Only around 5% of online poker players are long term winners according to the latest figures (figures that sites hide). The best players being able to multi-table and large numbers of fish being absent because of the UIGEA and “Black Friday” (Full Tilt Poker affair) has meant that although large player numbers are on certain sites……..when broken down then a very high percentage of them are regulars or break even players who don’t realise it yet.
When you hear about strong winning online professionals who are having break even periods of 100,000 hands after killing the games for the previous 100,000 hands then it is clear how much effect variance has. Imagine if you only played for 500-1000 hands per week……..there must be millions of players riding short term variance for considerable lengths of time.
If you get 50 regs at say NL50 through NL200 and they average six tables each then that is 50 players taking up not 50 seats but 300 seats. When these guys get involved in big pots then they tend to have a big hand in NL full ring games…….so having a big hand yourself has less value in big pots because you will often be on the worse side of big hand versus big hand against players who know what they are doing.
If you have a queen high flush against an ace high flush then you are losing your stack in escalated pots (unless the board is four to a flush)…….if the other player has the same hand then you do the same to them. Solid players will not make deep stacked errors like novice and intermediate players will and the latter two player types are disappearing fast above the micro-stakes levels.
So you need a plan of attack but to devise that plan means having a close look at who your biggest enemies are in poker………well essentially you have three enemies who are out to get your money and we will look now at enemy number one. The key rule of warfare is “know thyself and thy enemy”.
Poker sites can either be your greatest friend or your biggest enemy and which one that is depends on how you approach your poker and what your strategy is. Well your job is not to give them that money and to give them as little as possible. The poker site in terms of cash games can only take your money in one way and that is through rake.
This is the silent enemy that kills and rakeback does not always protect you from the effect of rake. Sites offer rakeback deals as if they are offering players the world. Do you know why sites offer you rakeback? They offer rakeback because some years ago the players became so incensed about how much profit the sites were making and lobbied for it.
Then one site became the first to offer rakeback purely because they wanted an edge against other poker sites and suddenly they all had to do it…….under no circumstances think that sites are doing you a favour.
Don’t you think that if they wanted to REALLY help you then rather than give you rakeback…….why not just take LESS rake to begin with? They don’t do that for one simple reason and that is because if they took less rake then that would be invisible to at least 99% of people who play poker…….how many players check the rake structure for the games they play and compare that with other sites and levels…….do you?
So they want something VISIBLE……a carrot to entice people with and so rather than simply taking less per pot……they want to be seen to be GIVING you something rather than taking less. To make money from online poker then you need advice from people that have actually worked on the inside but those people are rather thin on the ground.
Come and read Carl’s other poker blog at http://pokerworld.pacificpoker.com/pokerblogs
