Should I Play Poker
If your poker bankroll reflects a more significant percentage of your wealth, as it does for poker professionals who rely on it at a source of income, then air on the side of conservative and you’ll avoid losing your poker life blood. The chance of the place being a scam or a way to fool the innocents can be high. Thus many people prefer to play poker in a real poker room or a land based casino because in first place they think it’s much safer than an online poker room. For example, if you are in the casino and you know you are playing against weaker players, you should play more hands, and fold less. That’s what I do. In terms of poker strategy, post flop is where skill comes in. Better poker players will always come out on top. So give yourself that chance. If you are a professional poker player then your poker session can be anywhere between 2 and 8 hours. You should also take several short breaks during your poker session. But the right poker session length for you might be different. It depends on what games you play, how many poker tables and how good your concentration is among other things.
One of the questions that may be of concern especially to those who have never played poker, is how it is played. This game can be played in a casino or among groups of friends anywhere(casual play), and in each case the rules vary slightly. In casual play all the players have a right to distribute the cards and it rotates among the players, and this is slightly different from casino. Players make a bet and in the case of casino one of the players is normally required to make a forced bet. The house dealer then shuffles the cards and distributes them to each player at a time starting with the player on her/ his left hand.
The game then begins from the first bet and it may involve a number of bets. As the game progresses the set of cards that the players have continues to develop by either gaining more cards or even exchanging the cards which they had. At the final betting round, suppose there are more than one player left, those players reveal their set of cards to each other in order to determine the winner of the game.
The time spent in playing poker vary from one person to another, and it may range in hours every single day with breaks in between. When we ask the question, how often should you play poker, we may think of days or weeks or even months. For others it may be how often within a single day while to others it may be how often in a week or weeks. There are some people who play poker for cash and there are a few, especially in casual play, who play for fun. The reason why someone plays the game, whether for cash or for fun, will determine how much time they spend in that particular game. Money has some sense of attachment and where money is involved it may influence the time that is spent on the game, either because you are winning or loosing.
In most cases the session of poker game last between one hour to two or three hours. Therefore, if you have to play continuously without a break you are able to play in about six sessions a day. However, the human brain cannot concentrate for that long therefore there must be rest between each session. And because of this majority normally play two or three sessions a day. Whether it is one session a day or three sessions a day or even one session a week, the big concern is how often should you play that shall be of benefit to your health, work or money.
There are factors that may determine how often every person plays poker, whether for cash or fun. When you are employed or you have some business that you run that demand your time almost all day, you may end up playing poker maybe over the weekends only. This is because of the amount of time it requires per session and the amount of concentration that it also demands.
There are instances where in all the games that you play you record consecutive losses in a day or days. This may lead to frustrations, and therefore, it is better to take a break of days or even weeks to reflect on your methods of play before you embark again in the game. Taking a break after several days of play, whether you lost or won, enables you to reflect on your game plan and therefore you are to adjust where necessary.
There are a times when we are normally not at our best, either because we are emotionally disturbed or things are not working out well. At this point you can take a break from playing poker for cash and if you do miss playing you can opt for casual play just to play for fun. When we are disturbed emotionally most of the time our judgement is affected and this may be a big blow when playing poker. It is therefore recommended to always take a brake from playing poker at such a time.
A number of people play poker for income, and therefore to them playing poker is a profession and way of living. These people do play poker sometimes both during the day and at night. To them taking a break of days may be a challenge, therefore they can learn to play by taking a break of hours after one or two session in order to relax their mind. The game demands a lot of attention and thinking, therefore few sessions at night and a few during the day may be of great benefit to those who play daily.
There is no definite time over which people should play poker but as we have seen it depends on an individual. Some play poker for hours every single day, while there are others who play poker once in a day or after a season. There are a few who play poker for fun and to them, playing poker may be when it is convenient. However, whether you play for fun or for cash, or whether we play after days or daily, there is need for a break in order to have effective play. The breaks may be between every session or after some days but it will vary to a great extent with the player and the circumstances under which you are playing.
It’s important to define what money you are allocating to poker when considering what stakes to play. Some players have a dedicated bankroll, others have a roll which can be replenished from other sources of income. Whatever the case may be, monitoring your bankroll is a good way of keeping track, or keeping score, of your poker progress. Many successful players don’t see this as a limitation to the games they play, but rather a challenge to beat the current ‘level’ they are at and move up in the poker world.
Cash Game Bankroll
Pot limit and no limit Hold’em.
Cash game buy-in levels for good poker bankroll management.
If you are playing pot limit or no limit poker, the safe recommended size of your bankroll is 40 buy-ins of where you want to play. This means that if you want to have the best chance of making money at a $1/$2 game where the maximum buy-in is $200, you should have a bankroll of at least $8000.
Another way of applying bankroll management is by only putting a maximum of 2.5% of your bankroll on the table.
Limit Hold’em.
Limit hold’em players can have a somewhat smaller bankroll and follow the smaller end of the buy-in amounts than no-limit or pot-limit players. You should have 400 Big Bets as a minimum for the limit you wish to play at. Therefore to play $1/$2 limit Holdem, you should have a bankroll of at least $8000.
Bankroll variations based on type of bankroll.
If you are using a sum of money that is less significant to your daily living, and which can be replenished, you can afford to lower the buy-in level for your bankroll. A roll of $500 to a player with a full-time job with a good salary is going to be less significant, compared to that of a university student who is only working part-time.
MTT Bankroll
Multi-table tournaments often attract a huge field of players, and are very top heavy in their pay structure. For these reasons, MTT’s require the largest bankroll in terms of buy-ins as protection against frequent swings.
The general rule used by MTT pros is to have 100 buy-ins, or not to invest more than 1% of your poker bankroll on a single tournament.Even top online pros like ‘pkaiser’ experience prolonged down swings.
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Skill Factor or ROI
Your edge over the field, which can often be measured in terms of your return on investment (ROI), can help when deciding the number of buy-ins to have in reserve. If you’re playing $215 online turbo tournaments, then since turbos by nature have lower ROI’s given their fast paced nature which reduces the skill element, then you may want to go beyond the 100 buy-in rule. However strong online players often have ROI’s of over 40% in $11 online tournaments, especially if they are deep stack tournaments. These slower structured tournaments allow for more play when stacks are deeper, as well as post-flop play, which allow more skilled players to find more profitable opportunities and gain a bigger edge over the field.
Staking
Given the variance in MTT tournaments, many MTT regulars are actually staked. This means they have a backer who pays for their tournament entries and endures any loses, in return for a % of the players long-term profit. A typical arrangement is for an MTT player to split profits 50% with their backer. This usually involves an on-going relationship to protect both parties from the variance, and although the player receives less money overall, the reduced stress from down swings as well as the ability to frequently play much higher games than they may have the bankroll for, make staking a very popular choice for tournament professionals. A variation of staking is to sell action, or a BAP (buy-a-piece), which involves the player selling action on a ‘one-off’ arrangement. For example a player might decide to sell 75% of a Pokerstars Sunday Million entry since they don’t want to pay the entire buy-in. The percentages awarded to the stakers and stakee can be negotiated but this system again protects a tournament player from enduring heavy loses and can often allow them to play much higher than their bankroll allows.
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SNG tournaments require around a 50 buy-in bankroll to protect against down swings.
SNG Games Bankroll
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Your bankroll for SNGs does not need to be as high as compared to Multi-table tournaments since the likelyhood of cashing or making the money is far greater given the smaller field sizes. Therefore a bankroll of 50 buy-ins should be adequate to sustain any downswing.
Number of players and game will have an impact.
Type of game and your own personal preference has an impact on the size of your bankroll. For example for heads up Sit and Go’s and Double of Nothing, you could use a bankroll closer to 20 times the buy-in amount since you should be making the money roughly 50% of the time which will lower the variance.
Find Your Comfort Zone
When considering what stakes to play, it’s important to play with a bankroll you feel comfortable with. If by having a smaller bankroll, you would feel the unnecessary stress of having to drop buy-in stakes than go with a bigger bankroll. Others may want to play with a smaller bankroll in an attempt to climb the stakes faster, but this increases the risk of your needing to move down levels or maybe even going broke. Providing you know the risk and can sustain the losses, it’s all about personal preference.
Winrate (Skill level and Time)
It’s important not to be a victim of the ‘winner winner chicken dinner’ syndrome. In poker, players frequently experience a heater, or ‘hot run’, which enables them to win a lot from poker over a short period. These players often then blame a losing streak on excessive misfortune which unfortunately, usually isn’t the case. But rather an inability to beat the level of game their playing.
How many hands of poker do you need to play before you can accurately gauge your win rate?
Unfortunately there is no good answer for this. However usually several thousand tournaments or 200,000+ cash game hands should start to indicate more accurate results. But keep in mind players are frequently improving which means you probably are playing better than you were the last 100,000 hands. And that’s the main thing to keep identifying areas of your game that need attention and pushing your results in the right direction as a result of that work.
Summary
Your bankroll will depend on the format of game you wish to play, your ability, and tolerance to swings. Ideally solid winning players should maintain a bankroll of 40 times the buy in for SNG’s, 100 times the buy-in for MTT’s and 40 times the buy-in for cash games.
If your poker bankroll reflects a more significant percentage of your wealth, as it does for poker professionals who rely on it at a source of income, then air on the side of conservative and you’ll avoid losing your poker life blood.