Poker Articles

By Jennifear | Published Jul 31 2006, 08:41 AM
The top 5% of online players in terms of ability, are not the top 5% players in terms of total cashouts.  In fact, the biggest losers playing today are some of the best players, playing one limit too high, or without bankroll discipline.  My goal with the following article is to help you become part of the latter group, the winners.

The sng players, and there are many of us, have a hard time identifying what level they should be playing at to maximize their profits.  A mistake that many players make is not paying themselves along the way while trying to accumulate a bankroll for their desired level of play.< BR>
I recommend first that you identify first whether or not you can beat the $5 sng games.  Over time, this should become apparent to you.  If you cannot, playing sngs as a source of income is out of the question.

Anyone with a bankroll of $300 or lower, in my opinion, should be playing $5.50-$6.50 sngs.  This is well above previously stated bankroll requirements written by Fox and others on this site.  The reason for this is that the requirements set forth by Fox and others assume you are always beating the game, where in fact, many players go through phases of poor play that make them losers in the short term.  For instance, a player with a 30% roi can fall into a slump of playing bad hands, overvaluing hands, and doing things that are getting themselves in trouble, making them short-term losing players.

Once you have attained $300 or more, a move up to $10-12 sngs is justified, until your bankroll is at $1,000.  Should you drop below $300, your first move is to drop down levels.  At this point, it's time to pay yourself back.  Now that you have completely eliminated the risk of ruin, you want to take funds from POKER and put them into LIFE.  So the strategy is to "tax" yourself 10% of GROSS winnings from here forward, to be earmarked for withdrawal, and to withdraw the funds immediately as soon as you reach the site's minimum withdrawal requirement.  This will ensure that you don't have the temptation to put this money back into your poker bankroll when you hit a skid.  You will begin to feel better as you pay yourself, and as a result you will play prime poker, hoping to add to your withdrawal total.  You will be playing with a purpose.  

The other thing that this accomplishes is that it becomes harder to get to $1,000 this way.  When you get to $1,000, you can begin to play $22-27 sngs.  In order to even get to $1,000, you will have to have about a 20% roi at the $10-12 level to beat the rake, the "tax", and have money above that.  If you can beat the $10-12 games at 20%, you are ready for the next level.  Also, by waiting until you are at $1,000 to move up, you are ensuring a big enough sample size at your current level that you aren't being affected in your judgment due to short-term good variance.  I think moving up to the $50 level requires about a $2500 bankroll.  I'll stop here because this post is intended for the low-limit grinder.

Continue to "tax" yourself 10% and set high bankroll requirements until you don't feel you can beat the next level up.  When this happens, simply start "taxing" yourself 50% instead, and become a better student of the game, reading a lot, and getting new ideas, maybe signing up for an online poker school, until you feel ready to conquer the world again.

Put a stop-loss on yourself of 6 buyins/day at your current level, or stop playing at the first sign of frustration.  You don't ever want to damage your hard work by playing outside your bankroll or chasing losses. 

If you follow these strategies, you will never feel too much pressure to win a game,  you will have a constant, small income coming in, and you will feel better about yourself, allowing yourself to play to the best of your ability.

After all, the way we keep score isn't the level we play at, it's the number of dollars coming in.

Best of luck,

Jennifear