POKER TIPS & STRATEGY

3 Tips on How to Play Poker without Going Broke

The Internet has made it easier than ever to play poker – many people now turn to online poker for both entertainment and the potential to earn money. You’re just a click away from online casino sites and poker rooms where you can gamble and it doesn’t matter if you’re at home or at the beach. In the moment of euphoria of winning or anxiousness because of losing, it can be easy to forget your budget’s limits. The last thing you ever want to happen is to go broke – busto – when playing poker.

broke

When it comes to playing poker online, it pays to devise some sort of a savings plan. You wouldn’t want to be caught without funds available when you need them most, simply because you gave it all away playing poker. To prevent yourself from unnecessarily losing money and going broke at the poker tables, follow the advice of the three tips below. You’ll end up becoming better at preserving your money, while still having enough spare cash to comfortably play poker.

Set Your Game Limits: Don’t Play for Stakes You Can’t Afford

Nobody can predict how much they will lose or win at a certain game, so it’s extremely important to come up with realistic limitations on your gambling budget. Don’t ignore your opponents’ experience or even more important your relative skill versus theirs when playing poker. The most important thing here is to develop your own money management principles and to stick to them, no matter how tempting is to play for higher stakes. While it’s true that you can potentially win more money when  playing for higher stakes, you can also lose a lot more significantly more quickly. Exercising self-discipline will almost always prevent you from losing more than you can afford.

High Stakes Poker

Of course, the stakes are always relative…

Make Your Savings a Priority

We get it – playing poker is fun to the point where it can get addictive, but spending too much money on it while you neglect your other expenses isn’t doing you a favor in the long run. Expenses such as saving for your children’s college fund or paying the mortgage and utility bills should always be your priority, including setting money off to the side for emergencies. Play poker with true discretionary monies, not monies you’ll need later on. To spare yourself from financial difficulties, categorize your savings into different funds according to their importance. Once your prioritized funds are secured to the point where you can allow yourself to spend money on other activities, such as playing poker – feel free to do it.

Have Your Own Poker Fund: A Bankroll or a Budget

We’ve previously mentioned the idea of having different kinds of funds, but if poker is more than just a random fun activity for you, then maybe you should also consider creating a whole fund dedicated to it; i.e., a bankroll. Strictly speaking, winning players have bankrolls while losing players have budgets. Either way, whether you regularly in or lose at poker, what bankrolls and budgets have in common is that they involve setting money off to the side from your regular day-to-day funds.

Setting aside your poker monies can make your overall money management more organized and you will be more in track with how much money you win or spend. If you’re on a budget, we recommend that you set aside small amount of money on weekly or monthly basis with which to pursue poker. If you find yourself in a situation where you win more than expected, don’t fall into the trap of spending unnecessary and instead use those money to fill the prioritized funds; build that bankroll! And of course, if you happen to lose a lot, don’t take funds away from where they’re needed… wait till you can budget more before heading back to the tables.

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Written By.

Robbie Strazynski

Robbie founded Cardplayerlifestyle.com in 2009. A veteran member of the poker media corps, in addition to writing and video presenting, Robbie has hosted multiple poker podcasts over the years, including Top Pair, the Red Chip Poker Podcast, The Orbit, and the CardsChat Podcast. In 2019, Robbie translated the autobiography of Poker Hall of Famer Eli […]

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