Poker
is an unstoppable craze right now. Huge sums of money is available
and that has naturally generated interest to make a living
from playing poker. There are now thousands of Internet Poker
Pros that make a very decent tax-free living from playing
poker professionally primarily on the Internet. Take, for
example, the 2004 WSOP Champion - Greg Raymer. Greg started
with a $34 buyin to an Internet satellite event and a few
months later, he picked up a cheque for over $5 million! Then
there are the cash games where a pot can be over $10,000 -
all this in 2 minutes or less. Let's say that there were 2
players in the hand and you won the hand, you would win over
$5,000. If you win 4 such hands in an hour which is very feasible
and seen it done, you would make over $20,000 profit in an
hour! Few places offer a legitimate means to earn such huge
sums where skill is involved (as well as a lot of luck). There
are well documented cases of poker pros such as the Irish
woman who gave up her well paid job (holding a PhD in Applied
Mathematics) who has over the past 4 years made on average
over $200,000 per year net profit, or a player at Pokerroom.com
that has consistently over the past 5 years made a profit
of $500,000 per year in net profit (and I even had the honour
to play against him at the cash tables when he started out
at the low stake No Limit tables).
So if you are interested in becoming a Poker Pro, then there
are a number of factors to take into account. Playing poker
online as a pro is in most cases a very anti-social thing
to do with long hours playing on your own. Many play over
10 hours per day in total over several sessions. But it is
a job like anything else. You have to apply the same effort
and commitment as any pro would do in their respective field.
The most important thing to have or work on is SELF
DISCIPLINE! This involves all aspects of playing
poker professionally such as:
- keeping daily records of your play (detailed player notes,
log session profits and losses)
- take regular breaks and from time to time, longer breaks
- don't play when you are tired or have other things to
do
- analyse your results and thereby your play - always try
to improve
- be selective when it comes to choosing a table to play
at and also the position at the table (recommend to watch
a table prior to sitting down).
BANKROLL
So what do you need to do to become a poker pro? Start off
with a decent bankroll (your capital investment) which is
not required for anything else such as paying bills that is
sufficient to play at the stakes that you need to play at
to meet your profit targets. For example, don't expect to
make thousands of dollars at a $0.25/$0.50 Limit Table. Sure
you can play there with a bankroll of a few dollars but that
is not going to generate sufficient amount of money to live
on. Let's say that your target is to make $300-$500 net profit
per day. Then you need to start looking to play at $1/2 No
Limit and $3/$6 Limit tables. To play at these tables, you
need to have a significantly higher bankroll than if you are
playing at the $0.25/$0.50 Limit Table.
The Bankroll is the be all and end all if you are playing
poker professionally. There is no set rule on how large your
bankroll needs to be but below are some tips.
If you have a decent bankroll, then you can play your regular
style of poker that has gotten you that big bankroll in the
first place. If the bankroll falls below a certain level,
it is likely to affect your style of play. When under pressure,
a natural reaction is either to tighten up the play so much
that you don't maximise a strong hand just because you can't
afford another bad beat ... or just become too loose as the
"I've got nothing to lose" mentality sets in.
In LIMIT POKER, you don't really need to have a huge stack
unless you want to play professionally. As a general rule
of thumb, so for say $10/20 hold'em, you need to have 6K to
10K set aside just to stand the swings you might experience
... or approximately 300-500 the big blind. Even at limit
poker, one hand can become very expensive to see a river.
At a $10/20, the maximum you can put into a pot is $160. Doesn't
sound even close to a bankroll of $6,000. But remember this,
at Internet poker tables the number of hands played range
between 40 to over 100 hands per hour. So if you are on a
bad run and see let's say you see 50% of flops and you see
25% till river and lose 75% of showdowns, you can have easily
lost $1,000 in an hour at a $10/20 limit table.
I saw a guy win a $10,000 pot at a $300/600 limit table on
the Internet with K high. And the average stack once at the
same site one day was over $100,000. There was over $1 million
at an Internet poker table.
For NO LIMIT, it is a totally different set of calculations.
Someone asked me what bankroll I would suggest you need to
play $1/2, $2/4 and $5/10 No Limit. When I told him my suggested
MINIMUM bankroll, he exclaimed "really that much?".
Let's say that you are at a table with 2 or 3 loose aggressive
players at a low level NL table who have fairly large stacks.
It can easily cost you $10 or more to see a flop. Let's say
that the maximum buy-in is $100. That means that each hand
you see the showdown, you can easily have put in your entire
$100 initial buy-in in the first hand, or put in over 50%
over your bankroll by the turn card. I have been at some of
these tables and the average pot was well over $60. Add that
with approx. 60 hands per hour, us 6 at the table put in over
$3,600 per hour into the pots. If you want to make serious
money at a table, then you have to have the bankroll to support
big bets and take the regular bad beats. At one of these $1/2
NL tables, a loose aggressive player joined with $100 against
players with stacks ranging from $400 to over $1,000. Straight
away he got on a really good run and had a stack over $1,000.
I had a stack of about $400. Sitting on big blind and no preflop
raise (for once!), and flop came K84 rainbow. The loose player
bet $20 or so and I reraised to $50. Others dropped but he
called. Then he checked and I bet $150 or so and he called.
At river with another low card, I went all in and he called.
He had AK and I had 84. Took down $800 pot with 84 two pair!
At my next big blind J84 rainbow flops. This time a smallish
preflop raise. Guy bets $30 and this guy was fairly tight
and the loose player called and I reraise to $100. The others
call and then a 2 turns. I just went all in with about $800
and the tight player dropped (most likely AJ or KJ) but the
loose player called. The river was a Ten so didn't really
affect the hand (unless someone had chased his pocket tens).
At showdown, it showed that the loose player had turned two
pair (42 off) and I had 84 again! So I cleaned him out in
one circle of hands off over $1,000 at a $1/2 NL table. You
probably guessed it that to play NL properly and seriously,
you need a considerable bankroll relative to the limits. So
here are my minimum recommended bankrolls for NO LIMIT:
$1/2 NL - $3-5,000
$2/4 NL - $15-20,000
$5/10 NL - $50,000
Bet most of you are rather bemused by the size of these numbers.
As an example, I played at the $2/4 NL tables and seeing a
flop regularly cost $20 or so. Was on a terrible run like
getting 4 trips in a row beaten and so on. Within 2 hours,
I was down $2,500. I managed to claw back to take a session
loss of $500. I was happy Not many people I know would be
happy to being down $500 but on a bankroll of over $15,000,
it represented less than 3.33% of my bankroll, far better
than over 15%. There is always another day or session
The $5/10 NL tables can be very tight or very aggressive.
Saw a table where a professional player whom I hear from trusted
sources has made over US$500,000 per year was playing. Yup,
$60 preflop raises with 63 off and so on. How he softens up
new players who don't know him. A few more wild plays and
the others call his big bets, and .... Yes they walk into
a monster. A small investment and he cleaned 3 players out
within the hour they had sat down. Easy money for him. An
investment of a few hundred dollars as sucker bets yielded
a profit of over $3,000 in less than an hour!
Having established the importance of the bankroll above,
you need to make sure that your poker skills are as good as
they can be.
CONSTANTLY TRY TO IMPROVE YOUR PLAY
You should read every poker book you can get your hands on.
Even the bad ones have something to teach you since you will
have to think deeply about why they are bad. Make sure to
watch the available poker instructional DVDs.
As you read these books, and you should read the good ones
more than once, start trying to apply what you have learned
at the tables and then find another player whose game you
respect and start discussing hands and theory with them. Interaction
with good players is one of the fastest ways to improve and
pick up useful tips. Use other good players as a sounding
board, and incorporate what they say into your game. Follow
that advice and you can become great too! And that's exactly
what we are trying to do here at www.g-index.net - a forum
to interact with other players from all over the world
Make sure you have a back up plan to going pro. Get or use
your education. Make sure you have another career plan because
there are very few people on this earth making a really good
living playing poker. It is a very hard enterprise. However,
if it is what you really want and you get good enough at it
I think there is no better life. How do you get there? Make
sure you keep really good logs of your play so you are honestly
tracking how much you win or lose. Then get your hands on
every piece of poker educational material you can and really
digest it. Then apply what you learn at the tables and here
are some other tips:
- Make sure you play within your bankroll.
If your bankroll shrinks, step down. Be careful of moving
up too quickly as a bad session at a higher level can affect
your whole month.
- Make sure you don’t tilt. Tilting
and steaming can affect your outcome for the whole month.
Remember that poker is just one long game and don’t
let the ups and downs get to you.
- Make sure you exercise a loss limit.
If you don’t you might lose so much in one session
that it can affect your whole month. Never lose more in
one session than you can make back in one sessio. In limit
poker this is about 30 big bets. Also, if you lose too much
then when you come to the next session you might carry your
previous loss with you—which will make you not play
as well. Take a loss on the chin and forget about it. Everyone
has a bad beat now and again or a bady day at the office.
On the flip side, do not give yourself a win limit. As long
as the game is good and you are playing well and feel like
being there, keep playing. When you are winning you are playing
your best. That is when you should be putting in the most
hours.
Make sure you never stop learning. Get your hands on as much
educational material as possible and make sure to talk poker
with other good players.
Make sure before you go pro that you are a winning player
and that you have a proper bankroll. In limit poker this means
having between 300 and 500 big bets set aside just for poker,
not for living expenses. |
