For me, I have always had a simple strategy for Casino Poker Tournaments. I normally play £10 entry with £10 rebuys for 90 minutes and a final add-on, so will ensure I take £100 for the tournament and a separate amount for playing the other casino games before and after the tournament. The other basic premise is that this is money that I have put aside as my "casino fund" so I am not afraid of loosing all of it (I will still be able to pay my bills !) You should never gamble with "scared" money (meaning you are afraid of or cannot afford to loose it)
The reasoning is that if I need 9 rebuys within the 90 minutes rebuy period, then it is clearly not going to be my night so should walk away... but also you need to have enough for several rebuys in case you run into a bad beat or start playing too loose.
So far, so good... so lets think about online poker
When it comes to online poker, my strategy has always been "when I run out of money I will add more into my account" This approach has been fine for me for how ever many years I have been playing online (must look back and work out how long) as Poker has always been an enjoyable hobby which normally pays for itself (well, almost) What I want to now is see if I can make my hobby a source of income to fund other more expensive hobbies (we all gotta dream ;-) ) so will try out my own new strategy for online play
Mike's online playing strategy
1. Play within the bankroll
As with bricks and mortar Casino trips, playing online should follow basic rules
a) Do not load the online account with more money than you can afford to loose
b) Decide what type of games you want to play and stick to the types that really interest you (tournament/cash, Omaha/Hold'em/whatever)
c) Work out how long you want your bankroll to last, then pick the stake level that will allow you to play enough games but not be playing "scared"
d) Identify how long you have got free to play, when and where you will be playing. You definitely don't want to be playing Poker in a hurry, whilst being distracted by the wife trying to read her emails, or somewhere where there are other distractions (like TV)
Those of you who read my previous post about "Easy" money (http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2006/05/poker-is-there-such-thing-as-easy.html) will know that there are lessons to be learned about switching games and stake levels
So to put my strategy into practise for myself:-
- I find that I can only play low-limit cash games for about 15-20 minutes, then I start getting bored.... higher stake cash games would be more exciting but I simply don't have the bankroll to cope with the down swings that inevitably happen to everyone.
- Realistically the only good time for me to play is about 2 hours on a Wed night, other nights I normally only get about 30 minutes uninterrupted play time
- Although I have started looking at Omaha Hi/low games, it takes a long time to get to grips with a new game so am going to stick with Hold'em.
- I normally load my account with about $75 when needed, but could only do this once a month at most !
Conclusion
My ideal strategy is to play $10+1 single table sit and go tournaments (STT) with 5 or 6 players. (10 seaters can take over an hour to complete sometimes) This gives me 6 games (without winning!) which will probably take me 3 weeks to play. If I can build up my bankroll from $75 to $132 then I can afford to switch to $20+2 STT. I do also sometimes enter $10+1 Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) but this is rare enough to not be a big deal.
Update 22nd June 2006
I started my campaign with my new strategy last night
My current bankroll was $207 so could actually have started with 6 seater $33 tables, but decided to stick to $22 for the moment. Assuming average performance (1 win, 1 second and 4 out of money finishes) I would expect to end up with $177 after 6 games.....
Ended up playing 4 games and achieved two 5th places, one 4th place and one win (Hoorrahh) so am still on track to only loosing $30 :-)
I was particularly annoyed about one of the 5th places as my pocket kings got called all in by two people, one with AQ and one with 98 suited. This made me 54% favourite to win (courtesy of Card Player odds calculator at http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_odds/texas_holdem) Had an Ace come on the flop I would have been OK about loosing, but no.... it had to come 2-4-5 along with 4 on the turn and 3 on the river.... yes, I lost to a straight on the river (dammit....) Had I won that hand, I would have had half the chips available and would likely have had a money finish. Oh well, "That's Poker" as they say...
Update 23rd June 2006
The exciting news is that I managed to get in another couple of games last night (courtesy of Eastenders and Cornation Street)
The first game (game 5 in the series) was a roller coaster ride, first hand the player to my left (we'll call him "Kamakazi") was very aggressive with a rubbish hand and lost about 600 of his 2000 chips. Second hand I was dealt pocket Kings and put in a reasonable raise... Kamakazi went all-in so I happily called, which turned first to delight to see him with KQ (giving me 90% chance of winning) then despair as he hit a straight on the turn, leaving me with 600 odd chips and an uphill battle. Later in the game I doubled up with a Q3 suited against AA (I was 15% to win that time) so I guess the luck evened out, but only managed to finished 6th
Game 6 in my series was a bit odd as well, the 3rd hand someone went all in with nothing and got called by AA and quite rightly lost. After that the players were all tight as a ducks bottom, so I started playing more hands and taking a lot of blinds. With this game strategy they didn't know when I got a hand, so when someone attacked me I had hit 2 pair on the flop against his top pair so took a massive chip lead and managed to hang on to take first place
So to summarise my first series of games
- Played 6 games of 6 seater $20+2 STT
- Time spent 2 hours 35 mins
- Won 2 games
- Lost 4 games (4th,5th,5th,6th)
- Layed out $132
- Winnings $144
- Profit of $ 12 (about $4.65 per hour)
I don't think the professional players have much to worry about from me just yet :-)
So having completed my first series, I re-evaluate my position as per when I started, so what I can do now is play another series of 6 x 6 seater games at the £30+3 level, then re-evaluate again at that point
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