If you want to make money from poker then there are a few steps you need to take. You don’t become a top professional poker player overnight. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication, just like any other profession.
First of all you obviously need to be completely familiar with the rules of the game so learn them off by heart and practice on the practice tables online for play money until you’ve learnt all the intricacies of the game.
When you feel you are ready, you can start playing at the real money tables. I always suggest starting off playing at the low-stakes tables in order to minimise your initial losses, but you should be aware that in many ways it can be harder playing at these tables because the play is so loose.
For example, it’s quite easy to bluff a good player, but bad players will often keep betting. Also the poker fish at the lower stakes tables can be very unpredictable and therefore difficult to read.
As you gain more and more experience you should see a gradual improvement in your play, but this alone will rarely get you to the top. To help you achieve this aim you should educate yourself as much as possible by reading poker tips and strategies from poker professionals. Whether it’s poker books or simply forums and websites, there’s plenty of good quality information out there if you’re prepared to look for it.
Try and learn from the best, ie those players who have reached the very top, so I’m thinking here of people like Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Dan Harrington, David Sklansky, etc. This way you will learn some invaluable tips and strategies that will help improve your own game.
By gaining experience and constantly educating yourself you should improve over time and should hopefully start consistently making money from poker. The next step is to focus your efforts on only playing one type of game, and really try and master that particular game. This is much easier than dabbling in different forms of poker and playing different variants of the game all the time.
Of course not everyone will become a poker pro by following these simple steps outlined in this article, but by gaining experience and learning as much as you can about the game, including top tips and strategies used by the professional players, you are giving yourself every chance of becoming a good enough player to make a regular income from playing poker.
James Woolley is a regular poker player and the author of a poker blog which contains the very latest internet poker tips plus details on the top internet poker sites.
The popularity of online poker in the last five years or so has meant that more and more poker sites are starting up all the time, and they are all competing for your business in this fiercely competitive environment. The main incentive that most of them offer is off course a sign up bonus. This is great for you, but are they as profitable as they sound?
A mistake a lot of new players make is they see a large sign up bonus offer like ‘free $600 sign up bonus!’ and interpret this as meaning that all you have to do is open an account and you will receive a nice fat $600 in your account.
Unfortunately it’s not as easy as this. With offers like this, of course they’re not scamming you, they will give you the $600, but there are generally conditions to this offer. For instance you may have to match this offer with your initial deposit, so you would have to put $600 into your account yourself when opening an account, or you would have to generate $600 for the poker room in rake before they will give you the money.
If online poker rooms threw vast sums of money at every customer that joined they would soon be out of business so they have got to protect their own interests as well. After all their goal is to lure you in with an attractive offer, and then profit from your business in future months and years through you playing at their site and generating lots of rake and paying lots of entry fees to tournaments.
The worst type of customer for them are the people who open an account, take their bonus, and never play at their site again, which is why a lot of sign up bonuses have conditions attached to them.
So if you hear about people saying that they make loads of money going around signing up to various different poker rooms just for the sign up bonus, and think you could do the same, then be aware that it’s not that easy.
Yes you definitely can make profits doing this but you have to be a very competent poker player in the first place to be able to pocket the sign up bonuses without being out of pocket yourself. For example, a lot of sites will require you to generate a certain amount of rake or play a certain number of hands to clear the bonus. If this is the case then you will obviously need to be at break even point at worst in order to claim the maximum bonus available.
So always read the terms and conditions when you sign up to a poker room just for the sign up bonus because poker rooms aren’t in the business of giving away free money. There are nearly always conditions attached, but if you are a good solid poker player then these bonuses are relatively easy to clear.
James Woolley is a regular poker player and the author of a poker blog which contains the very latest internet poker tips and poker sign up bonuses.
There is only one way of finding out how to win at any type of gambling pastime. That is to learn why gamblers lose. That’s easily answered: They lose when they let themselves get hooked on the short end of any proposition, provided they stay with it long enough, which they usually do.
Looking at it from the opposite viewpoint, the gambler who can latch onto the long end of a proposition and stay with it should wind up a winner. In fact many gamblers do though their procedure is usually different from those who continually find themselves on the losing end.
Consider this point: When two players start matching money along with wits against each other there is bound to be a winner as well as a loser. You can argue, of course, that expenses may be involved, including license fees, taxes and such where gambling casinos are involved. But that’s to be expected in any business.
The talented night club performer who helps brighten the Las Vegas strip has to pay fees to` booking agents, managers and the public relations men who helped build him up to a high-priced attraction. Life itself is a gamble and you have to pay for the privilege of getting the most out of it. So that disposes of the philosophical side.
Now for the more practical phase. Somebody must make money from gambling or there wouldn’t be so many people in the business and staying in it. Some purists might argue that they aren’t gambling if they are in business. But if you ask any man about his business, he will tell you that it’s a gamble. There’s no business like show business; and there’s no gambling like that found in the gambling business.
This brings us to what might be classed as the usual approach. Many people get enjoyment out of gambling just as they do when they go to a restaurant or a theater. Certainly, it costs more to eat out than it does at home and theater tickets often run quite high.
But a good meal is worth it - and so is a good show - provided neither costs more than the budget should allow. By the same token, a fling at the gambling table can be charged to pleasure, entertainment, experience, or what-have-you, as long as it is kept strictly within budgetary limits. Usually, such expenditure is part of a vacation fund, as gaming devices are permitted only in certain states, as Nevada, or certain countries, such as Cuba and other Caribbean republics, as well as some European areas like the Principality of Monaco, where the famous Monte Carlo casino is located.
Words to the Wise
While players have a right to fair treatment at every recognized gambling casino, they should never expect to beat the business, particularly in the long run. Some system players have survived over many years, while others claim to have shown profits over lesser periods. But they have actually done so at the expense, not of the gambling houses, but other players whose systems have fluked. Those losers far outnumber the winners.
Another thing: Don’t expect all casinos to offer the same odds. Roulette is the great game in Europe because it gives a better break than the American version. In America, the predominating games are Craps and Black Jack for that very same reason. But rules and percentages vary. You can go shopping for the best price around gambling casinos, just as you would when buying food at a supermarket.
Just as some restaurants are known as “clip joints” and certain theaters may overprice their shows, it is possible to find “gyp joints” among gambling houses, particularly in some of the Caribbean countries. If the reader comes to the conclusion that it is smarter not to play such games at all and decides to limit his knowledge to reading about them he can be sure that he will have gotten his money’s worth.
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Racing started out nearly four hundred years ago as the sport of kings, but the little man has long since taken over. In America, the little fellow took over racing when the parimutuel machines were attuned to the common man. A Frenchman invented the machine, but the French failed to grasp the full possibilities of how machines could help the breed improve. The first machines came to the United States on a clipper ship, but that may be a coincidence.
For a number of years, the imported machines gathered dust in a warehouse because they sold only $5 tickets. Since even a skilled worker in those days was lucky to earn $15 a week, the little man saw no sense in going out to a track if his whole pay check was good for only two or three hunches. So racing was left to the frock-coat-and striped-pants-boys whose dividends had more stamina than the average pay check. They did business with men called bookmakers who are pickpockets who let you use your own hands.
Then along came a genius who probably was a direct descendant of the man who asked “Why?” when told “The show must go on.” He asked why the machines could not sell cheaper tickets and another genius suggested $2 as the unit of trading. The horse now was on his way to some real improvement.
The frock-coat-and-striped-pants boys soon were swallowed up by the little fellow who had no concern about his dress unless he was being fitted for a barrel. The only formal dress requirements retained by the tracks are that, whatever the garment, it must have pockets. But there probably would be no objections to the eccentric fan who wanted to carry his money in his sock.
So far, the horses have not complained about the shift to casual wear, but they must have noted some changes because now the roars and yells that urge them on are not always couched in drawing room language. And instead of a few gently shouting encouragement from grandstand and clubhouse, there are now thousands lined along the rail from where lung power can really sweep the track.
If the striped-pants brigade had any complaints, their protests were drowned out by the din of clanking dollars as proceeds were counted at the end of each day. Society may have lent dignity and respectability to racing, but modern track owners prefer dividends. Since the betting in those days was done through bookmakers who sat on high stools but assuredly did not wear dunce caps, the tracks never knew how much money changed hands. The bookmakers simply paid the track for the privilege of catering both to man and man’s good friend - the horse.
Several tracks still maintain an exclusive sanctum for those patrons who cannot only drive up in a chauffeured car but can also drive home the same way no matter in what fickle mood Lady Luck happens to be. Tracks, however, insist that these “bluebloods” also drop their money into the same mutuels, for the track likes its money thoroughly mixed. Nor does the little man object to this country club crowd, for to him it’s the same proposition as getting a transfusion at a blood bank. He doesn’t shop around for the blood donation of any particular person, and at the track he doesn’t worry about whose money the cashier shoves to him through the window.
Racing started out on a slogan of “improve the breed of horses.” Today’s fan has kept the spirit of the old slogan but changed it to read: “Improve the breed of bankrolls.” He is not interested in the social graces or in the manners of either the horses or his fellow players.
Whether the horse actually improves over the years is a question that is immaterial to the little man. He doesn’t care how fast the horse runs just as long as its speed is a trifle faster than that of the next horse. This is the only kind of improvement he can understand.
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You will probably have read about various different players starting off with relatively little and going on to make a fortune from playing poker. In this article I’m going to be discussing whether anyone could potentially follow the same path themselves.
Well in theory you don’t even need to start off with any money at all to become wildly successful. In theory you could do what a lot of new players do when they sign up to an online poker site, and that’s taking part in freeroll tournaments.
This is a great way of getting tournament experience and is also a way of building up your bankroll because a lot of these tournaments offer some prize money for reaching the latter stages of these tournaments, even if the amounts are relatively small.
Over time as you become a more accomplished tournament player, you will hopefully have built up a bankroll and you can then either continue playing freerolls or make the step up to real money cash games and tournaments.
By taking part in these real money games you can potentially grow your bankroll a lot quicker simply because there’s more money to be won.
One thing to bear in mind though. You have to slowly advance to the next stages of your poker career otherwise you’re in danger of blowing your bankroll completely and having to start again from scratch.
Everyone goes through bad patches, even the pros, so make sure that as soon as you have built up a decent sum of money, you only risk a small percentage of this amount entering tournaments or taking part in cash games. In poker money management is everything if you are going to successfully grow your bankroll over time.
As your bankroll grows you can take part in higher stakes games and grow your money faster if you’re successful, but always make sure you don’t risk more than you can afford to lose, and allow for a possible losing streak, so you have more than enough money to hopefully recover.
The internet has of course produced many of these rags to riches stories, simply because online poker is so convenient and you can play 24 hours a day if you so wished honing your skills as much as you want.
You only have to look at Chris Ferguson, one of the top poker pros, who has recently been attempting to turn nothing into $10,000. He began by playing in the freeroll tournaments and amazingly he’s managed to not only achieve this goal but do even better than this. Starting off last year, his current balance stands at just under $23,000 at the time of writing.
There are many others who have achieved similar success so it’s definitely possible for people to make a lot of money from poker starting out with very little, or even nothing in some cases.
James Woolley is a regular poker player and the author of a poker blog which is a complete guide to internet poker, and contains the very latest internet poker tips to help you become a better poker player.