While we are on the subject of switching sites this brings up something else that is very important, that of site selection or switching sites just to get a sign up bonus. Buying into a site primarily to get a sign up bonus is what LOSING poker players do. There are ALWAYS other far more important considerations to playing on an online poker site than how big the sign up bonus is. What is the point in getting a whopping sign up bonus if the players on that site at the game and the level that you want to play in are better than the other site without the big sign up bonus.

Where do you think you will earn the most money over time. Let us say that you want to play 10-20 limit Texas Hold em poker and site A offers a $600 sign up bonus if you buy in for enough while site B offers nothing. But site A is populated by US players who on average are much stronger at Limit play than Europeans while site B is populated entirely by Europeans.

At site A, your earn rate is 1.25 big bets per hour ($25) while at Site B, your earn rate is 1.75 big bets per hour ($35). Playing even part time (20 hours per week), the difference in an average week will be $200 between site A and the much better site B. It would take you less than a month to claw back the difference of the $600 sign up bonus. For a full time working poker pro, the difference in sites is over $20,000 per year. Imagine the difference if the game was 50-100 and not 10-20 and we had the same differential in earn rates, that would make the difference $100,000 per year.

Who in heavens name can afford to throw away that kind of money, the point is that people don’t even realise that they are and all because they wanted the feeling of initially being ahead by $600 at the very beginning and some sites don’t even offer bonuses as high as that. But this is also the reason why many very good players fail in poker. They know that they are good and because they are losing money, they think that this should not be happening and that the poker site is crooked.

Game selection is a critical part of poker and is a major factor for why players fail. Let us take that difference of $100,000 in the last example. If a player who would have earned $64,000 playing at site B had played at site A, then this would have meant that he had now LOST $36,000 and would have left him scratching his head as to the reason because he knows how good he is.

But sometimes in poker it is not enough to be good or very good for that matter. Fine so we can say that many players think that they are good when they are not but I am talking about the ones who ARE good here and they could still lose because of poor game selection. So you not only have to be a very good player but you also have to measure your skill against the opposition. Let us finish with an obvious statement, if you are not better than your opposition then how can you possibly earn money? I think that the lessons are clear here don’t you?

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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