Game Selection

The difference between starting your poker career off as a winner or as a loser is game selection. Choose the appropriate game for your bankroll and your skill level and you will be rewarded with a long and winning career in poker.

Poker bankroll

It is absolutely essential that you choose the limits you play carefully; you should do this based on the size of your bankroll. If you have a $100 bankroll it is not clever to be playing the $1/$2 games, as you do not even have a full buy-in for this limit.

To "beat" the variance attached with poker it is best to have only 5% of your bankroll on a table at any one time, for example a $1000 bankroll would be fine to play at the $0.25/$0.50 no limit tables.

Evaluate the game before playing

There is a huge difference in the standard of poker players at online poker rooms compared to real live. Better players tend to play at the higher limits, but don't be put off, even up to the dizzy heights of $5/$10 there can be bad players playing.

It is important to find a game that has weaker players as opposed to a game that has stronger players, why would you want to play against good players? Finding bad poker players is easier online than offline; dedicate 10 to 20 minutes at the start of your session to pinpointing where the bad players are playing.

Take some time to observe a game before seating yourself at a table. If it looks like a game full of tough players, then you should consider looking for another game and with the amount of players on some poker sites, it certainly won't be hard to find a table with an open seat at the same limits.

Tight/Loose & Passive/Aggressive

There are two major ways to describe the style in which an opponent plays poker: tight/loose and passive/aggressive.

Tight/loose describes how many hands a player will play. If they play very few hands, then they are considered a "tight" player. If they play a lot of hands, then they are considered a "loose" player, almost all beginners with little poker experience are considered "loose", they tend to play a large variety of hands and hope to get lucky. If you are a tight player you will love to play this type of player hence why it is best to play inexperienced beginners.

Passive/aggressive describes how often players tend to bet their hands. Passive players often and prefer to call or check as opposed to raising and betting, they like to see all of the cards down to the river. Aggressive players tend to heavily bet their hands and rarely call or check, aggressive players tend to bluff more then passive players, as a rule of thumb.

The easiest and most profitable style of games for a beginner to play at is games which have players whose style is loose/passive. These are games where players tend to play a lot of weak hands, by adopting a tight/aggressive style at these games it is easy to win money and be a profitable poker player.

The toughest games (hardest to beat) are those in which players play fewer hands and bet heavily when they enter a pot, which is rarely for a "tight" player. This is a tight/aggressive style and this is a style which has less variance, bankroll wise, than a loose/aggressive style. Any poker style can be profitable for a player, the key is to "mix up" your style and occasionally throw in odd bets or checks, this helps as other players will find it hard to categorize your style of play, which makes you unpredictable and more dangerous to play against at a table.