Poker: How you can get started, succeed, and many myths and facts

I’ll probably break this post up into multiple parts, so that I can respond to people’s questions on certain parts. Because of the audience here, I’ll keep the post relatively basic to start. I’ll make this thread as in depth as people would like, so feel free to ask about things you don’t understand, or things you want to know more about.

Myths/facts about poker:

Poker is all luck... false.

There is plenty of ‘short term luck’ in poker, but in the long run the good players will get the money. I might go all in with Aces pre-flop and lose 3 times in a row, but long term that hand will win me good money in those situations. The same applies to other situations as well, just the edges are going to be smaller than getting in pre-flop with Aces. Once you learn when you have the advantage, you can get your chips in as the favorite. You’ll lose plenty of times when you’re the favorite. In the long run, all the good and bad short term luck evens out though, and if you’re getting chips in with the best of it, you will end up with the money.

Only the house wins at poker... false.

In poker you’re not playing against the house. The house takes a small “rake” for every hand that a flop is seen. Similar to something like ebay charging auction fees. The seller isn’t competing against ebay. Ebay’s providing them with a service. They bring the customer to them, so the seller gives them a very small fee for that service. The seller still has a margin, so they will still make a profit. The casino/online poker room provides the service of putting the game together/dealing the cards, etc... From a professional player’s perspective, you could say they provide our “customers” as well. The player with an edge, will still make a profit.

Now that you know this, one thing I think that might really open people’s eyes is that all you have to do to make money at poker, is be better than the people you play with. Think about that for a minute. You just have to be better than the guys playing at your table. That’s it. You don’t even have to be better than all of them. Just be one of the better ones at the table and you’ll make money. Simple as that. The beautiful thing about that is in poker, everyone thinks they can play. Because of the short term luck that’s involved in the game, it’s tough for a lot of people to understand when they don’t actually know what they’re doing, or if someone has an edge on them. Can you imagine if you were good at basketball, and everytime you went to the gym people who were worse than you would willingly play you for money. Or bowling, everytime you went to the bowling alley someone who bowls a 180 would play you even though you bowl a 230. Golf, if you were a 4 handicap but guys with 15 handicaps would play you anytime you wanted. That’s the everyday life of a skilled poker player. The great thing about poker is, there’s no “score” or “rating” of how good someone is, everyone thinks they are good, so they will unknowingly play people who are better than them all day long, assuming they are just getting unlucky when they lose. If you played one on one vs. a professional basketball player it’d be pretty clear that you have no business being on the court with them, and even someone real cocky who thinks they’re better than everyone at everything wouldn’t be dumb enough to put money on the line against them. If you were playing poker against a professional poker player, you might never know. You don’t have to be a pro to make money. Just be better than the other guys you play with, and if you are, the funny thing is, they’ll never even know.

I don’t have a lot of money, so I couldn’t get started playing poker... false.

I started with $50. As I’ve said in the past, in my opinion poker is one of the best ways in the world to build up money with minimal amount of capital. Hopefully by the end of this thread, it will be clear why this is.

Fun fact: Biophase is a good friend of mine. For fun, he wanted to take $1, and a little poker advice, and see what he could do with it in his spare time. So, he set a challenge on his blog, to turn $1 into $1,000. A few months later he sent me a nice graph once he crossed the $1k mark.

Okay, so you can start with next to nothing, but you’ll need a huge bankroll to make the big money... false.

Once you build yourself a decent bankroll, you’d be surprised how little you need to actually “operate your business.” I’ll get into this in another section, but for example my graph in this post from the first week of August: A week in the life of Poker Pro, Snowbank - I needed just over $10,000 for my working capital to be comfortable for the stakes I was playing that week. With rakeback(I'll explain this later), my return for the week was over $25,000.(don't expect those results though, just showing an example of what's possible without needing a huge amount of capital)

Oh, you’re a professional poker player, are you on tv?

Being a professional poker player doesn’t mean you’re on tv, and being on tv doesn’t mean you’re a professional poker player. What they show on tv is usually tournament poker. They rarely show cash game poker. Personally, I play cash game poker.

Why don’t you/and others play tournaments? Don’t you want to be on tv?

Cash games are more profitable. Personally, I don’t have a desire to be on tv. I just want to make money. Overall, cash games are much more profitable.

A lot of the people you see on tv playing poker don’t have a lot of money, despite having a lot of big cashes. Many of them are backed(put into tournaments with others money) so they only get a small % when they do win money. Most people don’t understand the bankroll you need for big buy in tv tournaments is huge. Just to give an example of the %’s, I know a large number of players who were backed into the main event by “staking groups”(often players with a lot of money who pool their money together to stake other players into expensive tournaments that the players can’t afford the swings of, if they think the players they’re staking in the long run will net them a positive % return on their investment), and the players often got 20% if they cashed.(30/70 deals are also common if you’re doing makeup- which means you play many tournaments for the backers, but keep a running tab of ‘what you owe’ once you do finally make a big cash) So if one of the guys who were staked(which is a large number of people), let’s say won $1 million, they’d actually only take home $200k., their backers would get the rest.(and often more, if they had makeup owed to them by that player) The player gets a risk free lottery ticket and a chance at tv time(which potentially means sponsorships if you’re entertaining), so it’s not a bad thing to get staked. Not many people have the bankroll themselves to withstand the swings of what it would actually take to play big buy in tournaments full time. Another thing people don’t understand, is how often you’re actually going to have a big pay day is rare. Like I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of short term luck in poker, so even a great poker player will not win many big tournaments, and even a crappy player can win a tournament. There is a running joke when tourney players tell people how much they’ve won at tournaments trying to show off to non-poker people, you should ask, “ya, but how much did you lose” since tourney players often enter a bunch of tourneys- let’s say 20 $10k tournaments and have a $150,000 cash in their 20th, and tell all their friends they made $150,000. They forgot to mention the $200,000 in buy ins before they cashed, so they’re still in the red. The great thing for tournament players is it only lists your winnings, so it’s not uncommon to have $1,000,000 in tournament wins, but maybe it cost you $800k in entries to get that. Often players will get lucky and have a big score in a tournament or two and profess to anyone who will listen how much they’ve won or how good they are at poker, but if they talked about poker with anyone who really knew poker for 2 minutes, that person would be able to tell the real story behind their results pretty quickly.(I expanded way more on this part, because I get this question so often, and so many things are misunderstood about what is seen on tv. Figured I'd just expand now rather than later in the thread.)

Live poker vs. online poker:

Live poker is much, much easier than online poker. You may be thinking, “snowbank, then why the heck do you play online?” The ability to play as many tables as you want online, thus multiplying your hourly rate as many times as you want(or as many tables as you can handle while still playing your game.) As soon as a casino announces they’ll allow you to multi-table their games, I’m there. Also, live poker is pretty boring if you’re used to online. In live poker, you see roughly 30 hands/hour. With all the tables I play online, I often play about 800 hands/hour, sometimes even up to 1,000. You can see how boring live poker would seem to an online player.

As far as skill level comparison, many live players who try out online poker get obliterated because they don’t know coming in how big the skill difference is. They assume “online must be rigged” because they don’t know how they can win at the casino playing 1/2nl but get crushed online. To show you how the levels compare, a good 1/2nl online player skill-wise could comfortably play in a lot of 10/20nl games at the casino.(bankroll wise they might not be comfortable doing that, but skill wise they often could)


Part 2: coming soon...

Part two should be up in the week or so. This will include a lot more of the "how to" rather just general info. Part 2 topics I will be covering: treating poker like a business, general poker playing advice, how much money you can make, and more.

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Wanted to be one of the first to say "Awesome, Rep up"

Agreed! I have been pumped for this one. Rep up! Thank You!

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Thanks, snowbank! Great info. Can't wait for the next part!

Yo Snowbank,

I'm trying to find that graph to post as a reply but I only have the $1 to $500 one handy. So here it is. Funny how this looks like a technical analysis chart with resistance at $500. Once I finally broke through, the graph when up quickly. Maybe I can use TA to predict my upswings! Maybe poker is like stocks in more ways than one.

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biophase, how long did it take you to get to that level? What was your initial level when starting online? Were you a "decent" player? or never had played in your life before?

As many have said so far, great threat - I'd give you rep, but I need to spread the love some more first

I look forward to the how to part... I'll probably be testing it on Facebook. Lol

With $1, I started at the $0.01/0.02 tables. I don't think you can go lower than that. The buy in at those tables was $2.00 max. I bought in with $1 and played cautiously with it.

I knew the basics of poker but was not a winning player. I was one of those guys who deposited $50 or $100 every now and again and basically played whatever I felt like until the money was gone. I started playing for fun back in 2004 and I'd say I probably lost about $1500 total until 2007. Since Bill deposited $1 into my account I haven't had to add any money into my accounts again. In fact, I even withdrew money last year.

As with anything in life, coaching and having a professional guide you is a huge advantage. I think the most important thing in the beginning is plugging leaks in your game. At these super low levels, its pretty straightforward and easy.

Most people don't like to start with pennies cause they feel its not exciting enough. Who really cares about winning a $0.25 pot? But if you can't beat the penny levels, how do you expect to beat the higher levels.

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This is what I always preached to the micros on 2+2. Shore up the easy part of the game while down at the low levels, that way it becomes automatic and you can concentrate on your opponents at the higher levels.

Good tip Bio.

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Snowbank, where do you play? I use Full Tilt. If you play there, shoot me a PM with your handle. I would love to watch you play some high end cash games!

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"Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Thanks guys. Makes it much more worthwhile to post this type of stuff if I know people are getting something out of it/appreciating it. The next section will be much more informative/thought provoking. This was just kind of a teaser/info on a lot of questions people ask/things people should know about. So if you liked this part, I'm hoping you'll really enjoy the next part.

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nice! ya I remember you shot up after the $500 mark and reached $1k pretty quick once you got rollin.

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I'm very interested in learning poker as a "business", because for now I only play for fun. Another question: where can you play for $0.01/$0.02? I'd like to play for money, just so I have a different mindset when playing.

Thank you for taking time to write it out for the board. i am sure it will be the interest of a lot of folks on the board! I have never played with real money, only in person and online with play chips. i Did play 4 tables at a time on full tilt last night, win some loose some though. i left empty.... thank god it was 1000 real dollars LOL

Thanks!

One thing I might suggest, is maybe trying to play on one of the poker sites for play money. This way you get used to it, so when you felt comfortable trying it out for real money, it would already feel a little natural to you, since you'd be playing somewhere you'd already played quite a bit before once you made the switch from play to real money.

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I think this is really good advice. A lot of people get ahead of themselves and want to be playing for money that means something to them right away. If you're trying to make poker something where you can make consistent money at, that's a horrible idea. When biophase took some time to approach poker from a goal of making money, it became really easy, since he forgot about the money, and instead just learned to 'beat the game' so to speak. When starting to try to learn poker seriously, I think that people should totally forget about the money. So if you're buying in for $5 to a game, $5 might not mean anything to you, but you should play 100% seriously so that you can learn the game properly. If you can't beat the $5 games, you won't be able to beat the $25 games, or $50 games, etc... Think of it almost like a video game that you have to beat. You can't move up to level 2, until you can beat level 1. Forget about the money entirely when starting out, and just focus on learning the win the game, by playing correctly. If you win by getting lucky, it's not going to matter since in the long run you're just going to give the money you won back to the people playing correctly. If you learn to play correctly in the beginning, you will have a good base from which to build on. As biophase mentioned, at the low levels, it's very straightforward and easy. If you dedicate yourself to playing the right way, you can pretty much log in and print money at low stakes games, just by having a basic understanding of how to play, since your opponents won't. The important thing is, to be honest with yourself when you don't have the understanding that you need, since the short term luck in poker can fool many people into thinking that 'they have it' even if they don't.

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Ya, playing with money to give you a different mindset is not a bad idea. You can go to Pokerstars and they have .01/.02 tables.

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Ya, bingo. Poker is a game of "levels" in the sense of thinking. As you move higher up in stakes, players are thinking on an entirely new level. When you play microstakes, you're learning basic poker. You want to learn this correctly in and out, so when you attempt to move up, you aren't focusing on basics, you should already have them down cold. So if you move up from 5nl to 25nl, all the 25nl players should know what any 5nl player does, so it will get a little tougher. If you move up from say 200nl to 400nl, it becomes a game where, "okay, he knows I'll do this with this type of hand, so I can do this instead to push him off his hand since I know his range is this." If you don't know the basics, as you move up from one level to the next, you won't correctly be able to put your opponents on hand ranges they should have in certain situations, so for lack of a better term you're pretty much screwed, if you don't take time at each level to 'master' that level so to speak. Everytime a 100nl player tries to sit in a 400nl game, he might as well be playing with his cards face up because he's playing so basic(in comparison to a 400nl player) that he has no chance, since the 400nl regs know everything a 100nl reg knows, so they know exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it, so they can pretty much run him over and he'll have no idea what they are doing to him. I'll expand more about this when I do the strategy part, but you'd be amazed how real that is. He would literally have no chance in the long run playing with 100nl level skills at 400nl. Think of it this way, if you wait until you are a very good player at 25nl to move to 50nl, well, every 50nl reg was already a top 25nl reg before they moved up(or should have been), so you basically just move to play against the top players from your previous level, and some better ones. So it's unbelievably important to master the basics to get yourself a foundation that you can build on from level to level.

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