When Playing Poker, Set Limits

My Blog

You must decide just what your poker playing limit is.

The term of playing limit has nothing to do with the term of bankroll. Your playing limit is simply the amount of money you would feel comfortable playing. No one can be indifferent when playing his own money and therefore they cannot remain calm when it comes to losing them. Therefore, don’t use all your saving or paycheck to play online poker. This is not good for two reasons:

  1. If you lose, you will have a bad memory of the game that left you with no money at all, when it is your fault for not being responsible and for not thinking through your actions.
  2. You will lose! Think about this one for a while. You will most certainly lose because your game will be affected by the constant frustration that arises from your worries about your money.

So, avoid these situations by playing an amount you wouldn’t care about. Just think of it as if it was an expense to buy a game, and now you are playing that game you paid for. This way the worries can be ignored and your playing style can really become what it needs to.

If you have a normal profession or one more basis of profits, then the above strategy should suit your case. But when you plan to play poker for an income, then stuff gets difficult. A professional poker player has no source but his bankroll. The bankroll has at all times to remain intact so it can generate income.

When you play poker your income will fluctuate. If you are a wealthy person and don’t care about money because you already have too many, then fluctuation doesn’t mean a thing. But if poker is your only source of income, then keep the bankroll intact only as long as you don’t need it. When you have to pay the bills, you will remove that amount from your bankroll. It is a bad thing and it means you didn’t know your limits. Your initial bankroll will become smaller and smaller not because of poker, but because you wanted to rely on an amount of money you did not actually have to spend.

A professional poker player has learned his limits by now. He knows exactly how much he is playing, and he knows how much he should leave at the online casino and how much to put in a bank or invest in the stock market after a win. There is no need to increase a good playing limit that has been tested. Every time we go above it, we can redraw the exceeding money and leave this way the bankroll intact while making an income.