The worst thing you can do is hit the poker tables and in a hazy frenzy of excitement and euphoria go on to lose all of your money. You need to remain in control of your poker playing. Ask yourself what skill level do you perceive yourself to be at the moment and what is the reason you deposited what you did (in our case $200)? If that is your full poker bankroll then you need to play carefully to preserve it.

If you are a new player it is very important to try out the play money tables first in order to familiarise yourself with the software, how to bet, which button to fold, how the bet sliders work for betting and so on. This is vital because you must be able to choose your desired action and input it into the poker software correctly every time. Mis-clicks are often very costly and the risk of clicking the wrong thing is much higher when you are unfamiliar with a new poker room.

There are a variety of different poker games on offer at each poker room and I would suggest reading widely on each before you try them out. The size of your overall bankroll will allow you to set aside a portion of it for trying new games, money that you expect to lose learning about the strategies required to beat each type of game. Professionals refer to this type of loss as “paying your tuition” as while you lose pots to better players they in turn are showing you how to win. For a good player this trade-off for learning is worth it in the long run.

Start with one table and once you are used to it you can try adding more tables until you reach a point where you no longer feel comfortable with the speed of the poker games. For some players that can be four tables, others much more. Whatever you are comfortable with playing is the right amount of tables for you but do not rush into playing too many tables. A profitable player at two tables can be a losing player at four so watch your results carefully when increasing how many tables you play. Just because Boku87 plays twenty tables or more at once does not mean you or I should play that many.

Hopefully the initial deposit you have made will be the only one you ever make. Tom “Durrrr” Dwan is known to have deposited $75 once and is rumoured to have a poker bankroll of around $14 million today have never re-deposited. Of course he is one of the best poker players in the world but there is no reason why if you have the skills to beat poker you cannot deposit once then run that into something much larger. If you need to deposit money over and over to continue playing then there is something fundamentally wrong with your play.

On my poker site myself and another editor are doing our own $20 bankroll challenge. We hope to run that up to something larger and have set ourselves strict rules on how to achieve that. This gives us a goal and a reason to play rather than just randomly playing poker. Having goals is also important. Have we mentioned winning pots? Make sure you do that too!

By Malcolm Clarke