Poker players tend to focus their energy on correcting what happens during a session – a call they shouldn’t have made, a three bet they should have, and so on. That, however, is a bit of a myopic approach that ignores a simple fact: a lot of mistakes that happen during a session occur because of how you approach a session. Here are five simple errors frequently made by online poker players in how they think about a session.

ESTABLISH A PRE-SESSION ROUTINE
While your mind isn’t technically a muscle from a physiological point of view, it shares enough characteristics with a muscle that the metaphor is still useful. Just like a bicep or quad, your mind prefers a little preview of the activity its about to engage in before the activity actually begins.

I’m not suggesting you play some practice hands before you sit down for an online session. Rather, I’m suggesting you establish some sort of simple routine that you engage in before your session begins. It can involves anything – exercising, making some food, meditating, whatever works for you – but it should be consistent and it should be done before every session to get yourself into the proper frame of mind, to tell your brain that whatever it was focusing on before is finished, and now its time to focus on poker.

DEFINE THE SESSION BEFORE IT BEGINS
Before you start to play, you should establish a clear time frame for the session. For cash players, you can set a certain length or win / loss goal, or frustration point, or whatever. For tournament players, a frustration point or a clear cutoff for registering works.

However you do it, the idea is the same: before you begin a session is when you’re best equipped to make quality decisions with an eye toward long-term profitability. Once a session begins, it’s way too easy to get caught up in the drama of the moment and make some really tilty decisions, especially if you’re losing. Having an exit plan before you enter is a great tactic for getting out as healthy as possible when things go wrong.

SCHEDULE YOUR DISTRACTIONS
During a long session, especially if you’re a tournament player, you’re going to get bored. That’s just a fact. There may be a few people who can manage to stay 100% focused during a ten hour session without the aid of a prescription stimulant, but chance are you aren’t one of them. That’s ok, as long as you recognize that fact and deal with it before hand.

Know what you’re going to do when you get bored before you get bored and you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration. Maybe there’s a web game you enjoy or an episode of The Office you’ve been meaning to catch. Make a plan beforehand and you will avoid searching for something to do while you’re playing poker and having to settle for something that doesn’t actually distract and recharge you while you’re playing. Don’t kid yourself about mental breaks – you need them, and planning them ahead of time is good for your game.

HAVE A TOOL FOR MEASURING YOUR FRUSTRATION
Sessions are odd things. They’re hermetic little worlds in which you can really lose sight of yourself in a hurry, especially if things don’t go your way. Maybe you’re a cool customer who can remain level-headed amidst the flurry of beats online poker delivers.

Chance are, you aren’t. That’s fine, as long as you can remain aware of how frustrated you’ve become, as that level will inevitably impact how you play. Everyone has a different system, so play around with a few until you find a good way to accurately track how pissed you are at any given moment, and how you should adjust your game.

ESTABLISH SOME META-GOALS
While we all wish it wasn’t so, not every session can result in a profit – especially if you’re a tournament player. That inevitable loss can really grind on some people, especially if you’re an inherently competitive individual. So, what can you do?

Find some ways to win even when you lose. Specifically, establish some goals for your session that have nothing to do with profit or loss. Maybe it’s to not make any hero calls for the session. Maybe it’s to force yourself to open more in late position. Whatever it is, pick something you want to improve about your game and focus on it, so that even if you have a losing session, you still have a way to eek out a win.

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Let’s tackle the first question of how much should you deposit. The short answer is it depends on what you can afford to deposit. I’m not going to try and convince you to deposit your entire paycheck on to a site. But, there are some other things to consider when trying to decide how much to deposit. What level games do you want to play? If you’re wanting to play $1 sit-n-goes you don’t really need to deposit $500. If you are planning on playing $27 sit-n-goes, then you might want to deposit more than $500. The reason I ask what level games you want to play is that it will help determine what dollar amount you want to deposit. The opposite of that is of course also true. If you can only deposit $50, the you probably don’t want to play $27 sit-n-goes right? So, let’s say you plan on playing primarily $11 sit-n-goes. Then I would recommend depositing at least 50 buyins at that level, or $550 minimum. If you plan on playing $1.10 sit-n-goes, then I would recommend depositing at leat $55.

Now another thing to consider is what bonuses different sites offer for first time deposits. If a sight is going to give you a 100% deposit bonus up to some dollar amount, you might want to consider depositing enough to take complete advantage of the deposit bonus. This first time deposit bonus can only be used once. So, if you only deposit $50 and you get a $50 bonus great, but if you could deposit $500 and get a $500 bonus wouldn’t that be better.

But wait, there’s a catch. Please read the details of a deposit bonus before depositing. Every deposit bonus that I know of requires a certain number of games to be played to “earn” the bonus, and there’s an end date on the bonus too. So, if you have a $500 bonus let’s say and you have 6 months to play however many games are required, you must get them done in time. If you don’t you might have to forfeit the bonus all together. So, do some math. Most sites work the bonus on some multiplier. They might say 10 frequent player points for each dollar of the bonus. So, if you have a $500 bonus, and the multiplier is 20x each bonus dollar, that would mean you have to earn 5000 frequent player points to “earn” the bonus. That could either take a considerable number of games, or you could have to play a higher buyin than you’re comfortable with to earn the bonus.

Most people fail to consider what is required to “earn” a bonus. They get excited about getting $500 free, but they fail to read what is required to “earn” that $500. So, let’s do some simple math. Let’s say to earn you $500 bonus, you do in fact have to earn 5000 frequent player points. Well, generally about $1 in “rake” must be paid to get 5 frequent player points. The math can change from site to site, but let’s go with the math I’m proposing. If 5 frequent player points are earned for every $1 paid in rake, you would need to spend $1000 in “rake” to earn your $500 bonus. $1000 in rake would require you to play 1000 $11 sit-n-goes. The important thing to consider is can you play 1000 $11 sit-n-goes in the period of time alloted without going broke. If you can, then you’ll earn the bonus. If you can’t, worst case scenario is that you go broke and have to redeposit to keep trying to earn the bonus. If you have to deposit another $500 to earn the $500 bonus, then you basically only break even at the end of it all.

All of these things should be considered before making your first deposit. You don’t want to deposit too much, but you don’t want to deposit too little either. You want to maiximize your bonus, but you want to ensure that you can “earn” your bonus in the time alloted. It’s always important to read all of the fine print on deposit bonuses and make sure you follow all of the instructions to the tee.

The second thing to consider is where to deposit. It’s important to shop around for deposit bonuses. The smaller the site, generally, the better the deposit bonuses. Let me try to explain this notion. If a site is huge, and they have millions of players, they don’t really need to entice players to play there. But, if a site is smaller, then they are trying to encourage players to “try” their site out, and those sites will offer huge deposit bonuses. Other things you need to consider about sites is how easy it is to withdraw winnings. Also, do you like the way the site design and the client used to play. If you think you might want to try one of the smaller sites, check around on the internet to see what others say about it. Or ask in the forums here on Part Time Poker as well. You never know. You could learn some great things from other members of the site before you take a chance on that first deposit.

But, be careful as well. Generally, if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. If you find a tiny site that is offering a 1000% deposit bonus with no requirements, you might want to ask around to see if anyone has heard of or played on that site before. I guess what I’m trying to say is to be careful. There are probably 6 to 8 poker sites that offer a deposit bonus that is worth checking out. If it’s a much smaller sight or a brand new site, you should consider the risks of depositing with them at all.

The most important thing to remember is to have fun. Don’t go broke trying to earn a deposit bonus. Read all of the rules and requirements of the deposit bonus to make sure you can meet all the requirements. And last but not least, even if you have already made a deposit, you might be able to earn a “first time” deposit bonus if you ask nicely. I had been playing for almost a year on a particular poker site, and I didn’t take advantage of my first time deposit bonus the first time I deposited. Well, I wrote their customer service department a letter, and they let me deposit again and use the “first time” deposit bonus code even though I had deposited once before almost a year before.

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.

The ideas I cover here are more applicable to online poker than live poker, and I’ll note important differences when I feel they should be pointed out. A lot of the concepts I’ve come up with here are from talking to fellow poker players and from reading online forums. And I’ll be pointing out the flip side of some ideas, because I think different players are guilty of making different assumptions.

Bad assumption No. 1: Everyone you play against is an idiot
Make no mistake about it: There are lots of bad poker players. But when you sit at a table, the chances of them all being idiots is very slim.

Sitting down at a table and assuming you are the best player at the table can be good and bad. Having the confidence to think you are the best player, and having the track history to back it up, is obviously a good thing. It gives you the ability to make plays, reads, folds and calls that lesser players may not. And, let’s face it, if you don’t think you are one of the best players at a table, you shouldn’t be sitting there in the first place.

But there’s a big difference between thinking you are the best player at a table, and automatically thinking that the rest of the players are not good. It may seem like just semantics, but I think there’s a big difference.

Assuming every other player doesn’t know what he or she is doing – or at least that they are wrong more often than they are right – can lead to problems. There are good players at every level, with a lot more of them at higher buyins. Not respecting other players can lead to bad plays, bad calls and bad moves. Some players are simply playing well on a given day. Sometimes players catch cards. Some are simply…good. Believing you can constantly outplay your opponents is not a good idea, unless you are, quite simply, one of the best players in the world.

The key is having confidence in your game, rather than disrespecting everyone else’s. Remember that, and I think it’ll be good for your game.

Bad assumption No. 2: Opponents are always rational players
Sometimes, good players make this assumption in coordination with the first bad assumption. Which is kind of mind-boggling. You can’t think a lot of the people you are playing are not good or not bright, but also assume that they are going to act like rational poker players.

But, often, this assumption is made on its own. The player assumes everyone plays like they do, making calls based on pot odds, only playing quality hands, etc.

Just like the idea that everyone is bad at poker is incorrect, it’s also false to assume everyone you’re playing with will play poker in a rational manner. (Obviously, players play more rationally at the very highest levels of poker, usually, but less so at lower levels.)

At almost every table you sit at, people are going to call when they shouldn’t, play hands they should muck, try to raise when they should be checking. I constantly see people amazed when other players make simply awful plays – over and over again they talk about hands like they expect the other player to play like he or she knows what he is doing.

Instead of expecting rational play, pick out the players who are irrational, and increase your stack against them. It should be pretty easy to pick them out, even after a few hands.

Remember, not everyone who plays poker has read a poker book; not everyone knows what fold equity and pot odds are. Find them, and take their chips.

Bad assumption No. 3: I have a table image
This is one place where online poker varies wildly for live poker, in my opinion. When you’re sitting and looking at people in a brick and mortar poker room, you look into their eyes, watch them all closely, and form opinions of them. You are only sitting at one table. Your attention is focused solely on poker and the people you are sitting with.

This is not always the case for online players. Most are a.) playing multiple tables and/or b.) splitting their attention with other things.

Not every player at your table has watched everything you’ve done, in all likelihood. In a brick and mortar casino, you may get credit for folding 20 hands in a row – if you feel like making at a play at a pot when you have nothing after that track record, you may get the benefit of the doubt. Online, you probably won’t. People may not realize how tight you’ve played, for a variety of reasons — from not paying attention, to concentrating on other tables.

You cannot play in most tournaments or ring games assuming everyone has a table image for you. Players are more likely to have a table image for you at single table tournaments and ring games, when the turnover at the tables is much less; conversely, you are less likely to have a table image in a multi-table tournament, where the turnover on each table is much higher, at least in the tournament’s early stages. Just because you have been playing loose or tight, don’t assume anyone else knows that.

Bad assumption No. 4: Nobody pays attention to what I am doing
This is the flipside of the third bad assumption. While a lot of people may ignore what you are doing or have done, some make it a point to know what you’ve done in the past and to watch what every player is doing at their table. This player is probably more uncommon than the player who is oblivious to what other players are doing, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

And sometimes it doesn’t take an uber-observant player to form a table image for you. For example, if you’ve open-raised three or four hands in a row, people will probably notice, no matter how much their attention is split. One player constantly raising and taking pots without showdown will likely stick in a lot of players’ heads. Or, say you raise three times in a row preflop, then fold to an early bet postflop. These are the kinds of things that are hard not to notice.

Remember, you are not playing poker in a vacuum where no one pays attention to what you’re doing. Your actions and history will stick with your opponents to varying degrees, and your image will grow more complete the longer you sit with them. Once again, people pay attention a lot more at single table tournaments and ring games — it’s hard to not get some information after sitting with the player for a decent amount of time.

Bad assumption No. 5: I’m good enough to avoid variance.
Wrong. Variance will hit everyone. And it hits the best players in the world, too.

Playing tournaments or buying into cash games at higher levels than your bankroll will allow will catch up with you eventually. Maybe you’ll get lucky and hit when you play a few big tournaments that constitute a big part of your bankroll.

More likely, however is that you will end up crippling yourself by playing bigger buyins than you should. Always play within your bankroll. Convincing yourself that you don’t need to is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a poker player.

Bad assumption No. 6: My good hands get sucked out on more than other people.
This one always floors me, especially when I hear it from very good players who know better.

Statistically, it’s highly unlikely over thousands of hands that the percentages of poker work against you. You’ll win races half the time. Your pairs over pairs will hold up four out of five times. Statistics do allow for anomalies: It’s possible for some players, even over thousands of hands, to find that these percentages are out of whack for them. But the more you play, the more likely it is that the percentages approach expectation.

But if you really believe that your good hands don’t hold up as often as they should is usually silly. People remember bad beats more than the hands that hold, and more than the bad beats they put on others. Play the hands like the percentages say, not based on the perception that you can’t hold when the percentages say you should.

In summary, don’t make assumptions when you join a poker game, unless you actually have some prior knowledge of the players you are sitting with. Coming to a table or a tournament with an open mind and assumptions cleared from your mind should give you a positive outcome in the long run.