The world's simplest (and
dumbest-sounding) online poker
strategy: quit when you're ahead!
Want to hear an online
poker
strategy that WORKS? I have been a professional online poker
player for several years. But it was not until the summer of 2004 that
my Holdem life changed forever.
That’s when my wife came up with
a very simple, but ingenious online poker strategy. To explain how it
works, I’ll have to take a step back and tell you a bit about
what was happening before.
My online poker experience is
probably
fairly typical of an Internet poker pro. I played when I felt like it,
for as long as I wanted.
Some days, it went really well. Others, I
had a nightmare. The worst possible feeling is not the day when
you’re losing from the first hand and keep losing more.
The worst possible feeling is to
be ahead, then lose the profit back again, just before you were due to
stop playing for the day.
In fact, the swings in professional poker
(cash games are particularly bad for this) can really affect your mood.
One minute you can feel great, the next lousy. Not good for you, or
your family (working from home is one of the many benefits of the
online pro lifestyle).
Most players develop some kind of
rudimentary stop-loss mechanism. In other words, they have a limit per
day that they will not lose more than. As an online poker strategy, it
sucks. Let me tell you what my wife’s idea was (I've made it
nice and big, so you can't miss it):
Instead of limiting your daily losses,
limit your
daily wins
Sounds screwy, right? Even
to me, and
I’ve been doing this for two years now! But when you try it,
you will realise how clever this system is.
Let’s say you want to earn
$50,000 per year from your online poker play. Believe me,
that’s quite achievable.
Give yourself one day off in every six, so
you’re working 300 days per year. What this breaks down to is
$167 per day. Round it up to $200 to give yourself some breathing
space. (It’s unlikely in the long run that you’ll
hit an average of $200 per day. I was averaging about $165 per day
since January 2004.)
Now decide on a ‘bankroll
point’. For me, the bankroll point is $7,000. Don’t
ask me how I came up with that amount, it just suited me at the time.
Not enough to worry me if I lose $500 in a single day.
There’s wiggle room.
Day one. I begin with $7,000. Things go
well and I scoop a couple of nice pots on $2NL. Within one hour of
starting, I have exceeded my daily target! I have $245 profit sitting
in my poker account. Not a bad online poker strategy so far, right?
Now the fun part. I withdraw the $245!
Note that this achieves a number of things:
- I have created a cashflow. Thirty days like this
will repay
your original investment in full; and even poker players have to eat!
- It’s a
morale booster. There’s nothing
like cashing in a chunk of somebody else’s money to make you
upbeat for the rest of the day.
- There’s absolutely no chance I will lose back my
profit later in the day. It’s banked!
- I’ve reached my daily target quickly, freeing
the
rest of the day to spend with my wife and son, or working on other
projects, such as the Church of Texas Holdem.
There are drawbacks as well as benefits,
but these are the subject for another article, along with what to do if
you have a losing day.
This is the crux of my online poker
strategy. It made a huge difference to me. Instead of cashing in from
time to time and building my bankroll in $500 chunks on especially good
days, then having horrible downswings, I enjoy a steady income.
Perhaps this system
won’t suit you, but there’s only one way to find
out. Give it a try.
More
financial online poker strategy ideas here....
