Online Poker – Bankroll Management


Managing your bankroll is a key element to playing winning online poker and it is also one of the most important aspects that will ultimately decide your success or lack of it. As most poker players know, “you’re out” your money quickly if you lose a hand and that is why it is extremely important never to go “all-in” and take another cards until you have assurance you will win the hand. pokerjazz77 However, it is equally as important to know how to manage your bankroll properly.

You see, the explosion in online poker over the last few years has Led to a Wild West style of environment where directly connected players gamble with each other at almost every hand. As a result of this many players who might not have known how to manage their bankroll properly and got themselves in a financial hole try to pay for their loses with small bets or with pieces of their own money. This is a recipe for disaster and usually ends with disaster.

Online Poker – Bankroll Management

When you cannot afford to lose, you simply go in a bit blind and you pick up a big hand, you lose the hand, you lose quite a lot and never really understand why. You ask yourself “Why did I lose? I clearly have the best hand”. At the end of the day it is hard to explain to you why you lost with a hand that you have won the pot with. However, you know why you lost, why you made bad decisions and why you beat yourself up over taking a bad beat. All of this angles are valid and try to see where you went wrong and improve next time.

Anyway, let’s say you make that $50 continuation bet on the button and you get re-raised all-in by a desperate player in middle position. Standard poker justice service. You call with the best hand and show the aggressor you are willing to match his $500 bet with your entire stack. Occasionally you will win a hand where you might have actually have the best hand. Occasionally you will lose a hand where you had the best hand. Mostly though you will break even or will break even within the first 6 to 8 hands. By the end of the first week you should have roughly half or the higher point total established by the Hangman for the tournament.

For the second week you should start at the same level as the first since most of the players at the lower levels seem to be with a week or two of practice under their belt. You can experiment a bit with your strategy on hands you are not familiar with and on playing styles etc but you should try and pick up some sort of system or strategy as to how to bet. At this point you will know quite a lot about how to bet and what your opponents are likely to do, in relation to the type of hands you are likely to have.

When you are confident you can start to use your well trained intuition and begin to nibble away at the big pots. Often the smaller pots are the best pots of a tournament because unless you have a monster you will often get in cheap because everyone else is also in. nibble away at the smaller pots first and you will get a good idea of what the Game is about before you have to invest any of your chips.

This technique is a lot about observation and some commitment to learning. If you practice enough you will know the exact moments to bet or fold when you opponent is making a different move. You will be able to recognize which pots are yours and which aren’t. This technique of non-identification is what makes poker and that which separates winners from losers.