The issue most overlooked
by beginner poker players - and a few more
experienced ones - is that of bankroll
management and game selection. Frequently,
though, this is the difference between winning
and losing, and between being in action and
watching from the rail.
In basic terms a bankroll is a sum of money
set aside to play poker, out of which should be
enough for you to survive the ups and downs of
the game - as well as cover all expenses, tips,
and rake or table charges - and allow you to
turn a consistent profit. The question of
bankroll management and game selection is
intimately linked, since the whole concept of a
bankroll assumes that you are a winning player
overall, and that you can find games that you're
both able to beat and almost never likely to go
broke in.
If this isn't the case then, from a financial
point of view, you would probably do better to
find the smallest limits tolerable to you and
consider the money you lose (or spend on
flights, hotels and so on) as entertainment or
education.
Game selection covers a wide selection of
issues, and is just as important as how you play
during any given hand or session. It may mean
playing at the right stakes, the right betting
structure or the right type of poker, but most
frequently it means playing with the right
people (i.e. those who have money and are a lot
worse than you).
The masters of this aspect of poker tend to
be players with the maximum flexibility, who
will go almost anywhere for a game and play any
particular mixture of games to keep the weaker
players happy. One respected UK player recently
described another as: 'a master of game
selection. He will travel anywhere.'
Which puts him in good company, since this
sentiment actually echoes down throughout poker
history, right back to the days of the Texas
road gamblers. They would happily drive a couple
of days straight on hearing of a 'good game',
typically living nomadic lives built around
travelling wherever the action was.
Nowadays, though, an explosion of popularity
and interest in the game has transformed the
poker scene, and one upshot of this is that
there's suddenly more action available than ever
before. This comes in the form of poker
festivals all over the place (meaning many
players still live on the road for a big part of
the year) and on the internet, where there are
already more than 200 sites to choose from (and
counting) and an almost limitless selection of
games.
Don't get jolly rogered
These two options are very popular with both the
professional and recreational players, and tend
to both interlink and contrast in their
viability.
For example, the internet offers fast,
convenient, low-expense play and maximum choice
to all, but also the option of winning seats
into major festival events for a small
investment and an upper limit on stakes. The
live festival circuit, in contrast, typically
has the biggest tournaments and cash action in
one place and the chance to see the world while
making a living, but also the most risk of going
broke or finding out that your ability - or
bankroll - aren't large enough to make it a
viable option.
Similarly, while professional players have
traditionally always played live there is now an
increasing shift towards the internet game,
where they can minimise bankroll fluctuations
and multi-table in smaller games so that their
'wages' are more consistent. In this way what
could have been a bad week or month live
becomes, at worst, a bad couple of days online.
Coming at it from the other direction, though,
are the internet kids who have built sizeable
bankrolls and experience online in short amounts
of time and are beginning to hit the live
circuit in droves in search of the big action.
The modern poker player therefore finds him
or herself in a luxurious situation compared to
the road gamblers or even the pre-poker-boom
pros. New possibilities in game selection and
the pressure it takes off your bankroll is a
major part of this. Not only are there
all-important swathes of new players bringing
fresh money into the game, but, for the
experienced player, they are accessible from the
comfort of your own home and sofa - while they
are relaxing or learning the ropes, or against
the backdrop of any number of picaresque cities
where they flock to in the hope of TV stardom, a
'poker holiday' or the big-time.
WHAT GAMES SHOULD I PLAY?
CASH GAMES
Most professional players would say that they
get their 'wages' in the cash games, whether
live in the local casino, online or on a stop
along the festival circuit. This is because you
can choose who you play against, what the stakes
are, and how long you play for - none of which
are true in multi-table tournaments, where
seating is random, the stakes are always rising
and you must play until you win or go broke.
Also, since you can usually choose the amount
you sit down with (this is often capped online
in big bet games) there is little contingency
between the results of various pots, whereas in
a big event your results for the entire month or
year might be grouped around a series of crucial
final table hands. In a cash game, though, if
someone gets lucky against you it's easy just to
take out more money and try to get it back.
In deep water
Bankroll requirements vary wildly for cash
depending on the type of game, and it takes an
experienced player to know when they're out of
their depth or need to drop down and recover in
the smaller games. Obviously big bet games need
deeper pockets than limit ones, wild and
short-handed ones offer more fluctuation that
tight ring games and pot-limit Omaha players
need bigger tanks than pot-limit hold'em ones
who play at similar stakes.
The experts on limit hold'em often quote a
bankroll of around 300 big bets for ring games
but in looser or short-handed games this number
is probably too low. Similarly, for potlimit and
no-limit hold'em games you will need anywhere
between 25 and 50 buy-ins, depending on the type
of games you play, your style and the relation
of your sit-down to the blinds, and for
pot-limit Omaha you can probably double these
numbers.
SIT&GOS
'Sit&gos', or small, fixed-field online
tournaments, are an excellent way to learn
cheaply, make some money, and to maximise a
limited bankroll - they are also great practise
for bigger final tables. You can choose to play
heads up, against four or five players, or in a
one, two or three-table format, and the game
will only start when the required number of
players have registered.
Buy-ins and possibilities vary from site to
site, but almost all have very low stakes games
for beginners and the basic one-table tournament
where nine or ten players enter and three get
paid along a 50%, 30%, 20% structure. Across the
board, partypoker.com probably has the biggest
player base for sit&go tournaments, while
pokerstars.com has both the slowest structures
(plus speed events for those so inclined) and
the biggest actively frequented games - $500
single tables, and $5,000 heads-up matches.
You shark, them dinner
In terms of bankroll management and game
selection these events score very highly. You
can simply unregister if you don't like the
field and, while an excellent player might only
need to maintain a bankroll of 20 buy-ins to
keep safely afloat, even a moderately skilled
player shouldn't ever need more than 30. Because
the buy-in is fixed, you can easily keep results
and move up and down the various stakes as you
see fit.
Furthermore, for the expert player sit&gos
offer an attractive edge since, besides playing
worse poker generally, more inexperienced
players also tend to perform worse as games gets
shorthanded, and fail to understand and employ a
number of specialist tournament concepts which
are vital for success.
TOURNAMENTS
Multi-table tournaments are probably the most
frustrating, costly to the bankroll, and hardest
to win consistently out of all formats of poker,
but they also attract most of the new players as
well as the cameras, headlines and the biggest
prize pools. Make no mistake about it, though,
in the immortal words of leading player Dave
'Devilfish' Ulliott: 'You need a shitload of
money to play the tournament circuit', so
wherever you play bear this in mind and find a
few regular games in which you know you are a
consistent winner and which will allow you a
base for 'taking shots' at that big score.
Reality bites
The actual amount you would need to survive just
playing multi-table tournaments is almost
impossible to calculate accurately and playing
these events exclusively for a living is
strongly dissuaded. Even in sit&gos you must
play hundreds of games to even have a vague idea
of your overall win rate and skill level, and in
terms of multi-table games this can extend into
the thousands (i.e. years or decades of play),
especially when events both online and live are
now producing four-figure fields and buy-ins
vary in size, clustering your overall results
around the biggest and most populated events you
play.
Because of this and the contingent, compound
nature of tournament play, the difference
between a good player and a great one is
magnified to a huge degree. When flights,
hotels, taxis and other expenses are factored in
the net result is often that players can't make
a living and go broke, or spend ages discovering
they don't belong among the elite players for
whom these events are viable ways of making
serious cash.
So it's no surprise that even among top
tournament players (including several former
world champions) many have backers or go broke
frequently, and most of the European name
players have jumped at the opportunity of
sponsorship, indicating that this is the most
realistic future for tournament poker.
SATELLITES
Satellites are smaller tournaments that offer
tickets into bigger ones as prizes, and are
found both online and live, and in single and
multi-table formats.
They've become more popular recently as most
sites now offer satellites to major events with
buy-ins and expenses included, and while
amateurs are eager to emulate Chris Moneymaker
in becoming an unknown who wins the World Series
of Poker, even pros are attracted by the value
they offer.
But beware - for every Moneymaker winning
$2.5 million there are thousands who contribute
to their ticket and those of the other
qualifiers without seeing any return. From a
bankroll perspective the lure of the parlay must
also be approached with care, since the chances
of a serious return are minimal. While getting
into an event cheaply is great, it's unlikely
that over all the satellites you play in the
long term that you'll get your ticket for much
less than half-price.
Banking on a seat
Which is why you often hear cries of 'Why not
just win the money in a cash game?' Sure, the
reason for this is probably because you either
end up with a seat or don't, but bear in mind
that the satellite approach can make less sense
than first appears. For example, some new
players spend much of their poker time trying to
qualify for big events rather than gradually
moving up the ranks to the point where they
could just buy-in anyway.