Texas Hold’em poker at the end of 2009 is currently being took to a new level of high stakes by a group of poker professionals willing to gamble at unprecedented levels online. Ilari Sahamies, known by his online poker username Ziigmund, was quoted as saying that even he is not bankrolled for the swings that occur in this game but he keeps playing them because the potential upside in a winning session is so amazing. Online poker players always feel pressured to raise their stakes when they are winning, but you do not have to.

Online poker rooms like bwinpoker.com cater for all types of player at all levels of competition. Whilst all of the publicity goes to the Isildur1 characters who are playing for millions of dollars everyday the majority of online poker players contest the game at much lower limits. Even on the very large sites like Pokerstars you will rarely find full games above $5/$10 No Limit Texas Hold’em at certain points during the day. This suggests that online poker is more of a low stakes game for the majority of poker players.

Many would argue this is a good thing. The global economic recession caused everyone to re-assess their perception of the value of money. No longer are players prepared to gamble lots of their wages or salaries on the game. People have become more conservative with their finances and more sceptical over credit lines and loans. The level of poker players playing one table of $25/$50 changed into many players multi-tabling the lower stakes tables to spread their risk. This caused an increase in the standard of lower stakes games and now you can struggle to find a good table full of weak player’s right down to the micro-stakes poker games.

You can still maintain an excellent win rate playing lower stakes games. Many online poker professionals earn in excess of $50,000 each year by grinding the low stakes games for a steady win rate over many thousands of poker hands. This is not easy to do, but attainable. You must be able to sit in full concentration for many hours playing on many tables and you must be able to control tilt as you will encounter bad beats more often due to the speed and volume you play. Playing three thousand hands a day is the minimum for many grinders as this is around one million hands per year. Showing even a small win rate per big blind playing this many hands will show a healthy profit at the end of the year.

Playing within your bankroll can sometimes be frustrating if your bankroll is smaller than what you would like. Player’s ego can sometimes see them play badly at a low stakes table because they feel it is small-time for their normal games. They often forget that winning $2,000 or more per month can be obtained this way and this is good money for anyone. One player recently wrote that he played 3700 Sit and go poker tournaments in one month (this guy is definitely a grinder playing around 100 Sit and go’s per day) showing a $9,500 profit at the end of the month. That is excellent. He was playing $5 – $10 tournaments and worked hard at his game to show a good ROI. This goes to show that big money can be made from low stakes poker.

Millions can be won and lost at the high stakes tables but low stakes poker still offers the opportunity for good poker profits each month, whilst controlling losses. Do not feel you are playing small time poker at the low stakes. It is still genuine poker and many players make a great living cashing in on the blasé attitude exhibited by many poker players. These blasé players dream of the high stakes games but do not play well enough to ever build their bankroll to a point where they can afford to take their shot at the higher stakes games.

By Malcolm Clarke

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