The Grass May Just be Greener

I have spoken with many people over the past few years who have or who are playing poker online both face to face and on forums and through other avenues. One of the things that struck me and still does to a certain extent are the large number of people who buy into a poker site and then stay there for good. Do not get me wrong here, if you are purely and simply a recreational player then there may be nothing wrong with it. But even then, staying on the same site could be hurting you financially if you are not taking full advantage of the sheer volume of free money options that there are.

Deposit bonuses, jackpot bonuses, bad beat bonuses, loyalty bonuses you name it, there is money out there to be had. But what many new players fail to take on board fully is that poker is a very difficult game to master and depending on the player, can cost you an awful lot of money at the outset of your “career” when you are not yet at that stage where you are breaking even.

Taking this a step further, most new poker players lose right….of course they do and the main reason is that they lose through lack of skill or maybe through personal indiscipline. Because they lose money then this deters many of them from coming back to the game, a sure case of once bitten twice shy. But yet I wonder how many of these poker novices that were blown away from the game at the very outset of their playing days could have gone on to become very successful players and even professionals.

The number must be vast but yet had they taken the time and the trouble to take advantage of the sign up bonuses and all of the other free money that is out there then this would have certainly bought them more time and possibly enabled many more players to reach that level where they are not losing money at all and maybe even winning a bit. Sometimes the difference between success and failure not just in poker but in anything can be a simple act of deciding whether or not to go down a certain road. By not going down that road then your whole life changes without you even realising it.
Hollywood Poker - Where the stars come to play

As a full time professional player, I do not chase bonuses simply because I have got past the stage where they are of paramount importance to me. When you get to a certain stage in your development then chasing free money can be very damaging to your chances, let me explain. Let us say that we have two poker sites, we will call them site A and site B. Our full time professional player plays at $30-$60 limit hold’em and both sites offer plenty of action at that level at the times that he is available to play.

Site A is an American site that is populated very heavily by US players obviously whilst site B is a European site populated by mainly Europeans. Site A offers a sign up bonus up to $1000 which is the largest on the net whereas site B offers nothing as a sign up bonus. On the face of it this looks like a very attractive proposition from site A and it may be but then again it may not. You see American players are traditionally stronger than Europeans at limit hold’em and if your opposition are stronger then you earn less….that is obvious.

But let us say for example that our professional is playing forty hours a week on site B and happily earning at a rate of two big blinds per hour on his regular six handed $30-$60 game. If that earn rate falls by as much as half a big bet per hour which may not be apparent at first then switching to site A will cost him $1200 a week in lost earnings. So much for the big sign up bonus of $1000, our working pro has lost that back in a little over 30 hours of playing time. Of course most players online are not professionals or even winning players for that matter so issues like this should not concern them….. or should they?

What if you go chasing a sign up bonus at a certain poker site only to find that they don’t have the action at the game and the stakes that you want. So you end up playing no limit hold’em instead of limit hold’em and you not only lose the bonus but your original buy in as well because you had yet to learn a very valuable lesson….that you were not psychologically cut out for no limit play online.

You have a tendency to call money off which is bad enough in limit play but fatal in no limit. So you have learnt your lesson and it is a far more expensive lesson than what it should have been and all because you went chasing what appeared to be free money. Game selection is very important in poker as it is in blackjack of course but very few people take it on board properly yet it can be the difference between winning and losing for many players.

Selecting a card room to play in online is no different to selecting a bricks and mortar card room to play in. Some of them like the Vic in London for instance will be populated by better players on average and bigger games than many of the others. This brings up another interesting point for why it can be in a good players best interests to have a change of scenery every now and again.

The more that you play in any card room then the more the other regular players are going to get to know you and know how you play. It is even worse online as many sites have not only leaderboards for tournaments but also leaderboards for cash games as well. Many online professionals (myself included) will not reveal their online identity unless it is in their best interests to do so or they have some kind of sponsorship deal with the site concerned.

It does not make financial sense for everyone to know that you are a good player before you even sit down. Therefore it would be a very good idea to try and keep yourself off the site leaderboards as much as possible. This is a bit like blackjack in a way, I played that game professionally for four years but the biggest obstacle for any blackjack player has always been to retain their anonymity, once you lose that then you are on a downward spiral.

So for any winning player that has a long proven track record of winning then you better make sure that you keep things refreshed if you want to preserve that income. It is precisely the same thing with rakeback programs. I certainly do not buy into a site simply because of a rakeback scheme. If they have one then all well and good, you would be a fool not to take advantage of it but to use it as the primary reason for joining a site above everything else is silly and can be extremely counter productive for certain people.

There is a long list of criteria that you need to consider before you decide to play in any card room and while financial incentives are a bonus, remember that this is all that they are….a bonus. But the bonus that you thought that you were receiving just could turn out to be the worst thing that you ever did….or the best! Card room selection is much less important to a player who can almost beat any game at the level that they are at but for the rest of you, that is simply not the case. So take a while to consider the merits of each card room out there and how they fit in with you and your abilities as a player and also your schedule and objectives and don’t just jump into a cardroom all because your friend plays there and you can chat with him and play on the same table. If all you want to do is socialise then fine, go and have some fun. But if you desire to win money then you had better start putting a bit more care into your site selection and your game selection. The grass may be greener on the other side…..but then again!

This article was produced for Poker Pro Europe magazine and has been reproduced here with their kind permission.