Poker Strategy
Money Management
When you start out playing online poker, at what level should you play? Well, naturally it depends on how much money you have. Or rather, how much you are ready to lose. Obviously, losing is not what you're aiming for, but it can happen, and it doesn't depend solely on your skill level.
Most - if not all - experienced poker players have a separate poker budget called a bankroll, which is dedicated only to poker. If you mainly play low stakes poker for fun, it's probably not necessary to keep track of every session and hours spent, but as your poker skills grow and you start moving up the levels, some basic money management techniques will start to come in handy.
Natural swings in poker
The bank roll of a poker player moves up and down all the time. This is in the nature of the game. No player can ever win every single pot, or even every single session. Even if you're a winning player over time, you must prepare to tolerate losses due to natural variations, such as bad beats or simply getting a long streak of bad cards.
Say, for example, that you look down at your hole cards and find a pair of aces. Great! You raise and one player calls. Great! The flop is A-9-6 with two spades. Really great! There are no possible straights or flushes right now, so you know you have the best hand at the moment. Nevertheless, no matter how you play the hand from here, there is no guarantee that you will win the pot. Your opponent might have a straight or flush draw, or both, or you may be up against a lower set. All these hands have the potential to beat you if the right (or wrong) cards fall. And still, you cannot possibly lay your hand down since it is such a great hand. So you have to play it out to the end, and you have to accept losing with it from time to time.
Betting structures and multi-table play
The size of these natural variations varies depending on what kind of game you play. For instance, variations can be much greater in no-limit or pot-limit than in fixed-limit games; Omaha may have larger variations than Texas Holdem etc. Also, if you play large tournaments you may have to play quite a few before being able to bring home any substantial prize money.
Playing at several tables at once can actually decrease the variation, provided you already know that you're a winning player. If you are not winning on the other hand - multi-tabling will do nothing but increase your losses and slow down your development as a poker player.
Some bankroll guidelines
The bankroll needed to avoid going broke depends on a lot of unknown factors, such as your style of play and the style of your opponents. The figures below are often quoted out there, but still they are just rough guidelines.
Also remember that your bankroll is not the amount of money you have on a poker site, but the sum of your poker funds (which often is not so easy to figure out).
Recommended bankroll
Fixed limit games
600 big blind
No limit games
3000 big blinds
Sit and go tournaments
50 buy-ins
