Poker Skills – Backing Off Bluffs

When you get caught bluffing, your poker ego will often feel like it has taken a punch in the stomach when you are forced to give up the hand. Even though it’s against your natural instinct to back off, sometimes you just got to do it. Let’s say you’re in a hand with two big cards and you raised the pot from late position. The big blind calls you and you both miss the flop. Normally, he’s going to check to you, the attacker in a hand.

If your opposer does, this is a pretty standard play for you to make a continuation bet. Usually this means 1/2 to 3/4 of the pot, and frequently the play will end right there. But not always! Sometimes your antagonist will call your c-bet. He is offering you position with his call, however on a ragged low card flop, you have to constantly keep in mind these are precisely the hands your opponent may have called you with. Of course you don’t know that, as he might’ve called you with an ace king and have your king and queen dominated.

The important thing to note here is he did call you. This call indicates at least some strength, either through catching a piece of the flop, or slow playing. He may also think you are a timid enough antagonist, to be planning a bet or check raise on the turn or river. He could simply be playing on the assumption that this flop completely missed your high cards, and you cannot afford to make this pot grow with an ace high hand. He may also just be playing with a low pair, or draw.

Now, depending on your opponent’s profile, you may want to three bet him if he raises you, but that usually means buiding a big pot when you have a very marginal holding. This is something that you truly must consider as to be a pricy situation long term. Simply put, if you don’t have the balls or the cards to bet out on the turn or river, then you may likely be resigned to saying to yourself, “that’s all I’m going to put into this hand, I’ll have to check it down or fold”.

It can be hard to handle the feelings of being forced off a hand by an opponent who changes their level of aggression during a hand. This is simply because we are in battle with a human inclination to protect oneself and fight for survival. Folding a hand can feel cowardly and defeatist, but knowing when to back off is a vital skill if you want to be a successful poker player.

Now while backing off a hand like this can be tough, players who understand that it is simply a strategic move and actually has nothing to do with your personality or character, will be able to walk away intact – at least emotionally. The strong, experienced players will be able to patiently wait for a better chance. Weaker players, on the other hand may have a axe to grind about having to fold, and may be leaning towards tilt after just a single hand.

Raising is not a problem in poker, it’s really a required trait of achievers, but having to fold in certain spots is just as critical.

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Poker Skills – Bankroll Management

A common mistake in online poker is to play way above your bankroll. That’s because most new players don’t even know they should have between 15 and 25 times their buy-in sitting in their combined, online poker accounts. So for example, if you want to learn on ten buck tournament tables, your minimum bankroll should be two hundred dollars. If you put one hundred dollars down every time you sit at a no limit cash table, you’re minimum bankroll should be two grand. So as you can see your choice of poker game, has a substantial impact on what level of bankroll you need to cover your bets.

Now the lowest amount you should have when playing in more games than one, is about three hundred dollars and this is after you have built up your bankroll by winning enough hands. Now keep in mind $300 is a not the amount you maintain in your wallet. This is a separate account just for your poker, and you’ll use just a portion of this in each game.

Probably the single most important piece of advice is to monitor of all of your games, and keep an exact record of your profit and loss, so that you do recognize which game, time, and level are most effective for you at this stage of your poker playing career. This will also keep you honest – you’d be surprised just how many people think, and say, that they are winning players but once they start tracking their results they find that they are actually losing over the long haul. If you start tracking your results (no matter whether it’s a $200 buy in tournamnet or a $2 buy-in ring game) you’ll KNOW how you’re doing, and can analyse those results to improve. An old mentor of mine was fond of saying “Those who keep records, break records” and that’s solid advice for any player at any level.

Because luck is such a significant part of poker, your bankroll is also effected by it. The reason why a poker bankroll might seem unreasonably high compared to the amount you are allowed to play with is because of variance, luck, or education. You can’t expect to begin with a low bankroll and be a perfect player, nor can you avoid the sometimes brutally long streaks of weak cards and awful beats. If you play consistently within your bankroll, these performance dips are much easier to get through, allowing you to come back the next day, planning your same profitable game.

Learning good bankroll management, and being disciplined enough to follow it is an absolutely essential skill that all of the best players in the world realize and practice. What genuinely matters in the process of establishing a bankroll is how consistent you can become at making good conclusions. This takes practice and you can expect to play upwardly of 100,000 hands before you altogether understand how good and bad things can get, and a stronger intellect of your own style of play and limitations.

Your task is to keep learning more and more, as you will learn that the players who do know their profit goals, maintain a solid bankroll and stick to good principles are ALWAYS the ones who seem to have good records on shark scope and tournament database sites. The logic is simple, but not playing within your poker bankroll will cost you a lot of reloads.

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