Know Your Betting Limits
Introduction.
Has she got a Christmas treat for you?
As the end of December approaches no doubt you’ll be looking forward to a few days off work – and few days off work means more opportunities to play even more online poker. Of course when we’re on vacation we all like to relax a little and for some poker players that can mean betting stakes that they wouldn’t normally think of playing. Yeah, but why not have a bit of a Christmas treat? Nothing wrong with that of course – you’ve worked hard all year and so why not enjoy yourself a bit. However, you should know your betting limits and stick to them unless you really are on to a winner.
Your bankroll tells you your limit.
Knowing what betting limit to go up to should be quite straightforward. Whether your bankroll in the hundreds or thousands of dollars – your betting limit is the price of the stakes that mean you can play all your hands correctly. In other words if that bankroll is in the hundreds of dollars it’s no use sitting down at a poker table where the bets are $100/$200 – you’ll soon be out of it; much better to find a $10/$20 game and enjoy a good session of poker play. Having said that – the higher you play the more you’ll average in winnings. So the secret to progressing in the amounts you win is to add winnings to your bankroll and slowly increase the stakes you play with – rather than thinking you can win the ‘big one’ straight off.
Betting in early and later rounds.
Sitting at a $10/$20 game the early rounds of betting will be quite straightforward. But in the later rounds of a pot-limit or worse no-limit game, those stakes can suddenly rise steeply. So here you need to adopt a different betting strategy. As the stakes rise so to do your implied odds, so it will pay you to play loose early on in the game and then tighten up as the betting rounds progress. That way you’re betting on improving your hand into a winning one – and a big win.