Let me start of by saying that I do NOT recommend playing poker if you need money. It took me about 6 months of learning poker (mostly reading books and watching professionals play) before I started to break-even, and another year before it was enough for a living. Quite a big investment if you think about what I could otherwise have spent my time on.
Quickly after learning the basic rules of playing poker in free online poker games, I invested €10,- and lost it in three games… Poker games with money included are a lot different than poker games without money. So, I went on the internet and searched for strategies. I read about ‘Bankroll management’, ‘The rule of 4 and 2’, ‘Playing in- and out of position’, and many more… There was still a lot to learn and I liked to learn it.
Bankroll Management
Never going broke (in poker or in life) is actually quite easily achieved if you follow strict Bankroll Management rules. The principle is simple, if you for example lose money and don’t have enough money in your account to play 50 more games of the same stake, then play a cheaper game which you can afford to play 50 times. Moving up in the stakes works the same; if you win enough money to pay a more expensive game 50 times, then go and play.
The number of games you need to be able to pay is actually dependent on the variability of the games. If you play heads-up (that’s 1-vs-1) then you should win around 50% of the games and therefore you don’t need to be able to buy-in in too many games (approx. 10 times buy-in rate). However, if you play a tournament with 30.000 people in it, the chance are small you end-up in the top 10 and for these games you need about 500 times the buy-in rate in your account.
So how can you apply this in real life? I will keep my expenses relative to the money I have. The budget of a new item will be relative to the money I have in my account.
When I’m going to travel or doing a project, I’ve set certain budgets so that I choose cheaper options if the money in my account falls below a certain amount, and choose more expensive options if the money goes above a certain amount.
Up- and Downswings
Poker is not a gambling game. It is a game with random outcomes and imperfect information.
Dealing mentally with the swings is difficult. It makes you want to force the issue of getting your money back. At one point YOU should be the one getting lucky, right? Obviously it doesn’t work that way. Any outcome after you’ve made your decision doesn’t matter. Even if you have 80% chance to win the hand, it doesn’t mean you will win. You did however make the correct decisions because you are the most likely to win the hand so everything that happens after is not in your control anymore and you shouldn’t care about it. Making continuous correct decisions will eventually pay off in the long term.
Tens of thousands of hands can go by and you are still unlucky. Despite having played very well, it is possible to still have lost money in the end of the month. You’ve put in so much work and only lost money. When moving up in the stakes makes these swings even more exciting because these swings get bigger. Whenever I was in a downswing like this, I took more breaks from playing and reviewed my decisions. This made me an even better player and when I eventually got my luck back, I won more than I would if I didn’t had that downswing.
Staying positive and not being influenced by this gives you a huge edge over your opponent. If they start to make wrong decisions during these times, you can abuse it. So if you do it yourself too, other players will abuse your bad decisions.
It made me mentally very strong in real life too. I couldn’t care less about cycling in the rain anymore because I’ve already made the decision to step on my bike. Or when I bought something new and it sucked, I didn’t care because the decision has already been made. The only thing you can do is decide what you are going to do next.
This ‘strong’ mentality also has a downside. Friends called me ‘dead inside’. Sometimes they expect me to react sad but I didn’t because I couldn’t do anything about it anymore, so why be sad? This makes a lot of sense to myself, but it can be difficult for other people to relate.
Coaching
The amount and speed you can learn when you get a better player to give you personal advice is amazing.
At the start it’s more effective to learn from books and video’s and such. But once you are familiar with the subjects, it’s time to tinker it to your play style. Reading a lot of books looking for just a few lines you don’t know yet, is inefficient. Personal coaches can easily be found on the internet but they can get expensive. My first coach was only 10 dollars an hour, but I quickly learned all he had to say and had to move to the next coach. My third coach cost me 50 dollars an hour but he could learn me a lot and the 50 dollars an hour was easily earned back with the improvement he made.
After the learning curve goes flat when using books and videos as a source, I will find a coach. I’ve had a ‘business coach’ who has advised me with developing an app and with career choices.
Why spent your time finding it out yourself, if other people have already been through this and are able to prohibit you from the mistakes they’ve made?
Setting Goals
For each game you want to play, you pay about 10% of the buy-in to the host organization. That’s a lot of money the host of the game earns. But you can get a percentage back and this increases the more you play. So every month I wanted to play as much to reach a certain rank to get some of it back. Sometimes it was even worth to play a lot of games but not profitably anymore to get that extra money back again. But this monthly goal really got me going! I put in a lot of hours each month to reach it.
Every month I set development goals for project I work on. And I do everything to have them finished. Only seldom I break this rule.
One trick to be successful doing this, is to be not too hard for yourself. Once you start failing reaching these goals because they apparently were unrealistic, it’s easier for you to give up on them. So really, don’t put to much weight on your shoulders and be consistent with the amount you put on them. Only when you are confident you are going to reach them, go and do it.
Being Healthy
Gaining an edge over your opponents is not only gained during playing poker. By eating healthy and getting exercise you will improve your ability to focus while playing. It’s hard to measure whether it’s worth investing time in health than exercise, but it made me feel good so I do believe it really does.
Also, poker tournaments can take multiple days. The games I played where such that I couldn’t take a break. So once I sat down for a session, I couldn’t take a break for 4-8 hours. In the weekends I sometimes did 2 – 3 sessions a day. So yea, it’s an endurance sport and you should have the ability to focus for this long.
Reviewing
At the start of the month, I first review the previous month. You will often find the same opponents at the poker tables and at the end of the month you have collected a lot of information on them. During this review you have the time to dig into the details and find some of their mistakes. These small mistakes are important because you play against the regular opponents often.
Even when I am coding, I will look back on my code once a month. Sometimes I ask for the opinion from other programmers too, or come up with a way to create the same but more efficient next time.
I review what I’ve spent my time on last month. Are those the things I want to do, or is too much wasted on something that’s actually not important? Make adjustment for the next month accordingly.
Just invest that time once a month. It will give you time back too.
Why I Quit Playing Poker
I often get asked, isn’t it addictive? or, do you still play? But it gets quite boring if you play it on average 6 hours a day for years, and you have only only three options (fold, check/call, raise) each turn. My strategy was to play high volume, playing on average 12-15 tables a the same time. So I’ve made many millions of ‘fold’, ‘check/call’, or ‘raise’ decisions over the years. About 95% of those were ‘fold’ 😐
Sometimes I mixed it up by playing a different kind of poker game, or play in real life instead of online. But the excitement slowly degraded and it was time to move on in life. So I invested more time my study and experiencing new experiences in real life.
