So you start with $500 then and you play six tables of NL25, the plan is to drop down to NL10 if your poker bankroll drops to $300. It initially drops to $380 after you start but a good run of hands and situations sees you rising to $550 after the first week. You are also getting a good rake deal as well.

You are playing tight-solid and are merely looking to take advantage of the weak players at these levels. In week number two then you are really starting to feel out this level and you win a further six buy-ins which takes your poker bankroll up to $700. This equates to 14 buy-ins at the next level up which is NL50 but you want to get some more experience at NL25 first.

Week three sees you go up and then down several times and basically break even on the week. You are still $200 up on the month which is eight buy-ins and that increases hugely in week four when you go on a heater and win a total of fifteen buy-ins which sees your stack increase by another $375 and you now have $1075 in your poker bankroll.

You get another $75 in rakeback so you now have $1150 in your bankroll. You are seriously tempted to withdraw the $650 in winnings but you fancy having a shot at NL50. Both are viable options and you do have 23 buy-ins at the higher NL50 level which is a good bankroll to have for that level as well.

But you cannot just jump into any level with your whole poker bankroll and stay there for the simple reason being that this new level could be too tough for you. Caution is definitely advised when you move up. So you try your hand at NL50 with ten buy-ins safe in the knowledge that if you lose the $500 then you still have $650 to play NL25 with again. This is still more than you started with but if it does go wrong then this could be an indication that NL50 is too tough.

Of course there is a third option and that is to keep on playing NL25. Your sample size is still very small so you have not proved that you can beat NL25 yet. You change your mind and decide to wisely continue with your education and play NL25 for another month.

After a break even two week stretch you then win a total of sixteen buy-ins over the second half of the month which is a nice $400. You also get another $75 in rakeback which now takes your poker bankroll to a nice healthy $1550. You seem to be beating NL25 and now decide to take a six buy-in shot at NL50 to see how that goes.

Moving up and down through the levels like this can be your best weapon when it comes to making money in any online poker game.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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My first question to him was to ask how long he had been sat at this table and what information or conclusions he had of his opponent. Were they aggressive or passive and if so by how much? As it turned out, he hadn’t seen this player before and he had only been sitting at the table for about ten hands or so.

There are multiple dynamics at work with all situations that involve poker strategy and there are few clear cut situations in poker. In this instance then raising, calling and folding could all be optimal plays but you need to know what criteria are work in order to be able to ascertain which play is optimal. If you are playing against an opponent who raises a lot from position but who also backs down to a three bet unless they have a strong hand themselves then re-raising with the J-10s would be the optimal play here.

Any player who does not raise liberally from the button and suddenly folding may be optimal. But even then, this is incredibly vague as knowing what an optimal line of play is simply isn’t that straightforward. You not only need to have a very good feel of what hand range you are up against but also what your opponent is likely to do both pre-flop and post flop.

You also need to know how they are reacting to you as well if at all possible. It simply isn’t possible to know everything and Texas Hold’em poker is a game of incomplete information as are all poker variations so you are going to have to make educated guesses most of the time. Many people would argue against calling but what if you are in a deep stacked situation where if you three bet, your opponent four bets very liberally?

What if I also said that this opponent was an absolute maniac who would launch multiple street big bluffs often? Now you can call the $7 raise with $193 behind so if you hit this flop hard then you could stack your opponent here if they decide to fire multiple bluffs. Or you could maybe raise them on the flop or float them and look to make a move on the turn.

When you make any poker play then you are not doing so in isolation. This is why poker hands are not independent of each other and what has gone off before has a huge impact on what will happen in the present and also in the future. So you may be looking for answers to the J-10s situation but I cannot possibly give them because I never had the information myself to begin with.

What you are looking for in any poker hand is to use multiple changing dynamics and game history to then attempt to make an on the spot decision regarding optimal or satisfactory poker play. It is folly to think that you will find optimal plays all the time, this simply isn’t possible in a game like poker. The more that you discover in how to play poker then the more that you will discover this truth.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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There is a lot of merit to this view as SNG’s and large MTT’s do have many similarities. They have a prize structure that favours the higher end of the ladder. The winner of an SNG traditionally gets 50% of the prize pool with the second and third place players getting the other 50% and the rest of the field gets nothing!

This top heavy prize pool is similar to tournament poker as well where the majority of the prize money goes to the top three seats. This leads to various players implementing various styles of play and the most common style is to start playing very tightly and try to allow the crazy players and the crazy action to fizzle out. This leaves you in a situation where you have outlasted a good percentage of the field and are now into the tournaments middle stages.

The idea is not to get involved unless you have a premium hand or a very strong hand. Then you slowly open up the aggression levels as the tournament gets deeper and the blinds get higher. Your blind to stack ratio will be such that your number of moves will be limited and you are now looking to make moves to accumulate chips.

However this style of play does have drawbacks, it will not allow you to get a big stack early in the competition. The early stages of the tournament are where the real dead money is and the novice tournament players who may be in their hundreds if the field is large enough will be passing their chips to someone and you will not be in enough pots to take advantage of that.

It is for this reason that many online tournament professionals play a far faster style of play. They don’t want to be on the curve or behind the curve but considerably ahead of it. They would rather be out of the competition than treading water until the inevitable knockout arrives.

In the tournaments that I played (which wasn’t all that many as I am essentially a cash game specialist) then I would say that my own style fell somewhere between the two styles. Whichever style you choose comes down to personal choice. For instance in his great book “Every Hand Revealed”, Gus Hansen even stated that there is little to choose between the two styles and much of it comes down to preference.

I have known some of the tightest poker players you could ever wish to meet, take down large MTT events. They didn’t open up until the final two tables but they survived by playing tightly and then a good run of cards came for them at just the right time. I have known numerous players who were very uncomfortable at the prospect of playing short handed but that still didn’t stop them from cashing very highly indeed.

In fact if you have won your way into a tournament by a satellite or by utilising your frequent player points then the return on investment could be very substantial indeed.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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Anyway, I drop by again because I wanted to ask a question, something about my first real experience of bad beats. It happened a week or so ago and it was really weird and dismaying. Well, the money I lost was not actually because of bad beats, I guess it was more on because of the knock on effects.

At first, everything seems to be fine. But because of a certain instance where in I caught a good flop and then plenty of money was in the pot, things went the opposite way. To add up, my girlfriend joined in and started chatting to me.

Eventually, the hand turned heads-up, and at that instance I was assured I had my opponent beat. I believed the possible best hand he could have was king flush if he caught on the river, however, I had the ace of spades, the nut flush! Then the river came that gave him the king flush. As a result, he went all-in.

After which, all the money went to my opponent. I am not exactly sure what happened. I believe I had the flush, so supposedly, I’m the winner. But sadly, the community cards for me were all black and I missed to read them out. I only had a four flush with the ace back then.

After that incident, I barely win a hand that had more than the blinds in it. Perhaps, you think I went on “tilt”, but sad to say it’s not the case.

By the way, constantly, I was drowning in the river big time. There’s always someone who has better hands. But several times I had the nut hand on the turn, therefore no matter what happened I don’t lose so we just share the pot.

Right now, I’m dealing with bad beats just right. But I’ll of course admit that it wasn’t easy to learn how to deal with them properly.

One thing I perhaps learned from having games full of bad beats – bad beats will always be a part of poker. And that they come with the territory. No matter what happens, it is important that you know how to deal with them properly. Never let any bad beats affect you and your subsequent pays.

At some point, I was happy on what I’ve become as a poker player, for I’ve turned out to be much better. In fact, I was once well on the road to recovery and have gained almost all my losses.

But because I thought I had enough of cash games, I finally decided then to try “sit and go” tourney. I tried a $5 by-in to maximize my playing time. But then, at some point things got worse as I’ve realized I had joined a limit tourney. By the way, I don’t often play limit.

Well, I’m so determined to win so I tried to make some necessary mental adjustments back then. I try to apply quick memory re-call of Skolanki which is said to be more useful and helpful in limit than no-limit. And to my surprise, in just a matter of 45 minutes, I won the tourney. I thought it was just a beginner’s luck perhaps.

By the way, I mentioned prior to this that I wasn’t on tilt. But at some point I thought I also made some generally accepted acts as tilt. Well, I did the exact opposite I guess. So, do you think I was actually on tilt but just the opposite way? Any advice?

Thanks!
Joe
Joe,

While you didn’t seem to come across as playing on tilt, the fact you changed your game due to your results did slightly imply that you were on tilt. With that said, sometimes it is better to try something else when you are running bad. If I am running bad at holdem, I will go play stud or Omaha for a while until I am ready to play holdem again. I’m not saying go play stud, but if you are not doing well at cash games, go play a couple single table tournaments. You may also want to drop in limits as well to help offset some of the swings.

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I am a regular visitor of your site. In fact, I’ve already read almost all of your answers, advices, etc. I have also followed one of your suggestion in one of your articles – set a goal for myself. I started playing 500 up to 2k in two months and so on and so forth. But of course, just like a regular player, my way to success is also like riding in a roller coaster.

I have so many questions in mind, that’s why I visited your site once again. But I don’t want to bother you that much so I’ll just ask two questions.

1. To be honest, I am a beginner in the world of poker. And so as a beginner, is it right to have a goal relating to playing 500 up to 2k in two months? By the way, though I am a beginner, I believe I am very open to learning and really a fast learner.
2. How about my bankroll support? What game do you think I can play best? Ever since, I like no limit more than limit, as well as tourneys, but I found that the latter has a low potential of bringing in money.

Anyway, can I play 50 buy in no limit’s for example? How about 100, is this too much?

Hope to hear from you soon.
Dave
Dave,

1. There is nothing wrong with goals, but they should be realistic. 500 to 2,000 may be realistic to some, but just starting out, I would focus more on making good decision as opposed to chasing wins and losses.
   
2. You could play 50 buy in games with a bankroll of 500 but you can’t take that huge of swings in your game. I would try and maybe play $25 buyin games as you have twice as many buy-in for that game and can stand the swings easier. 100 buyin games are too much for your small bankroll.

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