Lesson #8: In Closing

In this last chapter of this eight-part series, I want to focus on bad beats, frustration, downswings and how seemingly totally unfair this game can be.
The reason most serious players keep hefty bankrolls is because of how variance never fails to eventually knock you over, and then proceed to kick you while you're lying down. If you haven't had a meaningful downswing yet, there's a very, very good chance you haven't played for very long. Being prepared for it, both financially and mentally, is a virtual necessity if you want to go as far as you can. When I say "financially prepared for it," I basically mean that you have a bankroll that can deal with some swings, and that you've planned for the eventuality of a larger downswing happening, of such magnitude that it may force you to step down in limits. Thinking that a good player rarely loses is just plain wrong, because - quite frankly - winning poker means pushing edges, even the smallest ones. When you push a 52% chance of winning, you're going to end up losing virtually half the time. And sometimes, you're on the wrong side of the coin for an extended period of time. Of course, you could pass up the small edges and focus solely on the large edges, which would negate some of your profit, but it would also bring with it less variance. Personally, I want to play to win as much as I possibly can, and I keep a large bankroll to be able to do so.
What may be trickier to deal with is being mentally prepared for it. No one really knows how they'll react to losing half of their bankroll playing solid poker against poor players until it happens to them, I'm guessing. What happened to me was, and I think this is pretty typical, that I started questioning whether or not I was a winning player at all, if I had just had luck so far, or perhaps if I had suddenly become worse at poker. I got sick of the game for awhile, hovering with the mouse pointer over the PokerStars icon and then deciding to watch TV for awhile because I didn't want to lose even more. Bad beat, after bad beat, set of aces cracked by a runner-runner flush, big pots lost because no one ever folds, etc. I've since been through a couple of more downswings, and I know I'll keep running into them. They're inevitable. Knowing that they're inevitable is a big step. Understanding why they're inevitable means you've come a long way. Accepting them for what they are - and thereby accepting poker for what it is - means that you've reached the point you need to be at.
The problem with downswings is similar to the problem with reverse reinforcement. You may be playing well but you're still losing, which can cause you to believe that you're not playing well after all and in turn this can make you change your game for the worse. This is dangerous. In the short term, this is usually referred to as "tilt." Someone who refuses to raise his two pair on the flop when there are two hearts there, because "someone will just hit a flush and I'll lose more money," is a good example. The real problems arise when this is no longer just a state of mind that we're in for a little while, like the rest of the night or for 15 minutes or something, but when our game permanently changes because of this. Understanding how poker works, that mathematically and logically the universe is not out to get you, is very important in order to counter this behavior. Being able, away from the table, to rationally realize that what happened tonight was just variance, that your losses are at least smaller than they could have been had you not played as well, is imperative. When you don't have the cards in front of you, you can afford the luxury of thinking things through, mulling it over, and reaching the correct conclusion.
Unfortunately, it's not as easily done while still at the table. Short term tilt is, for me, mostly a small problem. I believe I have it under control, but of course it's still hard to smile and think happy thoughts when the same guy beats your flopped pair of aces by calling your bets to the river only to turn his third-pair-hand into two pair or trips, for the fourth time in a row. Being rational about it right then and there is really, really hard. You know that you were doing the right thing to bet, and you know that he made a mistake in calling, and in the long run you'll win a lot of money if you keep it up. But that doesn't help you right now, does it? No. You're still down for the session and you're pissed off about it. Now, leaving the table when this happens is, for most people, probably a good idea. If you find yourself upset, to the point where you know that it's probably affecting your decisions, then staying at the table is really bad. The fact that he's a complete donk and that if all other things were equal you'd be making a fortunate off of him in the long run may not be enough of a reason to stay. Because not all other things are equal, not if you're on tilt. Be honest: Haven't you ever been more prone to raising or calling a certain player because you've wanted to get back at him? Win your money back? I know I have. I try to avoid it, of course, but I can sometimes sense that feeling where I want to do it. People who seemingly have no idea what they're doing taking my money makes me slightly sick to my stomach, but it happens all the time. What's worse, I'm probably a part of the problem, and chances are you are too.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're sitting at a table where there's this guy whose luck is just insane. He's outdrawn you on the river four times in the last 15 minutes, and you're pissed off. You're not going to take this kind of crap. So you get pocket aces, and you raise preflop. He calls two cold, no surprise there - he calls with anything that he can reasonably identify as two cards, it seems. So the flop comes, and you don't hit a set. He checks, you bet, he calls. The turn shows a brick, he checks to you, and you bet, and he checkraises. Steeming with fury, you see your chance to win some of your money back and you re-raise him. Take that you miserable luckbox! He calls. Then he bets the river, and again you raise. He calls, shows you his two pair, and drags home the pot.
Did you play it wrong? Too many unknown variables to say for sure, of course. I didn't mention anything about whether or not this player was passive or aggressive, but last time I did something like this, I didn't 3-bet the turn because I figured to have the best hand, nor did I raise the river because I thought he was overplaying a single pair or trying to bluff me. No, I raised because I wanted to punish him. And when that's my rationale for doing something, I'm better served taking a nap than playing poker. However, there's another potentially more important argument to be made here and that's the fact that he may have been correct to call preflop with 97s. He may have been correct to call on the flop with his pair of sevens, nine kicker. How do I figure? Because with the way you're playing, you're offering him implied odds of 5 big bets (10 small bets) if he hits! Before the flop, you're about a 4:1 favorite over him. When he calls two bets cold, he needs to win back at least 8 small bets in order to make his call profitable, and he has no problem doing that from a tilting player who's out to get him.
What about his call on the flop? Again, it's only one small bet in a pot of (at least) 5 bets already. He has five outs, so he needs odds of about 10:1 to continue, but you're giving him a whole truckload of money on the implied odds platter. If he knew what you had, he'd virtually be wrong to fold. Now, you could argue that this idiot who keeps calling you down doesn't know the first thing about odds, and that he probably can't even spell "implied." And you may be right. But the fact that he doesn't know that he's playing correctly doesn't change the fact that he does. This isn't a strategy article, so I'm not going to teach you about cutting down implied odds for people who play recklessly, but I wanted to illustrate how your desire for revenge is hurting you, especially when it gives people correct odds to draw against you.
Poker is a game of small edges. It's a little bit like operating a roulette wheel. You have the odds on your side, but someone who's always betting on black, while a clear loser in the very long run, could still win quite a heap of money over the course of one evening. You already know this. Do you understand it?
Can you come to accept it?
People who berate others for poor play, the table coaches, aren't smart players. They're not impressing anyone. The fact that the other guy got lucky when he hit his miracle runner-runner flush against your flopped straight doesn't go away because you yell at him about it. Honestly, when people get so upset about this happening that they just can't stop themselves from being rude, I always (silently) wonder how long they've been playing. It happens so often, so very often, that it's amazing how they seemingly haven't gotten used to it yet. And what's worse, they're apparently trying to stop the other guy from doing it again, when they should be rooting for him to make those calls every time! The best case scenario for a table coach is that the other players consider him a jerk. The worst case scenario is that someone who was having fun giving his money away suddenly wisens up and decides to play smarter, while everyone still thinks the table coach is a jerk.
So, being almost done with this article series, I want to take the opportunity to wish you good luck, if you decide to pursue poker seriously. There's a lot of hard work needed to achieve real skill in this game, but it certainly is doable. Of the eight lessons I've written here, I truly feel that the part about having fun is the most important, and I hope you'll enjoy the game for what it is - a game of true skill, but absolutely sickening roller coaster rides of variance.

Lesson #7: Improve Your Learning

This second-to-last lesson I want to dedicate to sharing some ideas on how you can improve your game more efficiently. Reading the books and playing lots of hands is great and all, but with only a little bit more effort you can get so much more out of it. Let's start by looking at the books.
You will probably want quite a few books in your poker library. Mine - and I'm only an eager student, without any plans for a professional career whatsoever - contains 14, right now and there are at least four more I'm planning on getting. As I said in the first lesson, it's probably true that not every book is worth reading. The catch 22 here is that you won't know beforehand which of them will be useful to you, so you will still need to pick them up and read through them to form your own opinion. Of course, you can practise some selection, I'm not saying that you should go to amazon.com, put in "poker" and order everything that matches your query. But the greater point still stands: You likely have a lot of reading to do.
The human brain is a fascinating piece of machinery, and it's clever enough to automate anything that needs (or even can) to be automated. This automation is called "reflexes." One of the reflexes that I'm pretty sure every adult that can read has, is the automatic eye-movement when reading. Have you ever been reading a book and suddenly realized that you have no idea what the last two pages contained? I know I have. What has happened is that your mind took a stroll down some memory lane, but your eyes kept scanning the text. When you reached the end of the page, your finger turned it over, without you really having to think about what you're doing. Sure, some of the words stick, but in general you have no idea what you've just read. The eyes are so used to reading that this behavior becomes automatic. You have to consciously think about what you're reading in order to make good use of it. There are many ways to do this, and I think most people who have studied on any higher level of education will have heard or read about at least a few of them; taking notes, making mind maps, trying to visualize what you're reading, etc.
There's no one way that's better than all the others. Personally, I don't take notes and I don't make mind maps. I don't find "visualizing" the hand or situation (or whatever) that David Sklansky is writing about helpful. I do, however, quiz myself. For instance, if someone suggests limping with low pocket pairs on a loose/passive table, I ask myself where I'd place the cut-off point between limping and raising. 8-8? Etc. I consider what other factors that would tip my decision between limping, folding or raising. Every chapter takes more time this way, but I find that I'm able to understand a lot more about what I'm reading when I do this, as opposed to when I'm just browsing the text.
Another thing I do is to regularly go back and re-read chapters in books I've finished before. I don't often go back and re-read a book from cover to cover, however, but I often pick up a book and work through a section to see if I'll pick up something I may have overlooked last time. And even if I realize that I already know what it says, I know that repetition is the mother of knowledge, to roughly translate a Swedish saying. Repetition and reinforcement. I know what it says, and if I I now know it again, I'm less likely to forget.
If there's a chapter or a section that you have trouble understanding, ask a friend about it or post on the forums. "Why does he say I shouldn't raise with AQo preflop? I don't get it. Don't I have a huge equity advantage?" There's no guarantee that anyone who answers will be better equipped to answer your question than you already are, but arguing and discussing will definitely help you understand it better. Also, make no mistake, poker books contain mistakes sometimes. Some strategies listed can be, if not flat out wrong, at least highly inappropriate for the limits you play or for the competition you face. If something doesn't feel right, take the time to figure out why it doesn't. Discuss it with others. If you finally "get it," there's reinforcement again for you.
But reading, while practically a necessity to become a good player, is only a small part of how you'll spend your time with poker. Your long hours will be spent at the table, playing hand after hand after hand. The more you learn here, the better, that goes without saying. But how do you maximize your learning while playing? Again, there are many things you can do and ultimately you'll have to figure out what works for you. But here are a couple of pointers:
Make conscious decisions. When you decide to bet, call, raise or fold ask yourself "why." Don't just raise, raise because of something. "I will raise, because I think he will fold ace-high often enough for my bluff to be worth it." "I may yet have the best hand, and I don't want to give a free card." Again, what you're doing here is reinforcing good behavior. Very often, decisions will be automatic and the decision trivial. Even so, reinforcing it can't hurt. And when you make a conscious decision that doesn't sound right ("I'm raising because he will call with a worse hand... Uh, wait. No, he wouldn't") and you change your decision because of it, you've really accomplished something!
Think through non-trivial decisions. It's very easy to think "I'm not sure what just happened. I'll call his raise." Sure, often enough the call may be the right decision, but when you find yourself wondering, if only for a split second, what the proper action will be, take some time to think through the hand. I, myself, am patently poor at this. I tend to make decisions much faster than I sometimes should, and this is something I need to work on.
Make a mental note of difficult situations, so you can review them later. If you're playing online, just look up the hand history and review it when you're done playing. Reviewing and analyzing hands away from the table is a very powerful tool for learning, but you should already know that. Still, as obvious as it may seem, this is something that almost no one does enough of. What should trigger a later analysis isn't whether or not you won the hand, but whether or not you had a difficult decision to make at some point. Compare to the non-trivial decision making above; all the situations where you realize that you need to mull it over, even if just a little, are things that are worth a review at a later time. Very often, you'll get checkraised on the turn, let's say, and decide to call anyway. Turns out the guy was overvaluing his middle pair and your pocket kings held up, and so you just shrug and move on. But if you had to think about it at the time, it's probably worth reviewing later on. Something in your mind told you that what he did was out of the ordinary, and you'd do well to check up on things like that. And, even though I feel like I'm repeating myself ad nauseam, if you find out that you did do the right thing, you've gained reinforcement of correct play. Practise, reinforcement, repetition, experience.
I don't know if there are players who are so skilled and experienced that they have very little left to learn about playing poker, but I think I'm generally correct in saying that mastering this game is a never-ending pursuit. I can always become better. You can always become better. How much effort we're willing to put into it is, naturally, what determines how quickly we'll advance. Knowledge is sadly not really a measurable goal. You can measure how many pages you've read, or how many hours you've spent analyzing your play, but you can't gauge how much you've learned. And what's worse, your results may not immediately improve either - it can take a long time for a new experience to start to pay off. This is pretty troublesome from a pedagogical point of view, since a treat (or a dragged pot) doesn't necessarily mean that we've played it right, nor does a slap (or a lost hand) mean that we played it wrong. This is why analytical reinforcement is so important. The results of the hand won't always (or even mostly) tell you whether or not you played well, so you have to do that job yourself.
Reinforce the good habits and plug the leaks that you get from bad habits. It's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding.

Lesson #6: Have Fun

Throughout the first five lessons, I've been working hard to get across the idea that playing poker isn't, for all but the most talented and lucky people, a fast track to riches and glory. I've stressed how much work is involved, the importance of setting goals and having discipline. But goals, discipline, bankroll management and extensive studying will not do you much good if you have to every day force yourself into doing it. Working purposefully and intensively can take some time to get used to, but it shouldn't be a painful and boring experience every step of the way. Quite frankly, very few people are so discplined that they will do something they just don't enjoy, day out and day in, when they're their own boss.
I don't want anyone to do that, and I don't expect anyone to do that. I hope that you'll do it because you will see results and reap rewards from it, and that that in turn will make what may seem like tedious timesinks into something enjoyable. I've kept repeating that setting goals is an important way to motivate yourself to work hard, but there's no motivator as powerful as having fun.
You should want to keep track of your bankroll, you should enjoy studying and you should have fun while playing. Why would you bother doing this, otherwise? If you're a discplined and intelligent enough person to be successful at poker, you're very likely to be able to make more money working for a company from 9-5, because people like you are highly sought after in the job market. Playing poker in order to make money is only worth it if you enjoy it, because it takes extreme talent to make it to the highest echelons where the big money is at. I suppose extreme and ridiculous luck will do the trick as well, but no article series is going to help you in getting lucky.
So remember to have fun. If you find yourself constantly frustrated at the poker table, ask yourself why you're playing to begin with. Anyone and everyone will feel frustrated in the course of a longer downswing, that's inevitable, but if you find yourself swearing and getting enraged at bad beats even when you're winning, you're either thriving on the rage (which I'm not sure is psychologically healthy) or you're not actually enjoying what you're doing and you're caught in a gambling addiction problem. You don't have to feel sincerely chipper about having your set cracked by a runner-runner flush, but if you find that you spend most of your time playing feeling angry or frustrated, something's wrong.
It's difficult to force yourself to enjoy something, if you don't already, but there are things you can do to at least get more out of it. Here's a psychological trick I've picked up in a book (a book that had nothing to about poker): Try to smile a little while you're playing. You don't have to sit and grin, but try to at least keep a somewhat happy or relaxed looking facial expression - even if you're playing online. See, the body is a weird mechanism, and there are actually relationships between facial expresssions and state of mind. If you're happy, you smile. But if you smile, your brain will subconciously be a little happier! For more on this phenomenon, check out  There are other psychological tricks you can employ to strengthen the sense of confidence and happiness, but this one is so simple that I had to share it.
Also, making friends among other poker players is a good thing. Doing so will bring a social side to what's otherwise a loner's game. Post on online forums and bring some humor into the mix, it can't hurt. Be nice and notice how others are nice to you. These friends will be there to support you through the bad times, and there to help you develop in the good runs.
And try to not see studying as a chore, but as a challenge. Try to figure out the pattern, like a riddle that should be solved. Reflect on why you played a certain why, and if you could have done it differently. What would have happened then? Was top pair a likely enough holding for your opponent that re-raising would be profitable in the long run or did he play the hand weirdly? Why does Sklansky recommend sometimes raising with hands like 98s preflop? This is not high school, and no one will grade you on your knowledge except you yourself.
If you cash out some portion of your winnings, do something fun for it. Go out and see a movie, buy some new toy. I bought a DVD player with a hard drive, which has an added benefit: It allows me to record shows I want to watch so I can catch up when I'm at a particularly juicy table. Or maybe, if you're doing well, a trip to Vegas? The money that you've won and that you've cashed out are yours to do whatever you want with.
I don't know what works for you, but there are ways to get enjoyment out of the game that aren't solely dependent on dragging a big pot. Ultimately, you'll have to figure this out for yourself. Just don't neglect the fun sides of it, and don't think that I recommend that you turn into a machine who works without pause or emotion. Being at a good state of mind will make everything easier, and it will allow you to keep it up.
No job is worth being miserable, and poker is no exception. "Being your own boss" can hardly be such a great thing if you walk through life unhappy about what you do. So remember to have fun.

Lesson #5: Discipline

In school and in the office, someone is - generally speaking - watching over your shoulder and making sure you're doing what you should be doing. You can get away with slacking when they're not looking, but you still have to report to someone at the end of the day, or the week, or the semester. For most, this is a strongly contributing factor in doing what you're actually supposed to be doing. But this factor is non-existant in poker: You won't have anyone to report to, there's no one who expects or requires that you do anything. You are, for better and - in this case - for worse, your own boss. When the only one you have to answer to is yourself, it takes a fair portion of discipline to actually do what you set out to do.
... Or at least it should. If you've given yourself a lot of slack in what you hope to achieve, this will be a walk in the park. But if you're serious about taking the road of poker as far as it will carry you, your goals probably shouldn't have too much leeway given for slacking. You should challenge yourself.
Discipline is needed for many different areas of poker. For instance, returning to Lesson #2 and the Anna example there, if she has set out to play 5,000 hands per month, she needs to actually do that. Hopefully, you won't need to much discipline to play the game. If you find that you just don't want to play, then there is an obvious risk that you shouldn't be focusing on this game at all.
But Anna also specified which limits she was going to play at, and conditions for when she would move down or up in the ranks. Really sticking to this, and not refusing to move down after a bad downswing takes discipline; we all have a little devil on our shoulder telling us that if we stay at the limits we're playing (or even climb!) we can quicker win back what we've lost. Resisting that urge takes discipline.
The previous lesson dealt with realistic goals in building a bankroll, with the basic conclusion that it takes time, because the relative profits that are made are low in comparison to the limits we play. If you make one or two big bets per hour, how many hours of playing does, for instance, logging on and playing while being roaringly drunk cost you? I'm not saying you can't be outrageously drunk (I'm all for that) but recklessness can easily set you back weeks in terms of bankroll progress. It's unnecessary.
You also need to be disciplined about other things, such as studying. If you've told yourself that you will sit down and carefully read and analyze hands three hours a week - because you know how important this is to your personal development as a player - your job is not done there. Making the decision is easy, it's actually doing it that's hard. "Easier said than done" is rarely as true as when it pertains to planning homework. But while on the topic of studying, again, I want to point out that while you'll need some discipline to do the time that you've promised yourself you'll do, the part that's actually going to require more discipline is the self-criticism, so let me talk about that.
Psychologically, people are mostly very defensive. There are, for instance, countless courses on how to give and take criticism because of this. I've attended a few in the line of duty. If we were computers, receiving criticism would be a piece of cake. Someone tells us we screwed up, we look at the situation, objectively decide that he's correct, and adjust. In reality, however, someone telling us we screwed up will trigger all sorts of self-defense mechanisms in our psyche. The most common reaction is to claim that the criticism doesn't apply to us. The second is to vividly argue (or at the very least, feel) that we didn't screw up at all, and dismiss our critic as ignorant: "he would never bluff in that spot!" or to blame something or someone else. The third way of defending ourselves against criticism is to give excuses.
Accepting criticism and embracing it is tough, and for me personally, it's even harder to give criticism that I know can be accepted and embraced. However, when you're asking someone else to analyze your play, you're in most cases not asking someone who's professionally trained to give sensitive criticism, so chances are he or she won't be as smooth or as harsh as they need to be. And so again, you need the discipline to take it for what it is - someone else helping you. But even after getting soar spot after soar spot poked at by other players, you need to swallow your pride and keep asking for more of it. This is the part that really takes discipline, but it will pay off and it's worth it.
Now, speaking of soar spots, I have one more piece of advice relating to discipline to share in this lesson: the importance of being honest to yourself when things aren't working the way you want them to. Maybe you're not putting in as many hours of studying as you had originally planned. Maybe you went on a terrible downswing and hesitate to re-count your bankroll to see just how bad it's been going. But you already know that you should, and the only thing standing between you and something you can and should do, is to actually do it. Discipline.

Bankroll Management

Bankroll management is the process in which a player decides how much of their money they should risk in any given game, specifically in regards to poker. If you are simply playing for fun, then play for whatever stakes make you happy. Otherwise, if you are trying to maximize your chances of growing your bankroll in the long term, then read on.

Never play with scared money

The first rule of bankroll management is to never play with scared money. By scared money I mean money that you need for important things like rent, food, or other necessities. Not only could this ruin you life, but it will undoubtedly effect your play, usually for the worse. Your bankroll should be an amount of money set aside specifically for poker.

Let your bankroll always determine your limits

After some minor adjustments, your bankroll should determine the stakes in the game you sit down at, every time you sit down. This rule is very simple in theory, but gets a little complicated when you look at the details. The purpose of doing this is so that when you inevitably take a big downward swing, it usually won't bankrupt you. Your starting bankroll should be whatever you are comfortable with (i.e. an amount you won't cry about if you lose it). With sites like Poker888 you can select from games as low as 1¢/2¢, so you should be able to follow these rules even with a very small deposit.

Limit vs. no-limit cash games

In limit cash games, the general consensus seems to be that you should have a bankroll of about 300 big bets. So if your bankroll is $150, then a good game to play would be .25/.50. No limit cash games are much more volatile, so when you do have a bad run of variance, you'll need more of a cushion. A typical no limit cash game player should have about 20 maximum buyins in his/her roll. The max buyin is usually 100 times the big blind, so that works out to 2,000 big blinds if you want to think of it that way. So if your bankroll is $500 a good limit to play would be .10/.25. I realize that sounds like peanuts, but no limit cash games can get bloody very quickly.

Sit and go's and Multi-table tournaments

For sit and go tournaments (often referred to as SnG's), a rule of thumb is to have at least 25 buyins in your bankroll before going for one of these tournaments. Multi-table tournaments (MTT's) with fields as high as 5,000 players are exceedingly volatile investments. A very good player is very likely to only cash in about 15% of these large tournaments, however if you do cash, the winnings could be gigantic. MTT entries should be few and far between if you even play them at all. If you were really serious about playing MTTs regularly for long term profit, I think a bankroll in the range of 60-100 buyins sounds reasonable.

Styles of play

The numbers given so far are only guidelines, as your style of play will effect these numbers greatly. If you are a winning, solid conservative player, you may be able to lower your threshold of 300x big bets in limit down to 200x since your variance should be more stable. Note that this will put you in a high risk / high reward game. On the other hand if you are a hyper-aggressive type player, you may need to up it to 500x to handle those bigger swings. Additionally, if you play poker for a living, you may want to up it to 500x just to take things conservatively in order to make sure you can easily pay bills even after a losing streak. Again, the opposite of that position would be if you are willing to make more risky play in the hopes of building your bankroll quickly, or if you can easily afford to lose your entire bankroll without a sweat. In these cases you can consider dropping your threshold down to 200x for limit cash games as an example. However you slice it, figure out your metric and stick to it. You do not want to suddenly change these requirements because you think you are doing very well or you need to 'make up' some losses. Any changes should come slowly so that you can account for variance.

Changing Levels

After you have established your metric, changing levels should be a no brainer. Once your bankroll can support higher limits, move up. If you have taken some losses, then don't be too proud to move down. Moving down in limits happens to the very best players, don't let it effect your play. Chances are that in the long run, even with a big cushion in your bankroll, you will probably even go bust at some point. Most professional poker players have a story about going bust, just don't let it happen to you suddenly. You would have to be some sort of superman to go from 1¢/2¢ up to $30/$60 without having to go down in levels at some point. Of course your available games will vary depending on which site you decide to play, so if the site you are playing on doesn't offer a $2 + $0.20 SnG game, you should stay down in the $1 + $0.10 buyin games until your bankroll is ready for the $5 + $0.50 game. He is an example metric for a tight aggressive SnG player:

Bankroll	SnG Buyin
$25-$124	$1 + $0.10
$125-$249	$5 + $0.50
$250-$499	$10 + $1
$500-$749	$20 + $2
$750-$1,249	$30 + $3
$1,250-$2,499	$50 + $5
$2,500-$4,999	$100 + $9
$5,000-$12,499	$200 + $15
$12,500+	$500 + $30

Bankroll	SnG Buyin

Lesson 4: Building a Poker Bankroll

The overall theme of this series, if it isn't obvious yet, is that mastering poker and reaching our goals takes time - a lot of time. It's this investment of time that makes it so vital to define our goals and our plan on how to reach them. Spending time working in one direction only to find we didn't really want to be where we ended up is unfortunate. Spending time working to reach a goal only to come to a late realization that it's unattainable is also unfortunate. Proper planning should minimize the risk of these things happening.
But this lesson is about taking into account that building a bankroll is, or can be, a slow and tedious process as well. Some people take a shot and win a (relative to their bankroll) huge amount of money in a tournament which allows them to move up very quickly. Many more people take shots and lose their stake; hopefully they realized that this was the more likely outcome. Some other people refuse to take shots and simply grind their way up, moving up in the ranks no sooner than their bankroll is good for it. I'm one of those people, although I wouldn't presume to say that it's the only - or even necessarily the best - way to work one's way up. Different things work for different people.
What's clear to me, however, is that unless you're an exceptional player who just happens to be a bit short on money right now, the average time it will take you to reach higher limits will be about the same regardless of if you take shots or grind yourself up. If you know that you're a lot more skilled than the opposition, playing higher games than you're technically bankrolled for is alright, and so you may be able to save yourself some time by taking shots.
But if you move along the usual path of progression, learning as you go and therefore ensuring that you're ahead of the curve already before moving up (and thus keeping a solid win-rate), I have some interesting numbers to show you:
Let's say that you're a limit hold 'em player, and your goal is to reach the $10/$20 tables. You figure that your average win-rate, if you're disciplined and work hard on studying (as discussed in the last chapter), will be somewhere around one to two big bets per 100 hands played. Your original investment was to take out $300 from your savings account and deposit it into a poker site and you use a fairly standard rule of keeping a 300 big bet bankroll, meaning that you will not move up until you've built up 300 big bets of the next rank among limits. Your starting capital will let you play at $.50/$1 tables. How many hands will it take you to reach $10/$20, if you can truly sustain a win-rate of 1 big bet/100 hands all the way up?
Easy. You need to win 300 big bets at $.50/$1, which is simply 300 x 100 hands (you win one bet per 100 hands) = 30,000 hands. A single table deals about 80 hands per hour; meaning that you're looking at 375 hours of time at the table. If you study one hour for every two played (as I've mentioned in previous articles), you're suddenly looking at 535 hours spent on poker. In terms of a regular day job, that's a little more than 13 weeks. Thirteen weeks! Just to get from $.50/$1 to $1/$2! And then you have another 13 weeks to get from $1/$2 to $2/$4, etc.
Of course, if you multi-table (and sustain your win-rate) you can cut down this time by quite a bit. And if your win-rate is higher than 1BB/100, that will of course also influence how fast you get to where you're going. But even at playing four tables at once at a win-rate of 2BB/100, we're still talking about 47 hours at the table, or about 1.5 weeks of work. Aha, now it sounded easy, didn't it? 1.5 weeks is not that much. But I know of very few people who are capable of four-tabling for a long term profit of 2BB/100 successfully. So, realistically, you're looking at quite a bit more than that.
So why am I bringing this up? Because I want you to understand that this is not a game of instant gratification, and that if you think you'll be playing $10/$20 within a few months, you're kidding yourself.
Another thing to consider is that you may wish to cash out some profit once in awhile. There are several reasons for why you'd want to do this, but to name a few:

1. It's a reward for good work; a pat on the back if you will. I discussed this in Lesson #2.
2. You can use the money to pay for books, hand analyzing software, etc.
3. If your significant other has a problem with you playing poker, cashing out your earnings and taking her or him out to dinner for the winnings is a good way to avoid arguments. Trust me on this one.
4. If you lose everything, you'll still have the money you've cashed out.

The problem - if you can call it that - with cashing out, is that it's yet another factor that hampers your bankroll progress. But if you've already come to terms with the fact that you're in it for the long haul, then the extra delay that occurs because you're getting something "real" out of your effort is perhaps not such a bad thing. Furthermore, slowing down your bankroll progress is not necessarily counter-productive.
If you go on a hot streak, seemingly being invincible, you can make a huge profit in a fairly short period of time even at the low limit tables. I've had sessions of a thousand hands where everything went my way, quickly making 150 BB or so. This can be deceiving, because you're not actually that good: No one's that good. This fast bankroll boost, in turn, can make you move up before you're actually ready for it, before you've actually learned all the things you needed to learn prior to sitting down at the next level. Cashing out excess profit will effectively take the edge of that problem.Your bankroll will increase at half its speed (but still drop at normal speed) so upswings won't push you too far too quickly as easily.
Speaking for myself, I've chosen to cash out half of everything I earn. It's simple to keep track of, it gives me a decent amount of pocket change and it keeps me from playing limits I'm not really ready for yet. I've spent a lot of time at each of the limits I've played, and this has given me plenty of time to learn what I need to learn before moving up. So far, I've been ready to crush the game at the new level even before I've gotten there.
Now, when I say "half of what I earn" I don't mean half of the profits from any given session, I should point out. What I do is to keep track - on a weekly basis - of the size of my bankroll. When my bankroll is at a new maximum (which thankfully happens pretty often), I simply take out half of the difference between the new maximum and the old one - half the profit. If I go into a slump, I don't cash out anything until I've reached a new record, etc. In practice, I cash out $100 whenever my bankroll has increased by $200, for simplicity.
But to summarize this lesson: Building a bankroll the conventional way takes a lot of time. Don't expect miracles, because miracles by definition don't happen very often. Instead, take this slow advancement as a good time to learn more about the game and practice hard. At the higher limits, the challenges will be much greater, and you will be able to make good use of the experience you amass here, once you get there.

Lesson #3: Studying

 TOP 5 Poker books

1) Doyle Brunson's Super System: A Course in Power Poker, 3rd Edition

2) Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play 

3) Caro's Book of Poker Tells

4) Ken Warren Teaches Texas Hold'em

5) Phil Hellmuth's Texas Hold 'Em



Learning poker will take a whole lot of playing it, but what separates the experts from the novices is often the time spent on studying the game away from the table. I'm not just talking about reading books (although that is surely a big part of it) because lots of people read books but never excel at poker. No, you need to study the books, not just read them. There's a huge difference, and anyone who's ever gone to school (that presumably includes all of you) will know what I mean. Sure, I can read through the entire book I have on calculus, probably pretty fast, too. I can even feel like I get what the author is saying, and have no real trouble following the lines of reasoning about integrals and derivatives. But if all I do is read it, I'm going to flunk the test for sure. I need to practise what I've learned to fully absorb it, and so all math courses (this goes for virtually any subject, but math is a convenient example) supply their students with problems to solve, helping them to absorb the knowledge they've just read about.
Few poker books do this, with a very notable - and commendable - exception of the Harrington on Hold 'em series. Many of the other Two Plus Two publishing books have quizzes at the end to help you test your knowledge, but most of them fall hopelessly short of a standard that would allow the book itself to be enough material for absorbing the concepts it contains. Therefore, we need to work harder than just reading the books. In fact, without a stern teacher and an upcoming test that we may flunk, mustering the motivation to force ourselves to study at all may be hard.
But I realize - as do you, surely - that learning more about the game is the way we come to the point where we can beat it. And so the problem is not that we don't understand that we'd be better off if we study hard, the problem is that hard work is often not fun. We need to be motivated to pull it off, and making a habit out of studying takes time and discipline. That's the core of this lesson: Realize that learning takes time and plan accordingly.
Furthermore, we must realize that studying doesn't end at some point; we don't graduate. The money that we make in this game come from the mistakes of others and our job is to make fewer mistakes than our opponents - or more specifically, less costly ones - which is how we show a profit. Competition at its finest. But our opponents aren't dumb - well, not all of them at least, and the dumb ones become fewer and more far between as we move up in limits - and they learn more about the game for every day that passes, too. In order to keep our win-rate where we want it to be, or even keep winning at all, we need to stay ahead of the curve. We need to know more about the game than they do and we need to work harder than they do so that we can keep outsmarting them. For this reason, there's no end in sight, no light in the tunnel, no day when our job of studying is done. Learning is a continuous process in poker.
I can't stress this enough. It seems very obvious to me that most of my opponents today have read many of the same books I have, even at the low limits. I see them applying concepts that I recognize so well that I could almost pinpoint the page where they read about them. Of course, they misapply a lot of them, and that's why I'm still profiting. They have read the books, gotten the general idea, but they still fall short of understanding how to apply the concepts. You don't want to be one of those people, you want to be one of the ones who know how to beat those people. You've got to know more than they do.
I spend at least one third of my "poker time" studying. For every two hours I spend at the table, I try to spend one hour reading books, analyzing hands, posting hands on boards, etc. Sometimes I play a session with the specific purpose of practising something new. Specific tips on how to make good use of the time we spend studying are found in Lesson #7. How much time you are willing to spend on learning more about the game is of course a matter of choice, but I put in about 10 hours a week on poker, and spending on average three of those hours working on improving my game away from the table has worked for me so far.
You would do well to take this - studying - into account when you plan how you will spend your time on poker. How strict you want to be about it is, of course, a matter of preference. Perhaps you want to take a whole week to finish a specific book before you go back to the tables, or perhaps you like to spend only 30 minutes here and there on it; do whatever suits you best. But be prepared to spend a lot of time on it. No, be willing to spend a lot of time on it. You already know that it's the right thing to do, but it's up to you - and only you - to actually make it happen.
I believe there's also a risk of overstudying. The theoretical knowledge of 20 books doesn't mean much without the experience that tells you how to use it properly, so for the best result, you should balance these two. Although I spend on average one third of my time studying (in "studying" I basically include all the time spent away from the table actively thinking about poker), this is not something that I've scheduled rigorously - I don't set the alarm for Sunday morning so I can go up and review sessions in PokerTracker. I think the best thing that can happen is that you're excited and curious about the game, so that you freely look up the information, rather than having the "must study"-sign hanging like a weight around your neck. Learning new things is fun for me, and I hope it's fun for you, too. It makes the whole process so much easier. So if you find that you're just not interested at the moment to continue reading the book you're trying to work your way through at the moment, take a break from it. Play poker instead, let the book rest for awhile. While studying is virtually a must to become better, it doesn't have to be a "must-right-now." Forcing yourself to learn something is pretty inefficient, and I think you'll find you have much better results if you spend your time on it when you actually feel like it.
If you have a busy schedule and only a determined number of hours every week to spend on poker, make sure that you don't set goals that require such a high number of hands played that you leave no room left for learning more about the game. Remember: You must stay ahead of the curve!

Lesson #2: Know Where You Want To Go

You must know where you want to go, and you'd do well to be pretty specific about it.
Knowing where to go - what your goals are - is important for quite a few reasons, above all the fact that your best chance to achieve your goals is to make a plan that enables them. This article is about how you set goals for yourself, and the principles you should employ when you make a plan to reach those goals.
First, let me reiterate something I mentioned in the first article: This series is not aimed at casual players. If your goals are simply "I want to win $1,000" or "I want to play 100 SnG's" then you don't need to dive into the kind of planning I talk about here. This is directed at people who want to be serious students of the game of poker, who want to go as far as they can with the time that they have to spend on it, whether this is 5 or 50 hours a week.
Step one in this process is defining and understanding what you want out of poker. Psychology of Poker by Dr. Alan Schoonmaker may be a good book for you to read to come to terms with what your own motivations are, but right now I will presume that they are a mixture of wanting to challenge yourself and wanting to make money. Hopefully the thrill of gambling isn't one of them; whether or not you also want to play to some extent to pass time is also largely irrelevant.
I want to make it clear that making money and challenging yourself may be goals that are contradicting each other, which may not be obvious. Won't higher limits bring both more challenge and more money? Only to a point. Unless you're one of the best players in the world, you are bound to sooner or later reach a limit where you're no longer making money, or just about breaking even. In this case, it's better if you step down to where you maximize your earning if your goal is to make as much money as possible. However, if your goal is to constantly challenge yourself, you should be willing to spend more time fighting at a higher level before learning how to beat it.
An extreme example of money vs. challenge is a player who will play 10 games of $2/$4 limit hold 'em simultaneously online. This was, presumably, challenging and difficult in the beginning. But after a few months of successfully doing this for 40 hours a week, it will become less and less challenging, even mechanical.
So ask yourself, what do you want to achieve? Do you want to be able to eventually take shots at $100/$200? Or are you in it for the money? Accepting that the goals can be contradicting each other is important.
Before we move on to how to construct your plan, I want to suggest a couple of other advantages to making one at all:
Planning...
... breeds discipline
By now, I've hopefully done a pretty good job of giving you the idea that successfully mastering poker is hard work, and if I have, then pointing out that hard work requires discipline is hopefully easy to accept. If you're devoted to the task, then the goal you set for yourself may require a lot of effort to reach, and us humans are infamous for our dislike of effort - we're lazy by nature, this is why we invent all this convenient stuff like armchairs, internet shopping and the wheel. We need to be reminded of why we're putting in all this effort to keep us motivated, even when things aren't going our way and the world appears to be conspiring against us.
Staying disciplined is difficult, but with proper planning it becomes a little bit easier. A lot of people find enjoyment in being able to cross things off their to-do list even if the things actually on the list aren't enjoyable; then that becomes a mini-motivator all by itself.
... and gives a purpose
With a plan and a clearly defined goal, you will be able to see a purpose in what you're doing even when the amount of work you have ahead of you may feel overwhelming. For the sake of motivation, this is more important than just being able to cross things off a to-do list, even if they're actually one and the same. Being able to see progress, over the course of time, is the biggest motivator I can think of. A simple example is a bankroll tracking graph: Even with a couple of days' worth of brutal bad beats, you should still be able to look back on your bankroll progress at a whole and see that the graph is pointing up and take some comfort in that. If you know what your next milestone is, you should also be able to deduce how close you are to reaching it.
A milestone, a term simply borrowed from long distance running, is a point in progress where you can say to yourself "now I've come THIS far." If your goal is to build a bankroll of $10,000, for instance, you could have milestones every $500. It wouldn't make much sense to make each dollar a milestone, because reaching a milestone should be a time for a small celebration of some kind. Instead of focusing on the goal - which may be months or even years away - carefully spaced milestones present you with something that is attainable within the not-so-distant future. It's easier to work towards a goal that will be reached soon. This is a psychological fact for most people; "instant gratification," getting our rewards quickly, is a powerful motivator. If we were computers, setting milestones would be useless. But people need a pat on the shoulder every now and then, even if it's our own hand that's patting us.
And this brings us to a hugely important factor in setting goals: They should be measurable! If any of you work in larger corporations or have taken courses on the topic, you should be familiar with the idea. Setting goals that cannot be measured in numbers is unwise. I was originally going to say "useless," but on second thought I disagreed with myself. All goals serve some purpose, but it's the measurable ones that we can use to our advantage. Non-measurable goals I'd like to call "ambitions," which can be useful as well, but not act as milestones. Let me give a few examples:

• "I'm going to play 10,000 hands of $25 no-limit cash games this month" - this goal is measurable. Its success can be evaluated with a simple "yes" or "no" and reasons for failure to reach it should be more or less obvious. Therefore, corrective action is easy to take ("play more").
• I'm going to become better at Omaha" - this goal, while noble in its intent, is not going to serve as a very good milestone. You have no deadline, and you have no clear point at which you've reached your goal. This is an ambition, not a goal.

These are good examples of a milestone and an ambition. There are, however, measurable goals in poker that are counterproductive, specifically goals which specify a certain amount of profit in a too-small of a sample. For instance:

• I want to win $1000 this week playing $2/$4 limit hold 'em" - not good.

The basic problem with that is that poker is a gambling game - you're betting on an uncertain outcome in every hand that you enter - and so you're at the mercy of the deck. Superior skill will in its own time dictate the outcome, but hardly in a single week. In just one week, it's unlikely that you'll play enough hands to actually be able to reach this goal with certainty. You should get in the habit of setting goals that are up to YOU to achieve, not the short term falling of the cards. If you're a winning player, you should be able to set a goal for winning a certain amount of money over the course of a year or a couple of months, but a week is never enough. I'd be wary of setting a monetary goal with a timeframe as short as one month as well, but that depends largely on how much you actually play.
There's yet one more principle of planning that I want to touch on: Planning for events you haven't planned for. This is not a contradiction in terms; a plan can certainly include the possibility of changing itself - a prominent example of this is the US constitution. It goes without saying that your plan will not have to be anywhere near as complete or as detailed as a country's constitution, but you should have some idea of how you will act if you decide that the current plan is not working. Just starting over again is one option - make a new plan entirely - but there can be other variants.
For instance, if you plan on playing 100,000 hands this year, and you've set out milestones of every 10,000 hands where you will review your progress, make cashouts, etc. but you find yourself in a situation where you simply won't have the time to play this much, how will you adjust? Just keeping the goal as it is and accepting that you won't reach it can be very detrimental; this goes back to the factor of discipline. I will discuss this in more detail in Lesson #5.
By now, it should be clear why this is something that a casual player is unlikely to want to go through. This is a lot of work for a hobby, and setting strict goals and being disciplined about them is not something that a casual player, whose relationship with poker is limited to logging on when there's some time left to kill now and then, is going to be up for.
Finally, your plan should be realistic. In fact, it should be more than realistic; you should give yourself padding, or more time than you think necessary, for the things you plan to do. Unexpected things always occur - including things like being bored with the game for a period of time - and disregarding those factors completely is foolhardy. If you're currently really into poker, and you play 6 hours a day, don't make a goal that requires you to keep up this pace unless you're absolutely sure that you can. Set an easier goal for yourself, because it's important that you set a goal that you can reach. Conversely, however, setting a pointless target that you don't have to work on at all to reach is also counter-productive, of course.
So how serious and detailed does a plan need to be? That's entirely dependent on the goals. I wish there was a template I could give you to fill out, but the best I can do is to give you an example, with some basic stipulations.
Anna
Anna has been playing poker for about a year, and is a somewhat stable winner at $10 no-limit hold 'em cash poker games. She plays about 10 hours a week, and is ambitious about playing more seriously. Her goal is to be a winning player at $400 no-limit, within a year. She's a well paid professional, who's not in it for the money.
She owns one poker book, Super System 2 by Doyle Brunson. She's a member of an internet forum, and has gotten the recommendation to pick up Dan Harrington's books, Sklansky's Theory of Poker and Miller/Sklansky's No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practise.
Her bankroll is currently $350. She breaks down her goal like this:
"Goal:
I want to be a winning player at $400 NL within a year. In order to even play $400 NL, I want a bankroll of $10,000 (25 buy-ins), but on top of that I need to be a winning player. The natural progression of limits to reach $400 is $10 -> $25 -> $50 -> $100 -> $200 -> $400. My way of gauging whether or not I'm winning is if I show a profit after 10,000 hands of a certain limit. How much profit I can show is not important.
Milestones, ambitions and rewards:

• The smallest amount of hands I will need to play before having reached my goal is 60,000, or 5000 hands per month. To give myself some padding - in the event that my bankroll is not big enough for the jump after 10k hands - I will try to play 10,000 hands per month, but 5,000 is the minimum.
• I'm therefore going to play at least 10,000 hands of $10 NL. If my bankroll is big enough to make the jump to $25 by then ($625, always 25 buy-ins) I will move up to $25. Then another 10,000 hands of $25 NL to see if I qualify for $50, and so on until I reach $400 NL.
• Every time I move up to a new limit, I will cash out whatever surplus - money that exceeds 25 buy-ins at the new limit - I have and spend it on whatever I feel like.
• I will spend at least three hours a week analyzing hands that I've played.
• I will read Theory of Poker, and then No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice , followed by the first two Harrington books in the coming two months, giving me two weeks per book. I intend to read every chapter slowly and take notes.
• I will track my bankroll weekly using an Excel spreadsheet. In it, I will also include a small diary where I list things I've learned every week.

In case this won't work:

• If I fail to make a profit at any specific level, I will continue there for as long as my bankroll allows - until I drop down to 25 buy-ins at the level below it - and move down when it no longer does. If this eventually leads to me not being able to reach my final goal, I will make a new plan once this is obvious."

What Anna does with her plan is up to her. She can print it and place it on the wall next to the computer, she could post it on the internet, or she could simply just keep it on a note somewhere. It is good, however, to write it down as that adds extra incentive for fulfilling it and will help her stay disciplined about what she has set out to do.
As you see, the plan doesn't take up a lot of space (and is certainly nowhere near the complexity of the US constitution!) but it contains the core elements nonetheless: A goal and milestones for reaching it, both of which are measurable, it is somewhat realistic and to-the-point, and it includes a clause about how to proceed if the goals within cannot be reached. All that is left is to wish Anna good luck.

Poker Lesson #1: Introduction

This is the first article in a series of eight poker lessons, the purpose of which is to give an idea of what kind of mindset and which commitments I deem to be the most efficient to reach real poker proficiency. The reader doesn't have to be a player aspiring to become a professional; just wanting to become good enough to beat the game at any meaningful level is enough of an ambition, but I would like to think that even future pros will get something out of these texts.
Why should you take my word on anything? You shouldn't, necessarily. You should know that I'm not a professional, and I (almost certainly) never will be. I have no ambition to become one, is the problem. I have a job that I like, and I'm not enough in love with the game of poker to pursue it full time. This has likely influenced my point of view, in the direction of being less enthusiastic and less optimistic about what is needed to become a very successful poker player. However, if I have to err on any side, I'd prefer it to be on the side of caution - so perhaps my pessimism is useful.
I have never played limits higher than $10/$20 (limit hold 'em), and I'm fairly young (29). Obviously, I lack a lot of the experiences needed to teach an up-and-coming professional everything there is to know, and I'd be surprised if no one tries to throw that in my face. Being a mentor to future world champions, teaching them what poker games are all about, is not my intention or ambition and I don't presume to be the right person to do that. I do, however, have a short list of things going for me as being someone you may want to listen to when it comes to learning about poker and working your way up:

• I know a thing or two about the game. I first started playing at the age of 17, and I've played quite a lot since those days. I don't claim to be an authority on poker strategy, but I am confident about the fundamentals and I have sufficient theoretical understanding to realize that I'm no master. Having what it takes and knowing what it takes are two different things, and I know I don't have it.
• I've worked myself up from the $.10/$.20 tables. I've gone through the ranks the slow way and I've picked up lessons along the way. I'm not precisely what you would call a high-roller, but I've learned valuable poker lessons in getting to where I am today.
• Planning and executing virtually-impossible-to-meet schedules is what I do for a living. I've learned a thing or two about being a realistic planner from this experience - so I'd like to think I should have at least some authority regarding making plans for success

But enough about me - let's talk about you.
Anyone can read this, of course, but my target audience is a decently experienced beginner who has started to "get" the game of poker and is now considering taking it more seriously. I use "seriously" in the sense of "being willing to spend as much time as I can to get better at it," here, not necessarily in the sense of wanting to turn it into his or her primary source of income, as I've stated above. The reason I'm repeating this is because I really want to drive home the point that devoting yourself to poker the way I'm suggesting in this series is not something that most people will (or even should) want to do. Perhaps casual players will still get something out of reading this, though, specifically that they're making the right call staying casual. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Also, none of these articles will actually give strategy tips or pointers. You won't learn how to play AQ-offsuit from middle position, and you won't find out how to extract the most money when you flop a set, there are loads of books for that. I will, however, encourage you to read those books, and then re-read them. And perhaps read them again.
And this brings us to the first lesson in this series: Learning how to beat poker takes time - a lot of time. In fact, likely more time than you can imagine. Being a fast learner is imperative, but even if you are you still will need plenty of time to soak up all the information you can in order to move forward. There are natural talents (Stu Ungar comes to mind), but they are very few and far between, and the likelyhood of you being one of them is diminishingly small. The rest of us - myself included - have to work hard to reach a real understanding of how to play.
Now, the exact numbers here aren't important, but I want to give you an idea about the scale of what I'm talking about in terms of experience and understanding:

• Playing a hundred thousand hands.
• Reading ~3000 pages of poker books, some of them several times and a few of them many times.
• Spending about an hour for every three hours played analyzing the way you played certain hands.

Almost certainly, there will be someone reading this article who will think "100k hands is nowhere near enough!" and this person is probably correct. My point is that if you think 100k hands sounds like a lot, you have to brace yourself for the fact that it will likely take even more - and probably a lot more.
Do you really need to read all those books? Yes, and no. You don't really need to read all of them, since there will likely be a few books from which you won't really learn anything you didn't already know, or couldn't have picked up from some other book. However, you still need to read all of them because you have no way of knowing beforehand which books you could have been able to skip. It's a bit of a catch 22, you could say. The willingness to study is absolutely key to becoming better and you should feel excited about devouring a new book on the market, scouring it for things that can help you become better. If you think reading books is boring, then your only way to greatness may be natural talent - see above for how likely I believe this to be.
Spending 25% of your poker time on analyzing hands already played (yours and others') is also something you should take into account and plan for. The best way of plugging holes in your game is to put them under intense scrutiny, and preferably the scrutiny of others. You would do well to spend a lot of time on internet forums, discussing your own and others' hands. This number - 25% - may be a bit off, but I believe it is reasonable.
If you can work through the three-part list above in less than a year, I'm impressed, not the least if you have other commitments (a job, school, parenting, etc.) that take up time. I read stories all the time about new poker millionaires, like some kid from my home town who won $1 million last year, and similar things. It's not surprising that many people think that poker is easy money, but they should stop and wonder how come, if it's so easy, not everyone is doing it. The answer, naturally, is that poker - for most of us - isn't such easy money after all. I hope to convey that message clearly in these eight articles, but I also hope that you, despite my inherently negative attitude, will be excited about my suggestions and that you'll make good use of them.
You've likely got a long way to go, and although not everything I suggest will sound fun and exciting, I do believe that it may shorten the time it will take you to get there.

Sit And Go Strategy

The online Sit & Go ( SNG ) games are a popular choice for many cyber poker players. Let's take a look at a strategy for the typical No Limit game with the common three places paid payout structure. In our game we'll assume that 1st place pays 50% of the buy in, 2nd place pays out 30%, and 3rd pays 20%. This payout structure leads us to our first strategy decision. That is, are we going to be playing to finish in the money or are we playing to win?

Some will argue that we must play for first place. They would argue that only the larger payoffs will enable us to be a net winning player. The buy in includes a steep rake for the house they argue and only by playing to win can we overcome this charge. For example in a $10 SNG the poker room may charge you $10+1 with the house keeping the dollar. This is over 9% that goes to the house. Larger SNGs usually have slightly smaller charges but they are still significant. In our example a first place finish pays two and a half times more than a third place finish. That justifys taking some risks.

Playing for first early means playing more aggressively. It means taking chances early in an attempt to build up a large chip stack. With the large stack you can control the action. You can push people around and put them all-in. Sometimes things will go your way and you'll find yourself sitting on top of a pile of chips. Other times this more risky strategy will leave you crippled or out of the tournament early. Proponents of the play to win strategy don't mind busting out of a SNG early. They figure that it's better to go out early and just get into another game than to lose out on the bubble wasting all that time and effort.

Other players play to get in the money. If they make it to the cash, they reason; then they can try to move up. These player will tend to lay low and avoid the action early in the tourney. They want to avoid the aggressive action that can break out at the beginning of the SNG. The finish-in-the-money player is seeking to shorten her odds by letting the other players take each other out. She reasons that if one or two players make a quick exit that significantly helps her chances. Furthermore, one of the players eliminated early might be a powerful player who just suffered a bad beat. A player using this strategy tries to cultivate a tight table image that they can later exploit. So the mantra of a finish in the money strategy could be, "Don't gamble early."

So which strategy should you adopt? Like most decisions in poker the answer is, "It depends". Online SNGs are unique in that we don't have much of an opportunity to engage in table selection. Typically when a table opens up for registration there is a 'land rush' for any available seat. We don't get the luxury of observing a table for a round or so like we do at a normal ring game. We have to figure out our opponents on the fly. If you play regularly, your notes can be a great help. But usually the first few hands will be a learning experience. Who are the aggressors and who are the maniacs? Who is sitting out the early action? Is this an aggressive table or is everyone playing tight? What's my position relative to the aggressors?

If you find yourself in a crazy game where several players are going all-in in a suicde pact, that's great. Sit back for awhile and let them chew each other up. You are hoping that several of these guys make a quick exit. The blinds should still be relatively low and you'll have plenty of time to pick your spots. Your chances of finishing in the money are good. If you find yourself at the other extreme and no one is stepping out of line, seek to take charge of this type of game. Look for opportunities to play your opponent more so than the cards. You're going for the gold in this type of game.

Most games will require tactics that mix the two basic strategies. As an example, last night I was in a SNG that was very aggressive at first. Four players were strongly contesting each pot. I chose to sit back and really picked my spots. I managed to stay pretty much even lurking around third or fourth place. After about 25 minutes, the character of the game changed. Two of the aggressive players were eliminated. The other two had accumulated large chip stacks. At this point it seemed none of the remaining 8 players wanted to play aggressively. The two high stacks seemed content. The other six of us were slow to recognize the new situation. Finally, I picked up on the new situation and started picking up some easy pots. As with most games, the character of that game changed several times. Each time it was important to recognize the change and adapt.

The default strategy that I feel most comfortable with is to play conservatively early. Don't gamble and play very tightly. Wait for the field to thin. As you near the bubble use your tight table image to play aggressively and steal a few pots. Your opponents may be reluctant to contest a pot and risk busting out on the bubble. But recognize that this strategy is a strategy now widely espoused by the better SNG players. You may need to take your tactical thinking to another level if someone else is aware of what you are up to.

So, while I'll enter the game with a basic thumbnail strategy; I think the important point is to not get wedded to either SNG objective. A good businessman will ask himself everyday, "What business am I in today?" He knows that conditions and opportunity are ever changing. He must adapt in order to survive and to thrive. Perhaps sit & go players should ask themselves a similar question, "What type of game am I in right now?" Asking this question on an ongoing basis will point us in the right direction. Play for the win when conditions are right to do so. Play to place in the money when that's the best choice. By being flexible and adjusting our objective when needed we can enhance our SNG play and boost our win rate. 

Sit And Go Strategy (low stakes)

Introduction to Sit And Go Strategy
One of the most popular games for new online poker players is Sit and Go Tournaments. The buy-ins can range from $5 to $5,000, and they typically last less than an hour. If you have the attention span, you can also play more than one table at once. Since a lot of people have watched no limit tournaments on TV, they want to play similar tournaments when the begin playing out. The Sit and Go Tournaments are great because they give you a chance to have fun while building your bankroll. Conversely, playing multi-table tournaments is not a good way to build a bankroll because there is too much variance. This article will guide you through sit and go strategy for low stakes sit and go's.

Sit & Go Early Rounds

The blind are usually a small portion of your starting stack in the first two rounds. Many novice players in these tournaments make the mistake of not protecting their monsters hands like AA and KK pre-flop by making small raises. When the blinds are low, you should be playing suited connectors and suited gap connectors because it costs you a very small percentage of your stack. You are looking to hit a flop hard with 2 pair or to flop a strong draw. Often people under-bet the pot with top pair to keep people in the hand, so you often get a great price to draw to your straight or flush. Now when you have big hands like AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ, and so forth, it’s key to play them correctly. With big pairs, you want to raise 3-4 times the big blind. Your ideal situation is to get 2-3 callers and isolate yourself with someone who flops top pair and is a 7 to 10 underdog against your overpair. The level of play in these tournaments is such that people will often commit themselves with top pair, even if they have a poor kicker. But remember, you want to narrow the field on the flop, don’t make bets so small that people with weak hands get the odds to call and chase you down. With big drawing hands like AK-AJ, KQ, etc… you still want to raise 3-4 times the big blind. If you don’t hit the flop, it’s ok to let these hands go, because you haven’t invested too much in the pot. When you hit top pair with any of the aforementioned hands, you will almost always have the best hand and should feel comfortable playing it for all your chips. Someone people will disagree with me here, but the level of play in these tournaments is quite poor and you want to take advantage of this.

Middle rounds

As the blinds go up, you starting hand selection should change a bit. Suited connectors are no longer profitable because not enough people are in the hand and the stakes are too large relative to people’s stacks to be playing these hands. Now you should tighten your standards up and playing the premium drawing hands and pairs 77 and bigger for a raise. The blinds become bigger, and there is nothing wrong with taking down an uncontested pot at this stage in the game. If you have a well above average stack, you can afford to wait for premium holdings. However if you are about average in terms of chip count, you will need to play some hands to build your stack. Remember that you don’t need pocket aces to go all in pre-flop against a raise. I would advocate moving in with any pocket pair of tens or higher or Ace-King and Ace-Queen at this stage of the game. These are strong hands and will often be a favorite if your opponent calls. Additionally, your opponent will often fold and you build your stack without having to show down the hand. Let’s take a look at why this approach is good. Let’s say you are on the button with pocket tens. The blinds are 100-200, and you have 900 chips. There are six players left. A player in middle position with 1400 chips makes a minimum raise to 400. If you just call, it’s difficult to navigate the flop because there might be overcards. However you are committing a large portion of your stack by calling in the first place, so you really can’t fold the hand. Now let’s say you move all in. Your opponent must think about folding hands like Ax, KQ, and lower pocket pairs, which leaves you in great shape. Sometimes he will call with these hands because of the pot odds and you are in great shape to double up. You are slightly ahead of hands like AK and AQ, and the dead money from the blinds makes this even more profitable for you. The only hands that you really don’t want to be up against are JJ-AA. This is why it’s better sometimes to just move in with a reasonably strong holding then to see a flop.

Late Stages of a Sit And Go Tournament

Now the blinds are getting very high in relation to the average stack size. You should not enter pots with marginal hands. Be VERY weary on confronting other big stacks without strong holdings, because they can bust you. You don’t want to go out on the bubble when there is another player with ½ as many chips as you. As soon as you are in the money, you should play to win. Since first place typically pays 2 and a half times as much as third, it’s ok to take some risks to try and win. Trust your instincts and make some bluffs, you can’t win without doing that. Now that you are shorthanded, I sometimes like tot trap aggressive opponents by check-raising all in with top pair or even middle pair I think have the best hand. It’s ok to move in with and reasonable ace or pocket pair pre-flop, because the blinds are so big. This is the stage of the game where you want to take down as many pots uncontested as possible by going all in before the flop with strong holding. A hand like A-8 is usually the best hand when you are 3 handed, but it hard to play because you only flop an Ace 18% of the time. By playing aggressively, you build your stack and often get called on all ins by weaker hands like KQ , KJ, and other weak holdings. People really like to gamble once they know they are making money anyway!

If you use these guidelines to adjust your play throughout the Sit and Go Tournaments, you should be able to build you bankroll and enjoy yourself. Remember to adapt as the blinds go up, and don’t worry about losing a few tournaments in a row, everyone has. I once went 8 straight tournaments without even cashing! Then I won 3 of the next four. Best of luck!

Loose/tight/Aggressive/passive

Loose/tight play

Loose players play relatively more hands and tend to continue with weaker hands; hence they don't often fold. Tight players play relatively fewer hands and tend not to continue with weaker hands; hence they often fold. The following concepts are applicable in loose games (and their inverse in tight games)

• Bluffs and semi-bluffs are less effective because loose opponents are less likely to fold.
• Requirements for continuing with made hands may be lower because loose players may also be playing lower value hands.
• Drawing to incomplete hands, like flushes, tends to be more valuable as draws will often get favorable pot odds and a stronger hand (rather than merely one pair) is often required to win in multi-way pots.

Aggressive/passive play

 

In the game of poker, opens and raises are considered aggressive plays, while calls and checks are considered passive (though a check-raise would be considered a very aggressive play). It is said that "aggression has its own value", meaning that often aggressive plays can make money with weak hands because of bluff value. In general, opponents must respond to aggressive play by playing more loosely, which offers more opportunities to make mistakes.
While it is true that aggressive play is generally superior to passive play, using any play exclusively can lead to predictability, and being too predictable is far worse than being too passive. A player who is constantly aggressive and plays many inferior hands is called a "maniac", and skilled players will take advantage of him by calling him more often, using isolation plays, and by other means.
If a player is not aggressive with his weaker hands, the opponents can safely fold whenever the player does bet or raise. The appropriate amount of aggression can be computed using game theory, and depends on the game being played and the tendencies of the opponents.
Most theorists, like David Sklansky and Doyle Brunson suggest aggression as an important tool. It is also worth noting that aggressive play should not be confused with loose play. Aggression is called for in particular circumstances. Very strong starting hands should be played very aggressively most of the time. A very strong propositional hand - one that is more likely to win with a straight or a flush - is one of the hands that can be played for effect with an aggressive style. Such aggression is deceptive, as the low and unpaired ranks of the starting hand require much improvement to win. This is beneficial for two reasons:

• When the hand improves the preceding aggression has increased the size of the pot, meaning a larger win.
• On future raises with more traditionally powerful hands, other players must consider the fact that the aggressor's open or raise is indicative of a strong drawing hand as opposed to a high pair.

The second reasoning is what is known as "advertising" in poker. It can be very profitable for a player to convince the other players at the table that he is willing to gamble with less than premium cards. The result is larger pots when the aggressive player has tremendously strong hands.

Raise or Just call

Reasons to raise

Unlike calling, raising has an extra way to win: opponents may fold. An opening bet may be considered a raise from a strategy perspective. David Sklansky gives seven reasons for raising, summarized below.^[1]

• To get more money in the pot when a player has the best hand: If a player has the best hand, raising for value enables them to win a bigger pot.

• To drive out opponents when a player has the best hand: If a player has a made hand, raising may protect their hand by driving out opponents with drawing hands who may otherwise improve to a better hand.

• To bluff or semi-bluff: If a player raises with an inferior or drawing hand, the player may induce a better hand to fold. In the case of semi-bluff, if the player is called, they still have a chance to improve to a better hand (and also win a larger pot).

• To get a free card: If a player raises with a drawing hand, their opponent may check to them on the next betting round, giving them a chance to get a free card to improve their hand.

• To gain information: If a player raises with an uncertain hand, they gain information about the strength of their opponent's hand if they are called. Players may use an opening bet on a later betting round (probe or continuation bets) to gain information by being called or raised (or may win the pot immediately).

• To drive out worse hands when a player's own hand may be second best: Sometimes, if a player raises with the second best hand with cards to come, raising to drive out opponents with worse hands (but who might improve) may increase the expected value of their hand by giving them a higher probability of winning in the event their hand improves.

• To drive out better hands when a drawing hand bets: If an opponent with an apparent drawing hand bets before a player, if the player raises, opponents behind them who may have a better hand may fold rather than call a bet and raise. This is a form of isolation play.

Reasons to call

 

There are several reasons for calling a bet or raise, summarized below.

• To see more cards: With a drawing hand, a player may be receiving the correct pot odds with the call to see more cards.

• To limit loss in equity: Calling may be appropriate when a player has adequate pot odds to call but will lose equity on money contributed to the pot.

• To avoid a re-raise: Only calling (and not raising) denies the original bettor the option of re-raising. However, this is only completely safe in case the player is last to act (i.e. "closing the action").

• To conceal the strength of a player's hand: If a player has a very strong hand, they might smooth call on an early betting round to avoid giving away the strength of their hand on the hope of getting more money into the pot in later betting rounds.

• To manipulate pot odds: By calling (not raising), a player offers any opponents yet to act behind them more favorable pot odds to also call. For example, if a player has a very strong hand, a smooth call may encourage opponents behind them to overcall, building the pot. Particularly in limit games, building the pot in an earlier betting round may induce opponents to call future bets in later betting rounds because of the pot odds they will be receiving.

• To set up a bluff on a later betting round: Sometimes referred to as a long-ball bluff, calling on an earlier betting round can set up a bluff (or semi-bluff) on a later betting round. A recent online term for "long-ball bluffing" is floating.