The Importance of Bankroll Management

Knowing when to quit is an important factor of being a successful poker player. There is no doubt that every good player know exactly when to walk away from a table, and in order to be at their level you need to learn this particular aspect of the game. Bankroll management should be carefully integrated to your overall poker-playing strategy to help you make tough decisions in difficult times.

Having a solid bankroll management strategy will surely help away from a table when you are losing and you can no longer afford the risks. It will give you a clear guide to calculate your standings and make decisions when you really need to. If you are winning, you can keep going and put more chips in your pockets, but you can quickly decide to walk away when you are bleeding whites. Having a good bankroll management will also prepare you for one of those times when you are losing but you know you can still recover anytime soon. Let’s say you are down $1000. If you walk away, you walk away with $1000 losses. If you can calculate your risks and be sure that you are still in the safe side you can continue playing and stand a chance of making more than $1000 of a profit at the end of the day.

Having a good bankroll management as part of your overall strategy will also help you play less emotional game. You are in control of your money and playing strategy, you know exactly what you are doing, and you will not have to deal with unnecessary emotional rollercoaster that each hand brings. You will emits less tales, have an overall cool aura surrounding you, and end up playing better games and making better judgments no matter what hand you are holding.

Winning a Poker Tournament

Allow me to tell you a story about a good friend of mine. I have to say she is an excellent poker player — yes, a good female poker player — and have won countless games against other players in various occasions. The one thing she never actually succeeds in doing is working her way through poker tournaments. I didn’t understood the reasons why she never go further than the second or third round until recently; being a great poker player is simply not enough to win a poker tournament. I had a chance to see her playing the WSOP day-2 and I can clearly see she is a short-term kind of player. She entered the tournament with no strategy, and focuses more on winning the current table she’s in.

If you are serious about entering a poker tournament, you must first realize that tournaments are long-term poker games with a lot of tables and countless opponents to beat before actually making to the final nine. Winning one hand at a time may be a good micro strategy, but you need to look at the bigger picture at the same time. Surviving a table just won’t cut it; you need to gather enough strength (read: chips) to survive the next round. Even if you survive the day, starting the next day with small amount of chips will get you eliminated before you land a good hand.

You must come up with a good strategy. You can be aggressive when you are confident with your hand to score some big wins. Keeping your game tight is good, but you still need to be irrational if not random from time to time to avoid letting your opponents read your plays like an open book. With a proper strategy, you will be advancing further and winning a poker tournament just like that.

Part-time Poker Player: Cashing in a Little Extra Something

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, professional poker players living solely from playing poker in the US alone. If you notice WSOP winners taking home millions of dollars, you should know that there are people making hundreds of thousands and even millions each day doing nothing but playing poker. But before you start to think about how good you are at poker and quitting your day job to be a professional poker player, you need to test the water and play part-time poker to make money.

Part-time poker player can indeed be very rewarding. Taking a little extra cash home could never hurt, right? More and more people are playing poker during their spare time, especially with the help of online game rooms highly available from the comfort of your homes. This means you have more opponents to play against, equals more money to be won if you know what you are doing.

The key to being part-time poker player as well as enjoying a professional career in poker is definitely wealth management. You need to make sure that you are making money in the long run. There is not a single poker player I know that wins every hand he or she played — it’s a game of fate and strategy, and folding or losing to another player will definitely hits you. The most important thing is to keep your games profitable from time to time. You can lose $1000 in one night while winning $750 and $850 for a cool $1600 total, and you are still profitable. Calculate risks involved and make sure you are only taking risks you can afford to handle.

This is why part-time poker is great, because you can test how good you are at managing your poker career. If you continue to maintain profitability you can consider a career change for sure.

On The Button

In poker, betting positions play important role in players winning strategy. Your betting position can be exploited to help you win the round. One of the best positions in a poker table would be the button, also known as the dealer position. Being on the button is as good as it may get because you will be acting last and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

Not that I’m suggesting you to do this, but there are several occasions when I get to see the river with hands I usually fold because I was on the button. No one raise on pre-flop, checked the flop, and make a small raise on the turn. Half the time I actually managed to constructs a winning hand at the river by pure luck, and being on the button keeps my hand alive and playable. Should I be in other table position, I would fold the hand even before seeing the flop.

Being on the button is also beneficial if you are holding either a strong hand or a weak hand. Playing on the button with a solidly strong hand will allow you to increase the pot accordingly and eliminate unneeded competitions. Even with a good hand, decreasing the odds of one of your opponents constructing a better hand is always good. With a moderate hand, being on the button is the perfect place to bluff or probe bet. You already have enough information when it is your time to move, and you can make better judgment calls with such loads of information about your opponents. Of course, you can limp without risking much of your money if your hand is weak, and you can probably see the turn if not the river safely. When used properly, being on the button will surely be a great place to be no matter what hand you are holding.

Reading Poker Tells

Poker tells is probably players’ biggest secret weapon when it comes to brick and mortar poker games. They are emotional signs and body language, mostly emitted by accident or subconsciously, that can tell the way they are feeling — later on with proper experiences you can predict your opponents’ hand by reading these tells. There are no definite ways to successfully read poker tells, but there are several common tells that can easily be spotted.

If you see your opponents‘hands shaking, their breathing patterns change erratically, or if you notice they are producing more sweat, you can pretty much be sure they are holding a good hand. These physical tells are hard to conceal and in most cases are telling you something. Players can also change mannerism when they spotted a good hand. They usually finish their drinks suddenly, stop their conversations, sit up straighter, or stop the regular thing they are doing (i.e. chewing their gum, etc.).

Other poker players choose to emit obvious tells thinking they are being smart. Have you ever met one of those poker players who expose his hand by doing stupid things like acting overly strong or overly weak, or make unusual comments? These types of players are considering what they do smart. Imagining them thinking “oh, I have a great hand, I’m going to pretend weak” and showing everybody what they were thinking by overly stating how weak their hand while calling every raises thrown at them. It is nearly impossible for their hand to be that bad, isn’t it?

Reading poker tells is an important part of this game. There are countless other poker tells often found, and in order to be good at spotting them you need to learn how to pay close attention to your opponents during a poker session.

Pocket Pair of Aces – How to Use Them

A lot of people got a pocket pair of aces, which is an incredible hand if you know how to use it, but end up getting less chips or even nothing at all. I have even seen people with pocket pair of aces to start with ended up losing the round or folding too early. Pocket aces are a good hand to start with, but it is also a tricky hand. You hand is good, but there are other possible better hands as well. In most cases, pocket aces can guarantee you a win hands down; all you have to do is play the card correctly, conceal your tells, and have other players play by your pace. The worst thing a player can do with pocket aces is going all-in pre-flop. Believe me, I have seen this move being performed countless time only to get beaten on the river or winning only a small amount of money because other players jump out of the boat immediately. Pocket aces are to be played smoothly. If you can, limp through pre-flop. Add some hesitation to your table tells to make people think you don’t have a good hand. They will buy this most of the time and try to get you out of the game by bluffing you with significant raise. Just take your time, and call their bet. If the flop shows another ace, don’t jump out of your chair. Make sure you calculate possible hands of your opponent. If there are no aces dealt at the flop, proceed with caution while slowly luring your opponents to putting bigger money on the pot. Carefully analyze the best possible hand that can be constructed with the flop, and continue to do so when seeing the turn and the river. If everything went well, you will be pocketing a nice sum of chips easily.