Online poker sites tend to be an up-and-down process, much like a rollercoaster. There are highs where you keep winning and lows where it’s not so fun. The best poker players can navigate both instances and ensure that they play consistently throughout the year in poker.
Online Poker Community Encourages 50/50 Win-Loss Split
While a player could win every hand they play at the online poker table, it’s unlikely. Players often end game sessions having lost money. Most online poker communities state that they play some form of poker every day (or the majority of them) in a month. Most players state that they will leave a session 12-15 times having made a loss. Therefore if you’re losing money on this amount of times over a month you shouldn’t feel too bad about it as you’re still winning enough on the other days to make an overall gain.
Call the Bad Days Early
There are going to be unpleasant days in your poker experiences. These are where the cards don’t go your way at all. Seemingly you get nothing but poor hands and when you got something of worth, of course, another player had a royal flush. It’s really important to stop these sessions from unfolding into chaos. Stepping away from the session will allow you to reset and avoid tilt. Even if you normally play for two hours but you’ve done nothing but bleed chips for the first 20 minutes, log out and stop yourself from losing excessive money.
Never Extend Your Stay
When you’re on a good run of form, there’s an urge to keep going and ride the wave, believing that you can’t lose. Well, the truth is that just because you’ve won a few good hands you’re probably overdue a loss. If you normally set yourself two hours of play and that time has elapsed, log out. Even if you’re on a five-hand winning streak, that over-confidence will not serve you well. Sticking to your pre-determined schedule encourages poker discipline so that you can control your spending.
Act Rationally with Winnings
If you’re lucky enough to get a good win or two in a session and log out with more money than you started with, then that’s great. It’s important to carefully consider what to do with it. The impulse is to immediately bet with it as greed can take over with the idea of getting yet more money. If you have no financial implications or items that you desire to buy, then go ahead and gamble it. Yet, in reality, there are better ways to process the money after you’ve just won it.
Putting it back into your poker fund bank is a good idea as it tops it up, or paying off that gas bill that you accumulated in the winter months or treating yourself to a new PS5 game will ensure that you get the most out of your winnings.
It Depends On Your Stake
It’s easy to say you can expect to lose X amount of games over Y period but there is little science or formula to quantify the exact amount of money involved. Why so? Well, each table has different rulings on minimum stakes, players can raise and go all-in which varies the pot accordingly. If you’re at the higher roller section of the online poker app, then you might be down millions by the end of the year – while someone exclusively using the two cents table might only have earned a few dollars, even on a successful year.
Don’t Bank On Future Winnings
If you’re in a rut of form and have lost money for consecutive days, you might think that the law of averages will owe some winning form. Sadly, poker just doesn’t work like that. Players shouldn’t bank on profits they’ve yet to win as they might simply never come. Assess regularly whether you can continue to afford your gambling activity to ensure that you don’t come into trouble if the wins never materialize.
Monthly Reviews
One of the best practices for online poker players is set to monthly goals for their winnings, as well as review how they played in addition to their net turnover, whether they made or lost money. You can win real money playing on these online poker sites but also use some tools to track your overall spending and see if you are up or down over a certain time period.
You Don’t Have to Bet All the Time, All Year
While you might want to be perceived as a hardcore poker player, who is grinding out their path from the online rooms to a WSOP bracelet, there is merit in not playing poker all year round. It’s important to live in the real world away from your connected devices. If you live in a seasonal country where the time of year presents varying conditions, then it could be wise to play more in winter and enjoy the good weather in summer.
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