How to make $5000+ every month as a mediocre player!

Some nice background-music while reading:

Poker is a game in which your score is money. In nearly every game, your score gets better as you evolve as a player. So, it sounds easy—get better to receive a better score and more money. Here comes the problem: poker isn't like that. The money part makes it so unlike every other game. It has more in common with competitive daytrading than with most community games like Risk or Monopoly or even other card games.

In other games, a player who constantly beats the high scores is considered best, but in poker we have two kinds of best. The skill component in which a player can be the best or in the money-making component. While there is definitely a correlation between a highly skilled poker player and his money-making ability, those two things don't always go hand-in-hand.In this blog post, I will show you why. ;)

I consider myself a mediocre player; not really bad, but also far from being very good or the best. My poker playing skill is good enough to beat the games, but I am certain that I don't have an edge against any of the regulars at my limits. Still, I manage to grind out a quite good winrate and, consequently, a good hourly. How do I manage to do that, and how can someone who is determined do it, too?

First of all, I am not saying that you shouldn't study poker, review your sessions, and analyze some hands in the poker forums—but that alone won't make you a winner in any game or get you a good hourly. In fact, I know many good poker players who are far better than me, but don't manage to match my hourly even though they are trying.


JonSnow's 5 Key Phrases:

• Money management
• Site management
• Self-evaluation
• Stakes management
• Mindset management

Every one of these things is crucially important!


How can you win in the long run if:

• your money managment is so bad that you sometimes go broke?
• the site you are playing on has no traffic, not much rakeback, terrible software, or or has too many skilled regulars?
• play limits above your skill level?
• you play tilted, tired, or drunk?
• you can't choose the right games because you over- or under-value your skill?

I strongly believe that if you can't manage all of them, then you will fail, even though you are a skilled player.

I will now show you a small framework that will maximize the money you can make with the poker skills that you have today.


Equipment:

Poker is a game of small edges, so playing only two or three tables will kill your hourly. So, we will need at least one 24" monitor. I prefer two of them, so you can have your tracker, skype, and FF on the second screen.

We need a tracking program to use a HUD on the tables and keep track of our sessions. A program like this also allows us to review hands extremely fast. There are two up-to-date programs on the market: PokerTracker 4 and HoldemManager2. I can't really say which one is better, because (as of this writing) both are buggy and use too much CPU power and RAM. PT4 supports more sites—especially the American friendly ones ;)
Because we will play 8-16 tables, we need enough RAM for the software and tracker; 6-8GB RAM should be fine, 4 GB is too little.The rest of the computer doesn't really matter.Just make sure you can plug in two monitors and consider using a SSD disk to boost the performance of the tracker.


To recap, here's what you need:

• 24" Monitor, preferably two of them
• 6-8 GB RAM
• Windows XP or better
• SSD (optional)
• Poker tracker software (PT4, HM2)

Note: Mac is really bad at supporting poker sites and poker-related software. So, if you want to save yourself some pains in the ass, go Windows ;)

Now that your poker computer is ready, find a site suited for you. Most of the readers here will be from the US, so I will list only US friendly poker rooms (but those are sometimes also the best ones for non-US players :P )


AmericasCardroom or True Poker (Winningnetwork):[I also play there]

• Great software; you can play unlimited tables
• PT3 and PT4 is supported (No HM2)
• Awesome rakeback (with some volume you will receive 60% and more—and it's dealt rake)
• SO MANY FISH! :)
• Good traffic on cash games and some very nice 50k guar. on the weekend
• Nice promotions
• Bad beat jackpot
• Cash-outs clear within 48 hours (huge plus)

LockPoker (Revolution):

• Lock Poker has extremely good promotions.
• With the RB(dealt method) and promos, you can easily earn 70% or me if you're a grinder.
• Software is ok
• Ok traffic
• Be very careful with lockpoker for now, because many players are waiting for ages to receive their cash-outs. I assume they have some liquidity problems. CAREFUL!

CarbonPoker (Merge):

• Ok software
• Good rakeback (35% flat + Promos and races)
• Many fish
• Warning: Cash-outs are currently very slow. This can be a bad sign
• Little traffic :(

And last: Bodog and Chico. DO NOT PLAY THERE; if you read the forums, you will see that those sites not only are very, very slowly processing cash-outs, there are also posts about getting scammed by the site, having to deal with frozen accounts, etc.

Hint: The ref links will provide the best rakeback for those site, but be aware that Lock and Carbon are experiencing very slow cashouts at this moment!

Americas Cardroom (VIP System) ((This one is better if you produce more than 200$ Rake a month))
Americas Cardroom (Flat Rakeback)
True Poker (Flat Rakeback)
Lock Poker (VIP System)
Carbon Poker (Flat Rakeback)

I can really vouch for WinningNetwork, especially Americas Cardroom, because I trust them with my own funds. I can't recommend PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker for players below 400NL, because the average skill level of players on these sites is way higher than any other site on the net (ok, maybe ipoker is worse :P ). Your hourly will never be as high as on the other sites, because you can play higher with the same skill. :)

Now that we have the right setup and the poker site of our choice, we can move on to money management. In this matter, there are so many opinions floating around the forums, so I will just tell you what I think is best for me. I am a person that can only play my A game, or let's say B game, if I don't have to worry about a bad session ruining my bankroll. That's why i always keep at least 50 buy-ins for the games I play, ready on the site, or on an online wallet (mb,net). The only exception to this rule is when you find a game with a huge whale; you can join him with just 25 stacks.

So, what stakes do we play now? The highest stakes that our money management rule tells us we're rolled for? NO! Please, for God's sake, don't do that! As a winning player, you would always end up playing stakes you can't beat. You will just win money at lower limits, move up, then lose it to the better players and the cycle continues.

Here comes the self-evaluation! You will need the ability to evaluate your own skill compared to other regulars on a limit. It's not necessary to know how much bb/100 you are losing on average to a reg, but you most definitely must know if you lose or not. You can't learn this skill in one day, but you have to work on it. Eventually, you will know when and how much you will lose against regulars, and how big of a fish you need at the table so that the game is still profitable for you.

It is not a rare occasion that I play a 6-max $5/$10 game with four players who are better than me and a whale. I will play this game because I have position on this guy and his losses make up for the 2-3bb/100 I stand tolose to the regs.

In conclusion, if we only play games with fish, we don't have to seat-select so hardcore But we have to be very, very careful in selecting tables on limits higher than our usual!

Now that we covered the first four points, we have to look at the last one and maybe the second most important after game selection: Mindset management. If you have read the Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt book "Treat your Poker like a Business," you will now read some approaches that really differ from his. He thinks it is the best to never deviate from the normal number of tables and limits. I, on the other hand, think that you most definitely should. Most players don't have a constant level of health (feeling good, etc.), but have a bad day every other day, or they feel tired. If you try to force yourself to play the same length of session, the same amount of tables, and the same stakes, I can tell you for sure that you will perform horribly.

I know that this is not the standard approach, but what I do is something I call "confidence grinding.” If we don't have a good day and don't feel like we can play our A-game, and I know everyone knows what i am talking about, we should just move down in stakes. Our winrate is higher but the hourly will go down. But at least it will stay positive—playing your normal stakes won't ensure that! We will win with a higher chance and at least our All-in EV will be very good. This way, we can start the next session with a confidence boost. I also move down in stakes if I don't run good for a longer period of time. I do this to renew my confidence, and then I start attacking those stakes again with new motivation.

If we stick to this approach, we can maximize our money won and avoid tilt induced by the feeling of getting owned because of low confidence.

CliffsNotes for the TL;DR Department:

• Skill alone won't make you money
• You need good equipment
• Select a good poker room to grind on (I grind on Americas Cardroom)
• Practice conservative money managment (50+ buy-ins)
• Don't play limits just because you are rolled for them
• Evaluate your skill and play only where you have an edge
• Don't play your normal limits if you don't feel like you can play your A-game
• Do all of the above to maximize the money you can make with the skill you already have.

I wish you good luck at the tables.
- JonathanSnow

Perceived Value in Poker

Hello poker-playing Redditors!

In this blog entry, I wanna talk about an issue I have spent many hours thinking about.. I just couldn't wrap my head around it: the fact is, poker is just one big session.

The questions I asked myself included:

- Why do people tilt when they drop more stacks than usual?
- Why is it that money won is perceived as less valuable than money lost?
- Why is it so hard for people to stop a session if they are down?
- Why do people feel like they "lost" money if they at one point in the session were up some stacks and then stopped the session breakeven?
- Why in God's name is it that so many people quit sessions just because they won a certain amount of money in a short time?

While some questions may have seemingly logical answers, I wasn't satisfied with the answers the forums and literature gave me. This bugged me until I learned about the "Prospect-Value Theory" while studying finance at University.

"The Prospect theory [...] helps explain how loss aversion, and an inability to ignore sunk costs, leads people to take actions that are not in their best interest. The sting of losing money, for example, often leads financial investors to pull money out of the stock market unwisely when prices dip."
Belsky and Gilovich (1999)

Just a heads up: sunk costs are past costs (losses) that can't be recovered. Let's take for example the concept of paying blinds, we are forced to pay them and after posting them, this money does NOT belong to us anymore, therefore they are sunk costs There is nothing you can do about sunk costs, so logically it would be wise to ignore them.
But here comes the catch: people are unable to ignore them. They always put those costs into their calculations. For example, people who invest in a stock that dropped in value since they bought it are more likely to hold on to that paper, just because they don't want to sell it and incur a loss. So they keep the stock and hope that it will rise above their reference point. Even if the expected value of keeping the stock is negative and the person knows that, his irrationality drives him to keep it―just because he values the chance of breaking even or better worth the likely loss.

What implications does this have for poker? I think you can define tilt as a situation where you take a certain action that you would not have taken if you thought rationally. For now, let's ignore the reasons for tilt. If tilt is not acting rationally, than clearly tilt equals irrationality. We should know better, but we don't listen to our self. Why is that?

Let's analyze the tilt induced by losing stacks in multiple bad beat situations in a short time. Jared Tendler (the mental coach and writer of the great book The Mental Game of Poker) thinks bad beat induced tilt occurs because we try to think rationally, but a part in our brain remembers every bad beat and suck-out and adds those situations to a stack of negative emotions. Because let's be honest: no one likes to lose money, especially to a donkey ;) . This stack of emotions will grow until tilt breaks out and, whether we're conscious of it or not, it blurs our clear thinking.. While I really like this way of thinking about bad beat induced tilt, I think there is more to it, mentally.

What does this prospect value theorem say about poker? The reference point of the theory marks a point we choose for ourselves. Values over this point have a different utility to us than the values lower than our reference point.

"Losses hurt more than gains satisfy; most empirical estimates conclude that losses are about twice as painful as gains are pleasurable." Hastie and Dawes (2001)

Let's assume this is right. We can conclude that while winnings above the reference point are perceived as half the "pleasure,” losses are perceived with full "pain."  This graphic displays this wonderfully:

 

What could be a reference point for a poker player? For example, if a player goes all-in preflop with Aces and his opponent flips over AKs, then we know that he has about 88% equity. We know he should lose about one time out of ten. But still, we set a reference point at winning the whole stack. The player expects to double up. In our minds, we claim the whole pot to ourselves.

Let's try to look on the math side of things.

Stacks: 100NL, with 100BB effective stacks

Reference point:              $200 (+$100)

Expected Value:               $175  (+$75) (200*0,875)

"Felt value real" :                  (If win:  Money won $100. If lost: Money lost $100) --> win counts half, loss full. Therefore: (100/2)*0,88+(-100)*0,12 = $32

"Felt value prospect theory": (If win, perceived:  Money won $0. If lost: Money lost $200) --> win counts half, loss full. Therefore: (0/2)*0,88+(-200)*0,12  = $-24

How can we interpret this? If we don't set a certain reference point, we would value this hand at + $32 , even though we just shipped all-in with AA. That's sick, but you can see how the higher perceived loss kicks in. In the second calculation, we set a reference point at $200. We expected to win. So if we do win, it doesn't add any happiness value—it just "is." On the other hand, if we lose, it has a huge impact. Even tough we only lose 12% of the time, this accounts for $24 lost.

It is obviously not such a big impact in real poker playing, because we don't recall every hand separately in our brain. But, we unconsciously set a reference point every time we look at our graph or our cashier. This value is what we have. We want more, not less!

So, basically, we can now say:
- Winning is good
- Losing is bad. Twice as bad.
- We unconsciously set reference points at marks that we have (if winning) or marks that we had (losing)
- We shouldn't do that if we want to become happy with poker

If we want to get better as players, we have to improve our mindset. As we just saw, this could be theoretically easy, but our mind tries very hard to make us unhappy! A solution to this is to accept certain realities of the game. And Prospect Theory is undoubtedly one of those realities.

I can only speak for myself, but after I saw the theory, the math behind it, and the implications it made, I thought about it, and then I tried to accept it. I really think this improved me as a player.

A big thanks to "www.reddit.com/user/CaptainLinger" for proofreading my blog post!!!!

Warm regards and good luck at the tables,
Jonathan Snow 

Introduction

Hi guys,

 I am JonathanSnow, 22 years old, and a fascinated pokerplayer. Four years ago i started playing poker, after i saw some TV-ads about poker after some televised tournaments. Then i donked around for quite some while, until i realised that there MIGHT be a strategy behind this game :D
After i found out that poker isn't just a simple game but a game more complex than chess, i started thinking about poker nearly every day and tried to solve some problems i had in understanding the game. Let me say it this way: i am not done yet, not even close ;)

 Since 2010 i have played poker semiprofessionally to finance my university studies in economics and business. I first started with the short-stack-strategy promoted by Pokerstrategy and luckily i instantly experienced a big upswing. In retrospect thats goob, because otherwise i might have quitted the game early on! With this upswing i moved up the stakes, starting from NL0,05/0,10 in Febuary to NL5/10(NL1k) in Dezember. I was playing at Everest Poker that time, and due to missing traffic i was bound to grind out all NL100 to NL1000 tables to get my 12 tables. While grinding out solid 5 to 10k each month on those extremly soft tables back then , i  also started focusing on improving my game and skill. I spent about half the time grinding and studying, that seemed a good balance back then. Today i know that i would have made more money overall if i used that time just practicing on the tables while turning in big $$$$$.

 But what i learned back then was, that you need really study poker everyday to keep up with the competition. So if you ever wanna play NL200+ and higher, you just need a sick determination to the game , and really put in a good work ethic otherwise you will just never come across NL50 limits.

Today i am grinding at Americas Card Room, and you can see me at the Tables NL100 to NL1000 sitting there, playing every fish that comes to my 6max games :D

What can you expect from this Blog?

Intresting pokerhands, graphs with sick swings :p , strategy content, some funny reallife stories and maybe some funny content you haven't seen on reddit maybe!

So long,
JonathanSnow