If I just flat with Tens out of position and the flop comes Q, 8, 3, now what do I do?  Donk bet?  Check raise?  If I check raise, what do I do on the turn if my opponent calls?  Now the pot is getting huge and he could easily have a hand like AQ or KQ or QQ for that matter.

If I put in a reraise pre-flop the action might look like this.

1. Opponent opens from LP for 3X.
2. I reraise from SB to 9X with TT.
3. BB folds and original raiser calls.
4. Flop is Q, 8, 3 rainbow with 19BBS in the pot.  I’ll bet about 2/3 pot or 12BBS and generally take down a nice pot and my opponent’s range is much better defined if he should call.

The other huge upshot in this example is I was able to get the pot heads up and create dead money which is the best kind to have in the middle.

If I had just flatted with my tens, the hand may look like this.

1. Opponent opens from LP to 3X.
2. I call from the SB and the BB calls making a pot of 9X going to the flop.
3. Flop is Q, 8, 3 rainbow, I check and BB checks.
4. The original raiser makes it 2/3 pot or 6BBS to go and I raise to see where I’m at and get value against hands that I still beat.  I’m going to have to raise to at least 15X here which should fold out the BB.
5. The original raiser calls. Now the pot is 39BBS and I’m just realizing that I might be in a lot of trouble.  Do I lead the turn hoping he’ll fold?  That’ll need to be a pretty substantial bet now.  At least 25X.  Now I’ve got 43X in there and have no idea what’s going on.

Do I check the turn and let him just fire away?  Yes my opponent is betting queens here, but if he’s tricky he might have seen through my flop check raise and have floated the flop to fire at the turn.

Also keep in mind, I picked about the driest board possible for this example.  This hand just got pretty complicated without a flush draw or straight draw.

Choosing your opponents

The final consideration is who I’m up against.  I want to 3 bet players that open with a wide range and it’s even better if they tend to fold sometimes.  If I’m against someone who goes to showdown a lot I’ll need to 3 bet more on the top end of my range because though I may be ahead of his opening range I might be in trouble against his showdown range and he’s not folding enough to make it worth it.

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Unless you’re more of a smallball player, you need to work on your situational 3 betting.  It will help establish you as the table captain and will get you tons of action because your opponents won’t remember the times you 3 bet with AA because they would 3 bet with AA.  However, they’ll remember when you 3 bet with K9 because they’ll think you’re crazy and put you on air more frequently than they should.  To help you get more aggressive, play a bit of 6 max.  Good luck and happy reraising.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Cash Games, Poker Strategy

How to raise money for a poker bankroll

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building | 1 Comment

This article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Building series.

Here’s a few thoughts I’ve had on how to raise money for a poker bankroll through online texas holdem. Please let me know if you have additional advice, or disagree with anything.

Why bother?

Good question. The obvious reason for raising money for a poker bankroll is that you don’t have your own money to play with. Then there’s the coolness factor of building a poker bankroll from scratch. We’ve all heard of the online phenomenas such as Isuldur who seem to come out of nowhere and within no time play million dollar pots on the high stakes tables of Full Tilt and Poker Stars. Another famous example is the Chris Ferguson challenge and recently the german dude who turned 5$ into 100000$ by playing SNGs and tourneys. Here’s another reason you might not have thought about. When you succeed in building a bankroll from scratch you will most certainly appreciate the value of it more compared to simply depositing the money from your real life bank account. With this appreciation comes the added benefits of sticking to solid bankroll management and the discipline needed to avoid tilt.

Poker Freerolls

All poker sites have freeroll MTTs and some even have freeroll SNGs. You will be battling large fields and playing for small amounts but who’s to complain? It’s free!! For some American and Australian poker players who are not able to deposit at all into poker sites, freerolls are the only way to build a bankroll.

Up front bonuses

There’s a couple of up front bonus deals out there, where you get free cash just by signing up. This is a great way to start a bankroll. Even-though the bonus amounts are usually quite small (5-20$ range) you will still be off to a better start compared to plying freerolls for cash. You can get a 10$ up front bonus through this blog, simply follow the instructions on the “We recommend these bonus deals” page.

Poker Schools

Poker schools will typically give you a starting bankroll of 50-150$ when you sign up to the poker sites they’ve partnered up with. By signing up through a poker school you will probably not be getting a sign-up bonus or rake back deal at the particular partner poker site so chose carefully. You want to avoid signing up to the big poker sites through a poker school. Usually you’ll need to play a large volume to clear your starting bankroll which is basically how the poker schools make their money. But hey, once again it’s free money, so who’s to complain?

Who cares, I have a job and plenty of money to spend?

You might want to consider depositing enough money to have a solid bankroll on your preferred limit and set yourself goals to increase your bankroll. This will undoubtedly increase your motivation for playing (goals are always good to have). On the other hand if you play poker simply for the fun of it and don’t really mind loosing money once in a while, a poker bankroll building project will be a waste of time.

Who cares, I don’t have a job and play for money I can’t afford to lose?

Warning! Warning!. Seek help and stop playing poker immediately…you are probably well under way to become a compulsive gambler. Seriously get help and stop playing poker. You should never play for money you cant afford to lose.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building

Running bad in poker

Monday, August 16th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Cash Games, Poker Strategy | 2 Comments

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

Cory wrote the article below about running bad in poker….something I’ve experienced myself lately. If you have time check out his band’s website at corywilkinsband.com.

We’ve all been there before, it’s called running bad. What is running bad though? It’s actually a combination of a few things.

First, never picking up hands. Remember, in low stakes cash games your opponents are calling too much, so your goal is to make strong hands and get maximum value. If you don’t get strong hands, your bluffs are not going to be effective enough to keep you winning. The last thing you want to do in a low stakes game is bluff off all of your money.

The second part of running bad is getting cold decked. You have KK and he happens to wake up with AA the last three times. Oh and the last time you had AA against KK, he flopped a King.

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Then you have running bad in the form of never getting your good hands up against strong second best hands. You raise pre-flop with Aces and everyone folds. The flush draw finally comes home, you bet and everyone folds. This can be particularly frustrating in low stakes cash since you expect to get action almost every time you hit big.

Another kind of running bad is when you have a lot of small and medium pairs and go a long time without flopping a set. Or you have open ended straight draws, flush draws, or even big combo draws that don’t ever seem to come home. There hands you need to play and put some money in the pot with, but you need to catch a card or two to rake the big pot.

Now that we know what running bad really is, how do we deal with it? It can be very difficult, but too many otherwise winning players either blame bad luck too much when they make mistakes, or they change their game too much when they’re just running below expectation.

All winning players analyze their hands after losing sessions and winning sessions, but if you’re honest with yourself, way more analysis happens after a big loss. This is because if you are a long term winner, you have an expectation to have more winning sessions than losing sessions. While this may be true, it doesn’t stop even the strongest players from running bad for a while. The worst thing a good player can do is start to make drastic changes to their game.

My local card room runs a promotion where any time you have a flush or better you fill out a little ticket that gets submitted in to a drawing which takes place every half hour Friday through Saturday nights. The winner of each drawing gets $200, so the more flushes, boats, quads or straight flushes you get, the better chance you have of winning one of the drawings. I recently went through a run where I played two times a week, for five hours or more per session for about a month and never qualified for a single ticket. That means I went something like eight, five hour or more sessions without making a hand as strong as a flush. Let’s face it, beating low stakes cash is very difficult when you never hit hands. I did not find a way to somehow come out ahead over this sample size, but here are some things that helped me get through it with my bankroll intact and never going on tilt.

First, I know I’m a winning player. I needed to keep my confidence up. There’s a huge difference between losing because I played badly and losing because I had ten pocket pairs and never flopped a set and had four missed flush draws in two hours. If I let my confidence drop, I’m going to start playing sub-optimally and start losing even more.

The second thing is to avoid trying to make something happen. I found my best fix was just to stay patient and stick to my standard game plan. Eventually the cards will come to me and the action will come along with it. I didn’t start trying to bluff more to make up for the pots I was losing, if I saw a bluffing opportunity I would take it, but I didn’t force the action any more than I would if I were running hot. In fact, maybe even a little less since my table mates know I’m losing and since most people try to push harder when they’re stuck, that is exactly what many of my opponents would expect me to do.

The third thing I do is what I like to call a line check. I have a couple of friends who I feel comfortable discussing strategy with, who think on my level or higher and I go over some hands with them without giving away the result before they check my line, or the actions I took in the hand. They tell me if my line is good, or not without having the meaningless results of the hand to influence their opinions. I also will do line checks when I’m winning, so my friends don’t know if they’re analyzing a hand that I won or a hand that I lost.

The final thing I do is I leave it at the table. When I have a losing night, or week, or month I don’t take it home with me. I don’t worry about it, I don’t lose sleep over it, I don’t bore my friends with bad beat stories. Sometimes the best thing to do for your poker game is get as far out of your poker head space as possible for a while.

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Remember, you will run bad. You’ll be bad beat, you’ll finally hit the nuts and not get action, you’ll be cold decked, but only you have control over how much it effects you. Keep this in mind during a down swing. Someone with the most elementary understanding of poker will win close to the same amount as you, a known winning player will when they’re running hot. The only way to tell a good player from a bad player is by how much they lose back when they run bad. You find out just how good you are when you’re not getting hands. It’s pretty hard to not win when you’re getting nut flushes against second nut flushes, or top set against bottom set etcetera. The poker skill really comes in when things aren’t working and you can still keep your head above water.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Cash Games, Poker Strategy

Why are your bet sizes so important

Friday, August 13th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy | No Comments

Why are your bet sizes so important?

There are countless amounts of poker players who never take into consideration how important it is to correctly size their bets based on the situation they are in.  Since you can bet any amount of chips in no limit Texas hold-em tournaments, it is easy to understand how deciding how much to bet might get a little tricky. The most important piece of advice I can give you is to think about is “When you bet, bet or a reason”.  In other words, what are you intending to do by potentially risking your chips when you throw them in the pot? For instance, if you have the “nuts” you don’t want to scare your opponent away by betting too high do you? Or perhaps you have nothing and want to scare him away. How much would you bet in this situation? With poker being such a dynamic game, this analogy is all but a small fraction of what can happen at the table.

Furthermore, what if your opponents notice that your bets are changing. They may be able to get reads on you if you if you alter your bet amounts when you are in the same situations. Maybe you c-bet high when you miss and low when you hit. These reads can and will be picked up by good players. But how do you know exactly what you are betting all the time? You can’t possibly remember each percentage you decided to raise in each particular hand! This is the first variable of the game which increases the chance for players to make mistakes.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy

My own Chris Ferguson Poker challenge

Sunday, August 8th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building | 3 Comments

Cory wrote the article below about setting yourself a poker challenge. If you have time check out his band’s website at corywilkinsband.com

In a previous article on the poker bankroll blog, I talked about how important game selection is, even in live games where it’s a little more difficult.  Today I want to focus on the idea of occasionally challenging yourself.  Most times when you go out to play cards, you want to be in the spot where you can make the most money as easily as possible, but occasionally, it might be a good idea to see how you measure up against tougher competition.

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A few nights ago I was in a live $1-$2 game and it was easily the toughest low stakes game I’ve ever been in.  The table was tight, aggressive and people were not paying off bets without hands.  I almost immediately asked the floor for a table change then I thought, since I’ve been winning, I could afford to sit at a tougher table to see how I measured up.  If I lost, it would be ok, I could stack off and still have met my profit goal for the week.

Sitting in a game against tougher players means you need to do a few things differently.  First, in a normal low stakes easy game, you don’t need to put much effort in to balancing your range.  Your opponents are not making any attempt to read your range of possible holdings, so you need little or no deception in your play.  In a tougher more observant game, players are seeing you limp with Duces and raise with Kings, so are likely to raise pre-flop when you’ve just limped and fold when you raise.

Balancing your range is just playing many hands of varying strengths the same way.  Raising pre-flop with Aces, 76S and Duces.  Balancing your range is something you’ll also need to do post-flop in tougher games.  If you want to be able to check behind with a straight draw, sometimes you’re going to have to check behind with top pair or two pair.  If you want to bet top two for value, sometimes you’re going to have to bet in to a pot with just a gut shot.  The tougher the game gets, the more you have to keep your opponents guessing.

The next thing you’ll want to do is be sure to focus on reading your opponent’s ranges in every hand.  Humans naturally make patterns, recognize theirs before they recognize yours.  Spot the weakest player at the table, even if he’s relatively strong and try to figure out what makes him weaker than the rest of the line-up and how you can exploit it.

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In my session against a table full of regular, solid players I managed to hold my own and turn a profit with some nice play and a few lucky hands.  The reason I stayed to see how I stacked up against this table was first out of my own curiosity, but mainly in case I won, which I did, I could really be confident in my play when I took a seat in my regular soft games.  If I can turn a profit on a very tough table, I should be crushing a very soft table.  Playing with confidence can really be a game changer, so every once in a while, when you’re playing well and feel on you’re a game, try sitting in a game with tough players just to see if you can stand up to the challenge.  If not, you’ll have a few specific things to work on, if so, you can go back to the good games and be fully prepared to crush.

Tags: Poker Articles, poker bankroll

Overcoming obstacles in online poker

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 | Poker and Life, Poker Articles | 1 Comment

Cory was kind enough to write an article about his own poker experiences and how to overcome the obstacles we all experience in life. Hope you enjoy the article as much as I did. If you have time, check out corywilkinsband.com. Great music!

I was recently asked to incorporate a little bit of autobiographical information in my poker articles for the Bankroll Blog.  Before I do, I just want to let you all know that the contents of this article, overcoming obstacles, in no way is meant to give you the impression that my life is so much tougher than yours, because it’s not, we all have obstacles and negative factors that try and hold us back from doing our best, but one of mine happens to be very visible.

For those of you who don’t know, I was born nearly completely blind and over the last twenty-eight years the little vision that I had has been slowly deteriorating until I’m left with just the slightest bit of light perception, which will probably be gone in the next few years.  I used to play card games with my grandma when I was a small child and I had enough vision back then to play games like Go Fish with a regular deck of cards as long as they were the jumbo print.  Now I can, in the right lighting and if I hold the card an inch from my face tell you if I’m looking at a face card or not and be right about three quarters of the time.

I discovered poker about five years ago, interestingly enough not from Rounders or from Moneymaker, or from TV at all, but from this website called allinplay.com that has accessible on line games, so blind and sighted people can play together.  In 2005 they introduced a play money Texas Hold ‘Em game and I had remembered playing five card draw with my parents and figured learning a new poker game would be fun.

I quickly lost my chips over and over again in this new form of poker and being the competitor that I am, I figured I was going to learn better strategy.  I spent two weeks looking up Hold ‘em strategy on Google before I played another hand.  I learned a good many things, I should be raising more than calling, I shouldn’t be playing many hands when I’m one of the first to act.  By applying a few simple rules I began to completely crush the games.

However, crushing play money games isn’t exactly something to get all excited about for me, so I decided that I wanted to play live.  I asked one of my friends to help me and trained her to whisper my hole cards in my ear, then let me know all of the action as it goes around the table.  After we developed our system it was time to convince the local casinos to let us play.

Most were very helpful and encouraging once I was able to convince them that I was indeed blind and needed the assistance to play and would not be using my helper to make my decisions because I would be making all of my own decisions.  Then I started playing live.

Most times other players are really great about it too, but every once in a while I’ll have a player complain and I’ll explain to him or her my situation, if they are still not satisfied I’ll call the floor to explain for me.  This can be a rather uncomfortable way to start a session, but it’s just reality.

So just from my poker life I’ve had to create a way to help me play, get my method allowed in a live casino, plus have to deal with the occasional ass hole who thinks I’m cheating.  Also think of the physical tells that I miss, my inability to quickly estimate someone’s stack size and you would think I’m at a rather large disadvantage.  However, I’m still a winner in the games I play.  I play live about once a week and with the help of my lovely girlfriend Kathi I also six table limit hold ‘em on full tilt.

So next time you’re facing a tough situation, stress, just not being on you’re a game, I don’t want you to think from this article that I’ve got it worse than you, that’s not my point at all, I just want you to remember, that no matter how big the obstacle is, no matter how long the odds if you set your mind to something and are determined to succeed, I mean really determined nothing can hold you back.  Success is not just the glory of accomplishing a goal, it’s the product of all the hard work, the late nights, the overcoming circumstances that are out of your control and coming out on top.

It’s so easy to give up or put in half the effort you should, but you will only meet your potential if every day you strive to effect any changes you can in a positive way, overcome the things that you’re powerless to change and always focus on getting better.  Nothing is free and nothing is handed to us on a silver platter, but great things are there for the taking if you put forth the initiative.

Tags: Poker and Life, Poker Articles

Playing against drawing hands in online poker

Monday, August 2nd, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy | No Comments

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

Chris submitted the article below on playing against drawing hands when the draw hits.

One of the most annoying things in poker is when a draw (that you’re not on) hits.  This brief article offers suggestions to help make the experience less annoying and more profitable.

In General, Exercise Caution
If you’re betting a made hand into a drawy board, and the draw comes in on the river, you need to take the time to analyze the situation at hand. Look at the texture of the board and the actions of your opponent through the hand, and see if the two correlate. If your opponent three bet preflop, and checks the flop and turn of a 34k5 board, then bets when the 6 hits, it doesn’t add up. Likewise, if your opponent limped preflop, then called bets on a 45K2dd board and the 8 of diamonds peels off on the river, a bet from him should probably be given a lot more respect than normal.

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When the Draw Hits on the Turn

If the flop has a obvious flush or straight draw that comes in on the turn, position is paramount. If in position, base your play on your opponent’s reaction to the drawing card and your relative hand strength.  Like most hold em tips, this is easy to say but not quite as easy to execute.   If your hand has potential to outdraw a drawing hand; you have the nut flush draw when the third diamond hits, the draw to a better straight when the straight hits, it may be best to take a free card and try to peel the winner, without leading out again and getting check-raised to an amount that prevents you from calling. Out of position, or with a non improvable hand, the decision is trickier, but betting out and reevaluating is the best normal line; if your opponent doesn’t have the draw, he’ll generally duck out of the way, and if he does, you’ll find out in the form of a call or a raise.

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When the Draw Hits on the River

When the draw comes in on the river, in position, these decisions are much easier; you don’t have the looming threat of another street to deal with. If your opponent checks, you can probably safely bet your good hands, unless you think the player is capable of check raising with a hand that connected. If your opponent bets, use judgment, pot odds, and your relative hand strength in making the call or fold.  For example, in Rush Poker, players are not as likely to get to the river with a backdoor draw. Good players recognize when draws come in that they can represent; be aware of that when a tricky player fires into you on the river when a draw makes. If you’re out of position, it’s pretty hard to fire again when the draw hits, so checking and calling or checking and folding, depending on those factors listed, is usually the best option. The last thing you want to do is bet out and get raised. If you don’t have the draw yourself, most of the time you’ll be hard pressed to find a call.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy