Managing your online poker game

Dustin : February 25th, 2008

There’s a step between being a casual online player and a serious online player that a lot of players don’t take, and it probably hurts them in the long run. I’m not talking about the decision to become a pro and devoting all your time to poker. I’m simply talking about making a transition from treating poker as a hobby that you do just for fun to approaching it as an activity where you do your best to make money at it.

Yes, we all try to win and make money when we “sit down” to play online poker. But managing your online game well starts before you ever take a seat. If you just want poker to remain something you do in your free time, and something just for fun, this article might not be for you. But if you are a “just-for-fun” player who wants to become something more, this article should be able to help.

WHAT SITE OR SITES SHOULD I BE PLAYING?
This might be an easy decision, and you might be on to step No. 2 quickly. If you have money on only one site, and you don’t really want to deposit or play somewhere else, that’s fine. There’s no reason to go out and play every at every online poker site just for the sake of doing it.

However, there are some things you can do if a. You have already branched out from a single poker site or b. Have a desire to try other sites.

If you already play on multiple sites, you should figure out where you play the best. Believe it or not, some players simply play better on one site than another. To do this, it just takes a couple of steps. First, go to officialpokerrankings.com — this is where you can look up your multi-table tournament statistics for different sites. Simply type your user name in for each site to collect the data. Look particularly at Profit, ROI (Return on investment) and ITM (in the money) percentage. Get the data for each of your user names and then compare them.

You’re obviously looking for a positive profit, a positive ROI and a decent ITM percentage. If one site clearly stands out from the others, you should be focusing your play on that site more so than others, at least for multi-table tournaments. You’ll want to focus the rest of your management plan around maximizing your play on your best poker sites.

Now, you want to repeat these steps using sharkscope.com (you can use
five free searches there a day). This will tell you how well you do in sit and go tournaments on various poker sites. Again, look for good profit and ROI. Again, note which sites you do the best on. You’ll want to play more of your sit and go action on this site than others.

If you have only ever played on one site, this is a good opportunity to see what else is out there. You can always download a poker client for free, and you can usually play games for free, with play chips. You should be looking at a lot of different variables. Do I like the interface and using the poker client? Are there a lot of players on when I want to play? Do the sit and goes or cash ring games I usually like to play fill up, or does it take a long time to start a new game or get a full table? Don’t underestimate simply feeling comfortable with the site and playing there. Being relaxed and enjoying the poker-playing experience can only help in the long run.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT BUYIN FOR ME?
So, you have a poker site (or perhaps several sites) picked out where you are going to play seriously. The next thing you want to do is a fairly simple exercise — how much should you be buying into online for cash games, sit and goes and multi-table tournaments?

Basic bankroll management is something that escapes a lot of online poker players. And it can be affected by a lot of variables. For instance, if you have lots of disposable income and you don’t care how often you deposit, you can throw bankroll management out the window.

However, that scenario doesn’t apply to a whole lot of people. More likely, you can afford to deposit x amount every once in a while if you are losing online and need to add money to your account. If that’s the case, good bankroll management can consist of a couple of choices.

Option A. I am depositing once this year, and I don’t want to/plan to deposit again.
If this is your plan for online poker, you should take a conservative approach to your bankroll.

Basic bankroll management would say you use a minimum of a 10% or 10 buy-in rule. That means you don’t use more than 10% of your bankroll at any one time.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you start with $1,500. Using a 10% rule, you would only play single table tournaments that are $150 when you first start playing on your roll. Or, in a cash game, you would sit with $150. You should be more conservative with multi-table tournaments, cutting your buy-in by at least half to 5% of your bankroll. And remember you can buy into any game.

However, this approach is perhaps too aggressive for someone who doesn’t want to deposit again. It’s possible to lose 10 buy-ins, even if you’re a very good poker player. Is it likely? No. But good bankroll management plans for worst-case scenario – it doesn’t shrug off variance as something that doesn’t affect good players.

I’d suggest a 5% rule for sit and go’s and a 2.5% or 1% rule for MTTs. This allows for variance and will all but ensure that you will never go broke. If you do well, it will allow you to move up in levels without risking a lot of your bankroll to do so.

Can you go outside of your bankroll rule to play games above the rule? Strict bankroll management says no. But if you allow yourself to do it once in a while, and limit the number of times you do it, you can probably get away with. Just make going over your bankroll limit an exception rather than the rule.

Option B. I can deposit several times, and I don’t care if I go bust, because I can always redeposit.
The first step is to know exactly how much you plan on depositing in a worst-case scenario. It’s never a good idea to just be open-ended and say “Oh, I’ll just deposit whenever I run out of money.” Tell yourself you will buy in x number of times for x amount, and not surpass that.

Once you have that settled, you have a couple of choices. You can use bankroll management based on each deposit you make – i.e. treat each deposit as a unit, basing your buy-in limit based on the rules I outlined above.

Or, you could base your bankroll management on the total you plan on depositing over the course of a period of time. If you can deposit $1,000 5 times, you can use a bankroll rule that is based on $5,000. A 5% rule here means you can buy in for $250 on a single occasion.

Of course, if you lose the first four units and are down to your final deposit, I would recommend you revert to option A and become more conservative, and base your bankroll management on the fact that you only have $1,000 left.

It doesn’t necessarily matter if you follow exactly the plans I laid out here. Just have a plan for your money, so that if you have a bad run, your bankroll can survive.

WHAT GAMES AM I GOING TO PLAY?
Once again, this seems like an easy question. But it’s a question all players should ask themselves. You should obviously play higher levels at the games you are good at, and play lower levels at games you are not as good at, or games you are trying to learn.

For instance, if you are really good at no-limit hold’em and you want to play $109 sit and go tournaments and your bankroll allows for that, great. However, if you are learning HORSE but aren’t very good at it, you shouldn’t play at that level. You should play at a lower level until you prove you can beat that game at lower levels.

And another note for multitabling: Unless you are very comfortable at it, you should avoid multitabling different types of games. If you are playing NLH, you should probably only play NLH. It’s easier for your brain to keep up. If you are playing four tables and you’re playing, HORSE, Omaha, NLH and Razz, you’re likely going to get confused moving from table to table. Once again, some people can do it. But unless you’re sure you can, stick with one type of game at a time.

The web sites I mentioned above can help you determine what games you are good at: OPR for multi-table tournaments and Sharkscope for sit and go’s. But as you start to take poker more seriously, you should also be tracking your play on your own.

HOW DO I TRACK MY PLAY?
There’s a lot of ways you can do this, the most rudimentary using the web sites above to keep an eye on how you are doing.

That’s not a bad option. But it doesn’t keep track of everything you do (i.e. cash games), and it’s not all in one place.

There’s lots of options for tracking tournaments. Two of them are free. Many players track their play using Excel. That can be a lot of work to keep it up, but it gives you a lot of control of what you track and how you do it – from tournament placings to cashes.

There’s a free option on the Web, as well, called checkyourbets.com. It is fairly simplistic, but a little data entry by you creates a lot of data, such as your hourly rates, which games you play well, etc.

A simple search of PartTimePoker reviews will also reveal some options for software that can help you track your player, the most common and popular being PokerTracker, that does a lot of the work for you.

No matter what you do, taking your game seriously means you should track your play, and figure out exactly what you play well, how much money you make at different games, and so on.

Starting to manage your online game effectively is as simple as starting with the above steps. And you should see some improvement if you use the information you gather through these steps to improve your online play, and to focus your play where it needs to be.