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.

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.

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.

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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 bankroll in whatever game they wish to play.

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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.

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.

Poker pro Gus Hansen

This article belongs to the Poker Pro series

Gustav Hansen, or Gus Hansen as he’s known on the World’s poker scene, belongs to the poker superstars along with names such as Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu to name a few.

Gus Hansen aka “The great Dane” was born just outside Copenhagen on February 13th 1974. Since then he has undoubtedly become the most famous Danish poker player throughout the times.

In this article I will sum up how Gus Hansen built his poker bankroll,  which currently allows him to play in all the major live tournaments as well as the highest online games on Full Tilt poker.

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Gus Hansen in his early gambling days

In the 1990s Gus Hansen traveled around with a group of guys from Denmark trying to build a bankroll and making a living playing backgammon. The group was known as “The Danish Backgammon Boys” and they were almost always stuck. Gus had the wildest swings of the lot, one week up a million and the next week down a million. Despite his bankroll swings, Gus always remained positive. As long as the games kept rolling he was convinced everything would work out. Many of you probably don’t know that Rasmus Nøhr, currently a well known Danish musician, was one of backgammon players in the group. Rasmus Nøhr quit the backgammon scene in the late 1990s in favor of pursuing a career as a chef. This was around the same time Gus Hansen moved to Las Vegas with a very small bankroll and a plan to increase it on the poker tables, which he believed to have a future. Rasmus Nøhr did not succeed as a chef and actually lived on the streets for some time until his music career took off. Gus Hansen was the first to invest in Rasmus Nøhr’s career by founding the recording company “Rec og Kort” and signing Rasmus as his first artist. Unfortunately the album “The happy pizza delivery guy” was never released and Gus Hansen shut down “Rec og Kort” to concentrate on his poker career in the states.

Gus Hansen’s achievements

Gus Hansen’s bankroll has increased significantly through his many cashes in major live tournaments. Since 2002 Gus Hansen has made in excess of a whopping 7500000$ in live tournament winnings. Pretty sweet bankroll boost if you ask me . Here’s a list of Gus Hansen’s biggest bankroll boosts:

• 2003 WPT L.A. Poker Classic, 1st prize 507190$
• 2003 WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic, 1st prize 556480$
• 2004 WPT PokerStars Carribean Adventure, 1st prize 455780$
• 2007 Aussie Millions, 1st prize 1500000$
• 2008 WPT World Championship, 2nd prize 1714800$

Another great bankroll boost came when Gus Hansen sold his stake in the online poker room pokerchamps.com. The site and software was sold to Betfair for roughly 15 million $.

Finally, although it did not increase Gus Hansen’s bankroll, I’m sure his street credibility climbed when he was accepted into the Poker Walk of Fame together with the godfather of poker Doyle Brunson and legendary James Garner from one of the all time greatest poker movies “Maverick”. To this day no other poker player has been accepted into the Poker Walk of Fame.

Gus Hansen’s recent year

Gus Hansen’s bankroll took quite a beating in 2009 on the highest stake Full Tilt poker tables. According to highstakesdb.com, Gus Hansen lost almost 6 million $ online in 2009. And with no major live tournament wins under his belt either, 2009 was a terrible year for The Great Dane. In December 2009 Gus Hansen decided to take a break from online poker to study his game and it seemed like this has helped. So far in 2010 he has increased his bankroll with more than 2 million $.

Gus Hansen’s weaknesses

Gus Hansen is a gambler at heart and as a result his bankroll takes some wild swings from time to time. He likes to bet on almost everything and has lost a lot of money on large sports bets and in the high stakes live cash games in “Bobby’s Room”, the high stakes venue at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas.

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Some of the more humorous bets Gus has made include:

• A 200000$ tennis game vs. fellow poker pro Patrick Antonius. I don’t actually know if the game was ever played. Rumors have it that Patrick Antonius backed out of the bet due to an injury.
• A 35000$ boxing match against his good friend Theo Jørgensen. Gus Hansen lost this match. You can easily find it on Youtube along with this gem where Gus Hansen and Mike Matusow bet on a game of tennis.
• When playing high stakes poker in late 2009 against Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and  Eli Elazra, Gus Hansen was offered 2 million $ bet if he could stay away from sex in one full year. The guys could not agree on the terms of the bet, so Gus Hansen ended up declining it.

Despite Gus Hansen’s large bankroll swings, I’m pretty sure he has a good amount of cash set aside for his retirement if he goes broke again. I wish him the best of luck in 2010.

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

See full list of Online Casinos For USA Players.

This article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Building series.

I’ve tried to put together a list of my top 10 “not to do” when it comes to poker bankroll building. If you disagree or have anything to add (perhaps you have your own recipe for building a poker bankroll) please feel free to add a comment.

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Do not start your poker bankroll building project without a plan

Planning is crucial in order for any project to become a success (I should know since I work as a project manager for a living). When it comes to poker bankroll building you need to lay out the foundation before you start. Are you aiming to copy Chris Ferguson, starting with 0$ and grinding it out in freerolls and micro limit SNGs or No limit Hold’em? Chris Ferguson succeeded in building a 10000$ bankroll this way. Are you going to build your bankroll through cash games, MTT tournaments or SNGs? What is your plan? You need to have this sorted out before you start.

Do not play out of your profit zone

Your profit zone is the limit where you can comfortably grind it out and make a regular profit (e.g. 5$ 10 max SNGs, 0,25$/0,50$ 6 max NL Hold’em etc…). If you’ve never played poker before you don’t know yet what your profit zone is and hopefully it will move up in limits as you get better. If you’ve played poker before you probably have a pretty good idea what your profit zone is. Here’s my point when it comes to poker bankroll building projects. If possible start up your poker bankroll building project in your profit zone as this will give you the best start. If you start out below your profit zone you run the risk of getting bored and if you start out above your profit zone you run a serious risk of loosing your bankroll.

Keep in mind that people play in games beyond their skill level, buy-in level and outside their profit zone because:

• They are attracted to the potential of the one big pay off
• They think they’re a better poker player than they really are
• They think anyone can get lucky once
• They figure the fastest way to re coop money lost at the lower levels is to win one big game
• They think poker is a game of pure chance
• They think they play better when up against better opponents (i.e. fewer donkeys)
• They have more money than brains

Don’t be one of these people!

Do not start your poker bankroll building project without (realistic, but at the same time ambitious) goals.

Setting goals for your poker bankroll building project is equally as important as the initial planning. Without goals you’re destined for failure. They are what will keep your motivation up and give direction and meaning to your projects. Be ambitious but realistic when setting your goals. Building a large enough bankroll to pay for your dream holiday for example, is in my opinion an ambitious but realistic goal. Make sure that the goal is something you really want. Often this is not the actual money itself but the stuff we can buy from it.

Do not carry out your poker bankroll building project without motivation

If you take care with your planning and choice of goals you should not experience long periods with lack of motivation during your poker bankroll building project. Short spells of low motivation however are unavoidable. I have often found that blogging about my poker bankroll building projects has helped me keep my motivation high. Therefore consider starting your own blog about your project or find a forum with equal minded poker players to share your ups and downs with.

Do not carry out your poker bankroll building project without discipline

Here’s a great definition of the concept discipline:

…..persistently act in the direction of a goal regardless of external adversity or internal state.

Many associate discipline with pushing yourself hard to achieve a certain goal. But this is not the way to succeed in the long run with any challenge especially Bankroll Management. To succeed it is essential to maintain the joy of playing poker. Discipline in this context is the ability to persistently act in the direction of a goal regardless of adversity and the emotional state while keeping in mind that you are doing it because it’s fun.

Discipline is what will keep you on track in your poker bankroll building project with regards to bankroll managements and avoiding tilt. In my opinion you will never succeed in a poker bankroll building project if you do not have discipline.

Do not carry out your poker bankroll building project without proper bankroll management

Bankroll management can be defined as:

………the continuous adjustment of your playing limit according to the size of your Bankroll while factoring in your poker skills and the level of risk you are willing to take.

Obviously this is important. Without proper bankroll management you run a high risk of ruin. In addition if you do not use bankroll management you might not realize that your bankroll is large enough to move up in limits.

There are a few rules of thumb regarding bankroll management, but I recommend you do your own research here because there are a lot of different opinions on this subject.

• For No limit cash games your bankroll should be 20-50 times the maximum table buyin on the limit you play.
• For SNG’s I would say your bankroll should be 40-100 times the buyin you’re playing
• For MTTs (multi table tournaments) you will need more than 100 times the buyin you’re playing (the reason for this, is that you due to the large playing fields in MTTs will not win them nearly as often as SNGs

Do not play at a poker room without a rakeback or bonus deal

Having a rakeback or bonus deal while you play will add $$ to your bankroll building project while you play. So there’s really no reason not to sign up through a rakeback site and get this added value. If you’re a break even player against the opponents on your limit, a rakeback or bonus deal will ensure that your bankroll continuously increases. Since anyone can become an affiliate of a poker site and start promoting rakeback and bonus deals, there is almost no end to the number of online poker rakeback pages available today. If you decide to get a rakeback or bonus deal for your poker bankroll building project, I recommend you check out PokerBRB.com. Here you’ll get better than average deals and the added benefit of a free online poker tournament and freeroll league.

Do not play poker outside your poker bankroll building project

This point on my list might sound strange to some of you, and I’m not even sure I agree with it My thought was that if you lime me play poker with your friends once in a while, chances are the stakes will probably be higher compared to your poker bankroll building game. I have a poker buddy and during our poker weekends I usually spend more $ in tournament buyins than I would during two months, when I just play alone. If you’ve just paid 200$ to play in one of the large Sunday tournaments, won’t the transition back to 5$ SNGs be difficult? As I wrote earlier, I’m not sure about this one, so any input from you guys reading this article would be greatly appreciated.

Do not go on tilt

This is a no-brainer. You tilt, you loose. So don’t do it. There are thousands of online articles giving good advice on how to avoid tilt. I like to throw my water bottle through our living room, but I don’t know if that will work for everyone.

If you go broke do not start a new poker bankroll building project before you’ve analyzed what went wrong in you first attempt

Did you play outside your profit zone? Did you lack poker skills in the games you played? Did you lose motivation?

Find out what you did wrong and learn from it so your next poker bankroll building project has a higher chance of success.

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MagicHoldem	Software license for less than 100$ a year	One of the best poker odds calculators. Click for more details

Thanks to Anders and JGiles for providing some of the material for the list.

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

Check out our Poker Freeroll and Tournament League.

I have started a stake deal with my good friend Artur. The deal is that I provide a starting bankroll of 2000$ and when he reaches 5000$ I receive 3000$. I have chosen to see the deal as a bet where I get odds 1.5 on my stake. Since I think the probability of success is more than 67% the EV on my bet is above 1. If you are a gambler you always take bets with an EV over 1

Here are some more details:

• Limits 0,5$/1$
• The project will obviously stop when the bankroll hits 0$
• I cannot pull out of the deal unless the bankroll reaches 5000$
• The daily running stop loss is 300$. This for example means that if the daily profit hits 600$ then Artur has to stop playing if the daily profit drops to 300$
• Rakeback goes back into the bankroll
• I receive weekly updates which I will post here

One month update

We are down to 1150$ which is obviously not good. Artur took a break from poker about 11 days into the project but unfortunately it did not change his luck.

Key hands; big pots lost where we were ahead:

• 330$ pot all in preflop with KK vs QQ vs 910. Flop is 10 10 6

I have started a stake deal with my good friend Artur. The deal is that I provide a starting bankroll of 2000$ and when he reaches 5000$ I receive 3000$. I have chosen to see the deal as a bet where I get odds 1.5 on my stake. Since I think the probability of success is more than 67% the EV on my bet is above 1. If you are a gambler you always take bets with an EV over 1

Here are some more details:

• Limits 0,5$/1$
• The project will obviously stop when the bankroll hits 0$
• I cannot pull out of the deal unless the bankroll reaches 5000$
• The daily running stop loss is 300$. This for example means that if the daily profit hits 600$ then Artur has to stop playing if the daily profit drops to 300$
• Rakeback goes back into the bankroll
• I receive weekly updates which I will post here

Second week’s update

As you can see the project is off to a slow start. Hopefully the pots will start rolling our way soon. Artur is very dedicated to the project as demonstrated by playing a session in the emergency room before it was his turn to get stitched up.

Key hands; big pots lost where we were way ahead before the river:

• Lost 200 with AA vs 10J on a 10 high flop. Our opponent called big bets all the way to the river to hit his runner runner flush
• Lost 200 where we hit K high flush on turn but lose to A high flush on river

I have started a stake deal with my good friend Artur. The deal is that I provide a starting bankroll of 2000$ and when he reaches 5000$ I receive 3000$. I have chosen to see the deal as a bet where I get odds 1.5 on my stake. Since I think the probability of success is more than 67% the EV on my bet is above 1. If you are a gambler you always take bets with an EV over 1

Here are some more details:

• Limits 0,5$/1$
• The project will obviously stop when the bankroll hits 0$
• I cannot pull out of the deal unless the bankroll reaches 5000$
• The daily running stop loss is 300$. This for example means that if the daily profit hits 600$ then Artur has to stop playing if the daily profit drops to 300$
• Rakeback goes back into the bankroll
• I receive weekly updates which I will post here

First week’s update

Key hands, 100$+ pots

• Lost KK vs AJ all in preflop, 189$ pot
• lost 88 vs Q3 on a 43383 board, 100$ pot
• lost A9 vs AQ on a AQ69 board, 200+$ pot
• Lost QJ vs Q9 vs 76 on a K10x board. Turn completed Q9′s flush, 212$ pot
• Lost K5 vs K8 on a K83 flop. Didn’t hit the flush. 221$
• Won 22 vs AJ on a AK2 flop, 120$
• Won 88 vs KK. Flopped trips. 200$ pot
• Won QQ vs J8 on a 8J5x5 board, 200$ pot
• Won AA vs Q9 on a AQ89 board, 200$ pot

Submitted by Julia Stanlie, this article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Building series

Julia Stanlie’ represents the Dozen Poker site. The site offers the Top Coverage as well as the Worse Coverage of the poker game.

Online Texas Hold’em Poker players can be classified according to four different styles of play, namely:
•    Loose Aggressive
•    Tight Aggressive
•    Loose Passive
•    Tight Passive

The words, Loose and Tight describe the number of hands the player will actually play, whereas the words Aggressive and Passive define the betting strategy of the player.

If you are familiar with the playing styles in your online poker game then it could probably help you combat their game and actually beat them. Following is a brief summary of each of the playing styles:

Loose Aggressive: A loose aggressive player can be easily found at the online poker game. They usually bet frequently and bet big preferring to go all-in. Such players are difficult to be judged because  it is clear that he may not always have the best of cards but how to identify when he’s bluffing?

Tight Aggressive: A tight aggressive player only bets when he has good cards. And so he is the diametrical opposite to a loose aggressive player. These players will hardly ever bluff. If this player gets a good hand he will place a big bet and keep the betting action going.

Loose Passive: These players are always keen to see every hand but are not prepared to be a part of the betting. They usually call small to medium bets  but won’t commit to a hand by raising bets.

Tight Passive: Such a player hardly gets involved in the game and you would probably question why he is there at all. These players usually fold all but the best hands. Even if they get a good hand they will rather call than bet.

Among all the styles mentioned above, the tight aggressive is considered to be the best. It requires the player to be patient but actually pays off in prize money at the end of the game.