Online Poker Bankroll Managment

One of the biggest mistakes many online poker players make is not managing a bankroll properly.  They play games that are too high for the amount of money in their account, and often try moving up levels to chase losses.  If you find yourself constantly reloading your account, then this article is for you.

What is a Bankroll?

To understand the basic fundamentals of bankroll management, you should first understand what a bankroll is.  A bankroll is money that you keep separate from your other money for the sole purpose of playing poker with.  You can either leave this all in one site in the poker site’s online cashier, or you can keep this money stored in an e-wallet such as Moneybookers if you plan to use this money at various different poker sites.

Common Bankroll Management Guidelines

Depending on what type of game you play, you will need to have a bankroll that is a certain number of buy-ins or big-blinds at the level you are playing.  Here is an easy to follow reference for managing your bankroll:
No Limit Cash Games – The common rule for no limit cash games is you should have at least 20 MAX buy-ins for the level you want to play.  So, for example if you were playing $2/$4 NL Holdem, you should have 20x the $400 max buy-in, or $8000.
Limit Cash Games – Limit games require a much smaller bankroll than no limit.  The basic rule of thumb for limit games is you should have 300 times the big blind.  If you wanted to play $2/$4 Limit Holdem, you should have 300x the big blind of $4, or $1200.
Sit and Go’s – If you prefer playing Sit and Go’s (SNGs) then you should have at least 40-buyins for the level that you plan on playing.  For example, if you want to play $10 SNGs, you should have at least $400 in your account.
Multi-Table Tournaments – Since Multi-table tournaments have much larger fields and there is a lot more variance involved, you will need to have a lot more buy-ins than playing SNGs.  On the other side a single win in a multi-table tournament could mean a huge boost to your bankroll.  A safe amount would be to have 100 buyins for the level of tournament that you want to play.  For example, if you want to play $5 MTTs, you should have at least $500 in your account.

Moving Up and Down Levels

As you grow your bankroll, or as it starts to shrink you will need to move up and down levels.  After all, if you are not winning consistently playing $5 tournaments, then you should probably drop down a $2 equivalent to focus on improving your skills first.  On the other hand, if you are consistently winning at your current level and you now have enough of a bankroll to move up a level, don’t be afraid to try the games at the next level to continue growing your bankroll over time.  Typically there is not much of a difference in opponents moving from 1 level to the next, but if you try jumping multiple levels you may be faced with a much different game.

Conclusion

Bankroll Management takes a lot of discipline to practice properly.  More often then not players will play games beyond their bankroll due to things like tilt, stress, or boredom.  Always be sure to play with money that you can afford to lose so that the actual dollar amount you are playing for doesn’t distract you from playing your best poker game.  Getting things like rakeback or a free bankroll are also great ways to get your bankroll started, so look into these also.  Study up as much as you can about the game, and in no time you should be making decent money playing poker online!

What is an Online Poker Bonus?

Almost every online poker room offers an initial deposit or sign up bonus in order to entice new players to sign up at their poker room.  These bonuses vary in matching percentage and size, but a typical bonus would be Full Tilt’s 100% up to $600 bonus.  The bonus is meant to be seen as free money for the player, but in fact the money is not usually given directly to the player, but is instead kept in a pending bonus account.  That being said online poker bonuses should still be taken advantage of when possible because they effectively reduce the amount of money you pay to the poker room for the duration of the bonus clearing requirements.

How Do You Clear the Pending Bonus?

In order to release the bonus from your pending bonus section of your online poker account you will usually have to earn some form of frequent player points.  For example, at Full Tilt Poker you must earn Full Tilt Points.  Your bonus is then released either in increments such as $10 or $20, or as a lump sum after you have cleared the entire bonus.  Full Tilt, for example, releases your bonus in increments of 10% of the total bonus or $20 increments.  To earn the frequent player points that are needed to clear the bonus you simply have to play in cash games or tournaments at the poker room.  For example, at Full Tilt you earn seven points for every dollar that you pay in tourney fees and each point you earn clears $0.06 of the bonus.  Most poker rooms will also make you clear the entire bonus within a certain amount of time.  For example, at Full Tilt you get 120 days to clear as much of your bonus as possible, but at PKR you have 60 days and if you don’t clear the entire bonus in this time the whole amount is lost.  In simple terms clearing a poker bonus is easy.  All you have to do is play at the site and the bonus will clear itself.

What to Look for in an Online Poker Bonus?

Apart from the obvious size of the bonus the most important thing you can look at when it comes to an online poker bonus is the clearing conditions.  A bonus with player friendly clearing conditions will clear much faster and you will have your bonus money much quicker than at a poker room that offers a difficult to clear bonus.  In order to figure out if the clearing conditions are good you should find out how much of the bonus each frequent player point earns and then see how many points you earn from tournaments and cash games.  For example, at Full Tilt Poker a point is worth $0.06 and you earn 7 for every dollar you pay in tournament fees.  This means that for every $1 you pay to the room you clear $0.42 of the bonus.  This is a good ratio and if you can find a poker room with a ratio of $0.40 and up the clearing conditions are friendly, but if the ratio is below $0.30 the clearing conditions are bad.

Conclusion

Poker bonuses are great for players because they reduce the amount of money lost to the poker room.  The size of the bonus matters slightly, but the main criteria for determining if a poker bonus is solid is the clearing conditions.  The better the clearing conditions the more money you save.

Minimize Your Poker Losses or Maximize Your Poker Winnings

At least once in a pro poker player’s career, after analysing their game they will find they should be making much more profit. There are two ways to make more profit, minimize your losses or maximize your winnings. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but you will only be able to focus on one of these factors, so which do you choose? You will only ever see people bragging about their winnings on poker forums, hear about how much professionals won on television and most profitable players plastered around poker sites. You will hardly ever see players talking about minimizing their losses, or strategy to do so. Winning a huge pot is much more exciting to talk about then making a superb fold which saved you a few big blinds.

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When minimizing your losses, it will mean playing much fewer hands. Remember in no limit poker, any chips you save will be worth double that if you double up. For example, you are playing $1/2 no limit and sit down at the table with $200. You call a big blind on the first hand and then fold to a raise. Your chip stack now stands at $198. You are now in the small blind and it folds to you. You and the big blind exchange bets and end up all-in. You win the pot and your chip stack now stands at $396, when it would have been $400 had you not called that big blind of $2.

Of course that example is not accurate, as rake would have been taken etc. But it still puts into perspective the amount that is there to be lost at no limit if you constantly limp into pots with mediocre hands. If we continue from the last example, you limp into 20 hands and do now win one pot. If you now go all in you stand to lose $80 just from the hands you limped in with. That is 40 big blinds to a $1/2 player, which is a huge amount of money to be throwing away each session. This is why you will often see players constantly reloading after each hand.

In turn, minimizing your losses will eventually lead to your winnings becoming maximized, which cannot be said if you reverse the statement. If you maximize your winnings, it doesn’t affect how much money you lose, as you may still be limping into as many pots as you used to. Therefore you must start off by minimizing your losses, despite how attractive it is to win huge pots and brag about them, it will lead to you becoming a much more profitable poker player.

Online Poker Tells

In online poker you don’t have as much information as in live poker to determine whether your opponent has a strong hand, but there are still some things you can look for when it is your opponents turn to act.

• In general if a player thinks for a while and then decides to raise he is not bluffing.  The player likely thinks they have the best hand and they were deciding how much you would call.
• In limit poker a quick raise preflop will usually mean the player has top pair.
• In limit poker a quick call with two flush cards on the flop will usually mean a draw.
• If a player raises very quickly it will generally mean they are either bluffing or have only a moderate hand.

There are many other tells that are unique to individual players that usually have to do with the amount the player bets or the time it takes the player to act.  If you can watch these two things and find some tendencies of certain players you should be able to beat them consistently.

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7 Reasons to Play at Full Tilt Poker

1.        Huge Player Base

At Full Tilt Poker you can find games of all varieties and types to suit your liking at any time of the day.  There are also scheduled tournaments running every few minutes with very large player pools.

2.       Initial Deposit Bonus

Full Tilt offers an initial deposit bonus of 100% up to $600.  This bonus is one of the best in the industry and is also one of the easiest initial deposit bonuses to clear.

Get this bonus by using Full Tilt Referral code THEFULLTILT, or by signing up for Full Tilt Poker Rakeback.

3.       Happy Hour!

You can earn double or triple full tilt points by playing in cash games and tournaments during select Happy Hours throughout the day.  Happy hours are a great way to build your FTP collection and can really help you complete other Full Tilt promotions such as gaining Iron Man status.  Check out the Full Tilt Happy Hour schedule.

4.       Full Tilt Pro’s

Full Tilt has hands down the most poker pro’s playing at their site.  You can play in games or tournaments with some of the most well known players in the world including Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius.  This can also help your poker bankroll because if you bust out a Full TIlt pro in a tournament with 30 or more players you win the buy-in of the tournament back up to $200.

5.       High Stakes Action

Full Tilt has the highest stake action online.  You can often see Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius and Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan battling it out at $500/$1K tables with pots getting as high as $500K some hands.

6.       Big Guarantee Tournaments

Full Tilt runs a new FTOPS series every few months, where the best Full Tilt players and many Full Tilt pro’s try for the big payouts.  Some of the big weekly guarantees include the $750K Sunday Guarantee, the $200K Double Deuce (Buy-in for only $22) and the daily $50K guaranteed fifty-fifty.

7.       27% Rakeback

Full Tilt is the biggest poker room online that offers rakeback.  PokerStars has the biggest player base, but does not offer players anything back in terms of rake.  The fact that Full Tilt, a huge poker room, still offers rakeback to its players sets it apart in the online poker industry.

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What is Rakeback?

In order for you to understand what rakeback is, first you must understand rake.  Rake is the amount of money that the poker room takes from the pot in cash games and the fees that pay for playing in tournaments.  In cash games the rake is usually a small percentage of the pot, and is only taken when the hand requires a flop to be dealt.  Rake is essentially how the poker rooms make their money and to be honest, they make a lot.  Many players pay thousands of dollars a month in rake.  For example, a typical cash game player who plays four $0.25/$0.50 no limit hold’em tables at a time, for a couple hours a day would pay over $1080 a month in rake!

Poker rooms can calculate your rake contribution using either the dealt or the contribution method.  In the dealt method the total rake is split evenly between all the players dealt in the hand no matter how much each player contributed to the pot.  Whereas, with the contribution method, the rake is split up proportionate to the amount of money you contributed to the pot.  For example, if you contributed $40 to a $100 pot and the rake was $3, then the amount of rake that is counted as yours would be $1.20.

Rakeback is rake that is refunded to the player.  Most online poker rooms offer to give back a percentage of the rake they take from the player if they sign up through a rakeback provider.  The typical rakeback offer is around 30%, but can be higher or lower depending on what room you are playing at.  A few examples would be Full Tilt rakeback offering 27%, Cake Poker rakeback offering 33% and PKR rakeback who offer 30%.  Continuing with our example, if the typical player who raked $1080 a month played at Cake Poker and received 33% rakeback, he would receive about $356 of the rake he paid during the month back as a refund.  That is a huge chunk of cash!  Especially for a low limit player who only plays a couple hours a day.

There is absolutely no downside to rakeback.  The only reason some players don’t receive it is simply because they don’t know about it or they already have an account at the poker site they want to play at.  In order to receive rakeback you have to sign up as a new player to the site through a rakeback provider.  If you already have an account at the site, then you are not eligible to receive rakeback at that site.  One way to combat this is to open up a rakeback account at a new site or sometimes if you email the poker room about your dilemma they will be able to help.

I would strongly advise signing up for rakeback.  When you receive your first refund at the end of the month you will be extremely glad you did!