subject: Poker Freeroll Tournament Strategy [print this page] Poker Freeroll Tournament Strategy Poker Freeroll Tournament Strategy
Poker Bankroll Management
There are plenty of people who make a living playing online poker professional, some of these are even as young as 18 or 19. Tom "Durrrr" Dwan, who is currently a sponsored professional poker player for Full Tilt Poker is only 22 and already has a poker bankroll worth over $10 million in online poker.
However while it is true you can make money playing online poker using the correct strategy and technique in addition to maths, all of this is pointless unless you apply sensible poker bankroll management to your game.
Poker bankroll management means limiting how much of your total bankroll you risk at any one time, as well as choosing the right stakes games to play. Conservatively, if you're playing cash games you should never risk more than 5% of your total bankroll at any one time. This allows you to lose a few buy-ins (up to 20 in fact) without damaging your bankroll or making you go bust early. You have to realise that poker is a game of luck, and while you can play with +EV (expected value) and expect to win money in the long run playing perfectly and reading a plethora of poker strategy books and articles, in the short-term you are always going to face variance and downswings.
For example, if you play perfectly in one heads up match than a beginner can still easily beat a professional player. If they both go all-in pre-flop, such as KK vs AA, then the beginner has a very good chance of winning (85%+). But this is a one-off game, and if we repeated this game over hundreds of simulations than the professional poker player would probably win around 80-95% of the time due to his superior playing ability. His knowledge of concepts such as table positional, agression, hand-reading and bluffing ability will always put him on top.
In order to minimise variance and downswings (short-term losses in your bankroll due to variance) you need to play as many games and as high volume as possible. This might include multi-tabling or just putting in more time.
Importantly, if you plan on playing MTTs (tournaments) rather than cash games than you shouldn't enter games with a buy-in worth more than 1% of your total poker bankroll. MTTs have lots of variance, since you need to outwit hundreds of other entrants to make it into the money, plus the fast blind structure and the fact that you cannot re-buy after going bust makes things harder. You cannot afford to risk 5% of your bankroll in tournaments because the chances of going several tournaments in a row without a pay day are much larger than cash games.
