Poker Diversification: Bankroll Management

Poker shares one very important aspect to any kind of investment, and that is no matter how good you may be, you must prepare yourself for unlucky events. A good investment banker will not put his entire line of credit on one company or industry, and conversely a good poker player will not put his entire bankroll into a single game or on a single hand.

To illustrate this example I will bring up a wonderful movie, Rounders, arguably the first great movie about poker. The constant heads up battles between the main character and Teddy KGB shows us perfectly that if not managed well, your entire bankroll can disappear in a matter of seconds.

For those who did not see the movie, the movie's main character, Mike is shown in a heads up game with Teddy KGB an underground poker room owner. Mike has risked his entire bankroll on this game and a well played hand by Teddy KGB catches Mike completely off guard and he ends up losing his entire bankroll in a single hand. Later in the movie Mike is shown again in consecutive back to back heads up matches with KGB and ends up winning back his money and then some.

What must be learned from this is that no matter how good you may be at playing poker, you will lose on occasion to players worse than yourself. For example if I were to play a heads up match with Phil Hellmuth, I may still have a 30% chance of winning, even though I may be a worse player then him. Thus if we play 100 heads up matches I will probably win 25 to 35 games and he will win 75 to 65 matches. This means that he must have a sufficient bankroll size in relation to the amount of money he has risked in this match so that his risk of losing all his money is reduced to near nothing.

Rounders is a classic example of short term poker meets with long term poker. If you play with your entire bankroll every time you sit down at a poker table, then you will go broke eventually. Mike has played great poker from start to end, but his swings from good to poor bankroll strategy meant that he went from a nice sized bankroll, to being in debt, and back again to having a nice sized bankroll.

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So now that we know how important bankroll management is, how exactly should we manage our bankroll?

Well it takes discipline and often just a basic strategy, and I will lay it out plainly here. First I will present 3 levels of riskiness when determining your bankroll strategy and apply them to all forms of poker. The variations exist because some types of poker inherently have higher levels of variance (variance: the difference between winning sessions and losing sessions).

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3 different levels of riskiness:

Gambler: You play mainly for fun, but you have fun when you win, and losing your bankroll isn't going to be a huge deal as it's money well spent.

Conservative: You play for fun, but you are very determined to build a bankroll as high as possible without ever putting anymore money into poker.

Ultra-Conservative: You may play for a living, or you are a beginner poker player, thus variance will inherently be larger because you have not experienced enough decisions to always make the right decision.

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Basic terminology used when describing your bankroll strategy:

BB is referred to in fixed limit poker as the "Big Bet," not to be confused with the "Big Blind." For example if you look at a fixed limit table online, you will see 1$/2$ games, the small blind is 50c and the big blind is 1$, and the Big Bet is 2$.

Buy-In is used for Pot Limit and No Limit poker games. This is basically the amount of money you buy into a certain PL or NL game. I advise personally that you should buy in for the maximum at all times in a PL or NL game, some exceptions exist, but unless you are a very advanced poker player it usually pays to play with the maximum buy in.

*Note for No Limit and Pot Limit*
Most online poker rooms make the standard max buy in 100 times the big blind. So for a .5c/1$ No Limit Hold Em game, the max buy in is 100 dollars. This may change at your local casinos that are known for having strange buy in structures, and thus you may have to adjust your bankroll strategy slightly in relation to the structure.

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Texas Hold'Em Fixed Limit:

Ultra Conservative: 500xBB
(For example you should have a bankroll of 1000$ to play the 1/2$ fixed limit game)

Conservative: 300xBB
(This would translate into a 600$ bankroll at 1/2$)

Gambler: 150xBB
(300$ bankroll at 1/2$)

Texas Hold'Em No Limit and Pot Limit:

Ultra Conservative: 40 Buy-Ins
(At a .50c/1$ No Limit game with max 100$ buy-ins you should have a bankroll of 4000$)

Conservative: 25 Buy-Ins
(At a .50c/1$ No Limit game with max 100$ buy-ins you should have a bankroll of 2500$)

Gambler: 10 Buy-Ins
(At a .50c/1$ No Limit game with max 100$ buy-ins you should have a bankroll of 1000$)

*Note I will not continue to include these examples in further poker variations, as I'm sure you have an understanding of the math behind this strategy by now*

Omaha Fixed Limit

Ultra Conservative: 300xBB

Conservative: 200xBB

Gambler: 100xBB

Omaha Pot Limit and No Limit

Ultra Conservative: 30 Buy Ins

Conservative: 20 Buy Ins

Gambler: 10 Buy Ins

Omaha High/Low, 8 or Better Limit

Ultra Conservative: 200xBB

Conservative: 100xBB

Gambler: 50xBB

Omaha High/Low, 8 or Better Pot Limit and No Limit

Ultra Conservative: 25 Buy-Ins

Conservative: 20 Buy-Ins

Gambler: 10 Buy-Ins

7 Card Stud

Ultra Conservative: 1000xBB

Conservative: 500xBB

Gambler: 200xBB

7 Card Stud High/Low 8 or Better

Ultra Conservative: 300xBB

Conservative: 200xBB

Gambler: 100xBB

SNGs (Sit and Go Tournaments, or Single Table tournaments)

Ultra Conservative: 50 Buy Ins

Conservative: 25 Buy Ins

Gambler: 10 Buy Ins

MTTs (Multi Table Tournaments)

Ultra Conservative: 300 Buy Ins

Conservative: 200 Buy Ins

Gambler: 100 Buy Ins

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Bringing it all together.

Now that you have your strategy, you must implement it into a long term strategy of making your bankroll larger.

I will use myself as an example, I started with a 50 dollar bankroll, I play No Limit Hold Em and I would consider myself Conservative when managing my bankroll.

Now with a 50 dollar bankroll, you can only play .01/.02 cent No Limit Hold Em. At those limits you will be buying into games for 2 dollars. This is exactly 25 buyins for my bankroll, this is perfect for starting my bankroll.

As soon as my bankroll reaches 100 dollars, I can move up to the next limit, .02/.04 cent No Limit. The buy in is now at 4 dollars which is exactly 25 buy ins for your bankroll.

Again when my bankroll reaches 200 to 250 dollars, I will now move up to the next limit, .05/.1 cent where they buy in is 10 dollars.

You will continue this process all the way up the ranks. Along the way you will gain much needed experience and your skill will probably increase with the limits thus keeping your winning rate around the same, and increasing profits over time.

This includes moving down the ranks as well. If you currently have 1000$ and play the .25/.5 cent No Limit Hold Em games, and suddenly have a bad run and end up down to 750$, you should consider moving down to the .1/.25 cent game again until you have 1000$ again. This is suggested to reduce your variance, but if you happen to lose half your bankroll, you must move down in order to stay in compliance with this bankroll strategy.

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Quick note about multi tabling. Multi tabling will require you to have a larger bankroll than suggested above but not as much as you may think. If you single table at the conservative level, then you should consider moving to ultra conservative if you play 4 tables at the same time (this usually translates in moving down only one level in limits).

One thing to note about multi tabling is that you will increase your profits even though you are moving down the limit structure, and thus I highly suggest for anyone serious about online poker to learn to multi table effectively.

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This is all for bankroll strategy, I hope you all learn how to manage your poker money like a pro, please comment and come back again.

-Tireur

A Quick Easy Guide to Odds in Poker.

Understanding odds in a poker game is vital to a successful poker player and must be learned by all who are serious about winning. I will present and explain the three vital statistics that make up a poker game, pot odds, implied odds, and "outs".

Hand odds (outs) or more specifically the odds of making your hand, or odds of your hand being beat on the next card. This represents those percent numbers next to people's hands when you watch poker on television. This is vital not only in determining whether your hand is good or not, but the odds of making that straight, flush or higher pair.

When playing a game, you can only guess the kind of hand someone else may have and thus the only true odds you can calculate are your own odds of making a hand or odds that someone else may make a hand (if you suspect they are on a draw).

To calculate these odds you take the number of "outs" that you have, these are cards in the deck that can still help you, and multiplying by two. This is the odds that one of your outs will hit the very next card.

For example: You hold Jack Ten off suit (both cards have different suits), the flop comes KQ2 rainbow (3 different suits). You determine that you are more than likely up against a pair of kings or queens. Thus in order to win this hand you will need to complete your straight with an Ace or Nine. You have 8 outs in this situation, 4 aces and 4 nines. This means you have a 16% chance or about 1/6 odds to make that straight on the turn. You have 32% or 1/3 odds to make that straight by the river.

Similarly with a flush draw holding 4 of the same suit, you have 9 outs in the deck to hit one of the remaining flush cards. This would translate into 18 percent or just a little better than 1/6, again you double this to figure your odds of hitting this hand by the river.

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Pot odds are where you take your knowledge of counting outs and apply them to deciding when to call or fold your draw. Pot odds are actually much easier to calculate than your figuring out odds based on your outs.

Pot odds are simply the amount you must wager to win a certain amount of money. For example if you have a pot with 6 dollars in it, and someone raises 2 dollars you will be getting 1:4 on your money. You are wagering 2 dollars (your call) to win the 8 dollars in the pot (6 in the pot plus the 2 dollar bet). To display your pot odds as a percentage: 1:4 = 1/(1+4) or 20%.

So what exactly does this mean? Well traditionally you should only call this bet if your hand has 20% or better odds of winning or 20% or better odds of making your hand on the next card. For example with our straight and flush draws in our previous example, neither would be adequate for calling on the flop. Or are they? In my personal opinion you have an adequate hand to call this 1 to 4 pot odds bet and this will lead us to the next topic: Implied Odds.

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Implied Odds are similar to Pot odds, but they are the odds based on money you could win by the end of the hand. For example, both you and your opponent have 10 dollars in the game, and he bets the same 2 dollars into the 6 dollar pot. Thus he now has 8 dollars in front of him, and there is now 8 dollars in the pot, thus you have the potential of winning 16 dollars in total, giving you 1 to 8 or 12.5% on your money.

If you believe that you can extract much more money out of your opponent by the showdown if you do make your hand, then this is now an adequate call with a flush or straight draw.

If you are playing a Fixed Limit game, then implied odds become much more difficult to accurately calculate. This is a very important thing to remember when playing limit, pot limit and no limit poker.

*****Edit June 5th*****
I was asked to further explain implied odds in fixed limit games and why it's more difficult to calculate them and use them in your poker math. The reason is that it is very difficult to calculate whether you will have someone who will call you down, reraise you, or fold by the river. Thus relying on implied odds to make your decisions is much more speculative.

In my own personal opinion you should only rely on pot odds when making plays at fixed limit poker. And often because of it's fixed limit structure you will be given correct odds to chase your flush and straight draws anyway. If you really want to include implied odds in your decision making process then I suggest taking your current pot odds and making it slightly bigger. For example if your pot odds on the turn with a draw is 1/6 you can probably safely say that your implied odds are around 1/7 or 1/8. Again I personally wouldn't advise making too many decisions on implied odds in fixed limit poker.

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Bringing it all together:

Learning the math of poker takes some time and practice, but it’s vital to your play. It will keep you from chasing hands given bad pot and implied odds, and seemingly chase hands that you might not have before.

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What may be more important to note is that you should always make the pot odds for your opponent large enough to cause them to make mistakes and chase hands they shouldn’t if they figured the math correctly. This is why it’s general practice to bet 1/2 to full pot bets if you are going to bet or raise your hand. 1/2 pot bets will give your opponent 1 to 3 pot odds, and full pot bets will give your opponent 1 to 2 pot odds.

This is why it’s very important to bet your big hands aggressively, because players calling these bets with inadequate hands will be seeing flops, turns and rivers without the right pot odds and in the long run will lose money to you.

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Implied Odds will explain why we will see small pocket pairs for cheap before the flop. For example, lets consider we hold pocket 8s in a 1$/2$ NL game. Everyone in the game will have stacks ranging around 200$, thus you are getting 1 to 100 implied odds to limp pre-flop, and you are still getting stellar implied odds to see a flop for 2-5x the big blind (1-50 to 1-20).

You will connect with your set around 1 out of 8 times, and you will make that set on a “non-scary” board (a board with no straight and flush potential) around 1 out of 10 times (note: rough estimate). Thus this makes these hands incredibly profitable when you make your set as you are more than likely going to be paid off by the showdown if played correctly.

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In conclusion, learning these basics will help to make you a good poker player. However, if you just enjoy playing poker, and enjoy the gambling aspect of the game, then by all means disregard all the tedious out counting and figuring out your odds and play however you like.

If you do count your outs and figure out your odds, but happen to lose, don’t fret, if the math adds up, you made the correct play and you just didn’t get lucky. To avoid tilt, you must focus on your long run results, and realize that if you played that hand 100 times over with random flops, turns and rivers that you will net a profit.

Your long term results rely on good play. Short term results are at the mercy of lady luck.

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One thing I’d like to note is that you should never tell someone what to do at the poker table, everyone is at the table for their own reasons, whether it’s to play seriously or for fun. To tell anyone differently is rude and unnecessary, and if I personally owned a poker room I would not hesitate to eject a player for being rude or berating another player’s game. Let the gamblers be gamblers, and let the fish swim.

Anyone who berates the play of another player can never be classified as a good poker player, as it’s analogous to the shark advertising to the pool of fish that he’s on his way to eat them, and telling them they should swim faster. It will only make it that much harder to win their money if you criticize the play of another at the poker table.

How To Play Texas HoldEm

Basics -

A poker table can have between 2 to 11 players sitting playing Texas Holdem. Often a max table is either going to be 9 or 10 though. And shorthanded is often referred to a table with 6 or less players.

We now have the blinds and antes. Blinds are forced bets after the "Button" which is the person who acts last on subsequent betting rounds. So at a ten player table we will have one person sitting on the button. The person directly to his left will be the "Small Blind." If the minimum bet on the first round of betting is $10 dollars, then the small blind has been forced to bet $5 dollars. Directly to the left of the small blind is the big blind, who is forced to bet the minimum, or $10 dollars. Antes are forced bets that are often imposed late in tournaments, it involves making everyone at the table throw in a small forced bet.

Next after everyone has thrown in their forced bets, the dealer deals 2 cards to every player. These are known as your "whole cards." You have a round of betting, starting with the player directly to the left of the "Big Blind" and continuing left around the table until everyone has bet/called/folded. The dealer then deals 3 cards face up. This is known as the flop. A round of betting will ensue. Then the dealer will deal down 1 card or the Turn or Fourth Street. A round of betting agian will ensue. Finally the dealer will deal down 1 last card or the River or Fifth Street. The final round of betting will occur, and then the players will show their hands and the best 5 card hand made from the 2 cards in your hand and the 5 on the table will be the winner.

Poker hand rankings are the same as they have ever been througout the ages. But I'll throw them up here anyway. The strengths are going to be in decsending order.

High card - The highest card in your hand that isn't paired. (Jack)
Pair - Two cards of the same rank (Jack - Jack)
Two pair - Just like the name says, two pair (Jack - Jack, Queen - Queen)
Three of a kind - Three cards of the same rank (Jack - Jack - Jack)
Straight - 5 cards in consecutive order in rank (Ten - Jack - Queen - King - Ace)
Flush - 5 cards with the same suit (5 clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds)
Full House - A three of a kind coupled with a pair (Jack - Jack - Jack - Queen - Queen)
4 of a kind - Just like Three of a kind but with one more card (Jack - Jack - Jack - Jack)
Straight Flush - 5 cards in consecutive order in rank and all the same suit.
Royal Flush - Same as a Straight Flush, but it's highest card is the ace. The best hand in poker.

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Before I publish my first strategy guide for this ever popular Texas Hold'Em I must make something clear that most books will not tell you. You will not be a successful poker player copying someone's play style exactly, you can idolize them and aspire to be as good as them, but you can never be as good of a poker player without making your play style unique to yourself.

Advanced:
Play Style

So instead of promoting a certain type of play style, I will describe some common play styles. I will then attempt to help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of certain hands.

First before going into great detail about play styles, I have to mention that your play style is not going to be specific to these ones I'm describing below. Your style will change according to the game and limit. How you attack a certain table, or a certain player is truly your personal play style, these are just common ways of attacking poker.

Tight Aggressive - The most recommended but hardest to adopt:

Picking good starting hands and betting aggressively when you have the probable best hand. This means no slowplaying unless you have a hand with a lock (meaning 90% or better chance to win by showdown).

The basics of this style is to wait for good hands and bet to make the impatient ones at the table pay to play their sub par hands. Very good style when playing at a table full of loose players. Will work best against loose weak players, who play lots of hands but don't bet or raise often. Loose Aggressive is a little harder to play against as it's hard to sense whether you are up against a good hand or not.

Loose Aggressive - The controlled Maniac:

Playing any and all hands very aggressively, putting the pressure on constantly. This style is not the most recommended online as it is hard to pick up on tells, and it's easy to be slowplayed into a monster pot you can't win. This works well at live games as a good player reader can pick up on tells and can sense weakness or strength.

Loose Passive Preflop, Semi-Tight Aggressive postflop - The sleeper - (Credit to WaffeHo, the "HoDa" for this style)

You play many hands preflop, limping to see a flop, and then turning the heat on with aggressive betting to either grab a pot that hits no one, or to figure out whether your flush draw or straight draws are any good. This is a wonderful style for putting folks on tilt(a player who is very mad at the game and is playing subpar poker). Be wary as this style works on very specific tables where everyone is very timid with their money and willing to see flops cheaply but can be outplayed postflop.

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As I stated before, these styles are not exclusive to anyones game, you must change it up according to the game and your table image.

Table Image - How the rest of the table sees you, "the biggest bluff of the game."

This is very important for good poker players and is often how tournaments are won. Most pros adopt a tight image (play very few hands) then later in the game or tournament you have an upsurge of aggression and begin playing more hands. Your image dictates that you have good hands when in fact you are holding marginal hands. This can result in just enough stolen blinds and pots to make a good session a great session, or a 15th place tournament result into a top 5.

Some more unique pros such as Gus Hansen, adopts a very loose aggressive image. This makes them difficult to read, but more importantly it makes the amateur player believe that you will always have trash cards. So when you do hit your big AA hand, chances are you will be paid off handsomly by the showdown.

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Bringing it all together:

A winning poker player mixes his game up, often you have a certain way of approaching most games, working at getting a table image, then exploiting it to it's full potential. It isn't about being unpredictable, it's about looking predictable but mixing it up with a few unpredicted hands that win big.

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Now to the starting hands. Often times it's given information in most poker books to give you a list of playable preflop hands, but offer no more information. I will attempt to explain why certain hands work and others do not.

The classic monsters - AA, KK, QQ

These hands hold special importance in being favorites preflop, thus you are 95% sure you have the best hand during that round of betting. It's often good practice to bet these as such to make bad hands or hands that are 2:1 or worse underdogs to you to draw on you with inadequete pot odds (pot odds are the caluculations of the money bet for money won).

These hands are not invulnerable and thus must be protected by good bets, but a good poker player must know when to fold them if someone is representing a hand that has yours beat.

The high card hands - AK, AQ, AJ, KQ, etc.

These hands hold the value of either being in great condition (having a bad hand like A9 or KJ dominated because of the smaller kicker, the second best card) or nearly 50/50 to hands like JJ, TT, 99, etc.

Again these hands should be played aggressively because they are even more vulnerable to losing to bad hands, and thus you must make bad hands pay to see flops.

Drawing Hands - JT, Axs, 56s, small pocket pairs, etc.

These hands are the connectors, and suited hands to either small connectors or suited to an ace. These hands are small favorites to hitting big hands such as straights, flushes and straight flushes. They also help disguise your play a little more often, as small hands aren't expected to be played very often.

These hands should see flops cheaply, to figure out whether you will even have straight or flush draw potential. Smaller pocket pairs are the same, you want to see the flop cheaply and hope you make a set (three of a kind) which is one of the most profitable hands you can receive.
Use caution and don't chase a hand you aren't getting the correct pot odds to chase, this is why hands such as these shouldn't be played by beginners as they often misjudge their odds of hitting their hand.

Trash Hands - 72o, T2o, K4, etc.

These hands are the unsuited and even suited hands that have both cards too far away from each other to give you much chance of hitting a straight, a pair that will stand up, or a flush that can win. Unless you are really intent on making everyone at the table think you are a fish, these should normally be thrown away the second you see them. And these will probably account for nearly 60% of the hands you will see in hold em, if not more.

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This concludes my very first strategy article. I hope this proves helpful for beginners and amateurs alike. I will have more articles to come dealing with more advanced topics including betting, pot odds, implied odds, and tilt.

Please leave some comments and feedback! And have a wonderful rest of the weekend.

Welcome to Poker by Tireur.

As you can guess I am Tireur and I love poker. Tireur pronounced tee-rare is a french word literally meaning "shooter," and has been my online alias for many years now.

Poker became my passion after I applied my quick learning abilities from video games to online poker. I quickly turned around a small deposit of money into a sizable bankroll, I am far from a perfect poker player, but I am a winning poker player.

I currently specialize in No Limit Texas Hold'Em as seen on television, but I am proficient in other forms of poker including Omaha Hold'Em Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo, and Razz.

My site will be dedicated to making my visitors better poker players both online and in your local casino. My strategies will not only help you specialize in your favorite game, but expand your general poker knowledge that will go to making you a better poker player at any and all games.

So welcome to my blog, and I hope you bookmark me, visit often, and contribute through comments and feedback.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Tireur