Poker Articles

By GambleAB | Published Apr 17 2007, 03:55 AM
"But Aaron," you say, "I'm no Doyle Brunson, I don't have a huge bankroll, and I actually enjoy spending time with other humans!"  "RUBBISH!" I say [authors note:  I probably don't say "rubbish," I'd probably say something way more derogatory that would hurt your feelings].  You can do all this playing comfortable levels in only 40 hours, the same amount of time that a normal office person works at his/her job. 
      
What is the secret?  Repetition.  The key to poker is finding small edges and exploiting them over and over and over again.  It's like if every time you took a step, you saw a nickel on the ground.  It's not going to change your life if you bend down and pick one up once in a while, but if you pick up every single one you come across, at the end of the day, you'll have a nice chunk of change in your pocket.  Literally. 
      
So here is what you do.  Sit down at your home computer.  Fire up your favorite poker site.  Open up a table of 10/20 limit texas hold 'em.  Then open up another one.  And another.  Then one more.  You now have four tables of 10/20 running.  Now, this isn't the easiest thing in the world to keep up with, but as long as you have a moderately sized monitor and aren't running a million chat programs with things popping up on your screen every minute, it is very easy to do this with minimal practice.  Once you are four tabling, just play a normal solid limit game.  Play good cards in position, and get free turn cards.  Pay attention and see who will pay you off and who only plays the nuts.  Playing a solid game, you can easily grind out 2 BB/100 hands, and playing four tables at a time, you can comfortably get in around 300 hands per hour. 
      
MATH TIME!  2 BB/100 is $40 per 100 hands played.  300 hands per hour at $40 per 100 is $120/hr.  That's a pretty good working wage.  You could call yourself Doctor Poker. [Authors note: Please don't ever ever ever call yourself Doctor Poker.]  Now again, here is where the repetition comes in.  If you play for 40 hours a week, you have just made $4800 in a week.  You played comfortable limits.  You played tight.  You got to spend time with your friends and family.

Now let's compare.  Let's face it....multitabling 10/20 limit isn't sexy.  Nobody is going to make a post asking for you to be ranked b/c of your superior grinding skills.  It's much better to be playing tournaments.  Right? 
      
WROOOOOOOOOOOOONG!  Sorry for yelling.  Let's look at a top online tournament player.  They have around an 80% ROI, which is higher than yours---much higher.  They play around $1000 worth of tournaments on weekdays and around $5000 in tournaments on the weekends.  $10k in buy ins times 80% ROI....come on you can do the math.  Fine, it's $8,000 in average weekly profit.  And that is for the very best players in the world.  And that is if they play their best in every tournament they enter.  And if they run poorly, you know what they lose?  Around TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.  If you run poorly in a week playing 10/20, know what you lose?  Maybe $1k or so.  Also you can bet that the very best online tournament players, playing 10k worth of tournaments a week, are playing way more than 40 hours in the week. 
      
So what would you rather do?  Be the best in the world and make 8k or be above-average and make 5k?  Still money hungry?  That's ok, because after a week or two of playing 10/20, you'll have more than enough in your bankroll to play 15/30, where you can make close to 8k playing 40 hours a week. 
      
Now, grinding out mid limit cash games isn't glamorous or exciting.  There is no huge rush of adrenaline, but the average player can sit down and focus hard and have it pay off big time.  And at the end of the day, the biggest winner in poker isn't the people that get talked about the most; it's the people that have the most in their bank accounts.