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:
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.