Champion of Poker

Many people assume that a pro will be playing for high limits but that is not necessarily the case. I will play at $25-$50 at no limit Texas Hold’em online where there can be at least $20,000 on the table but only because I play in such a way that helps me to beat games at that level. But limit hold’em is vastly different, there is far less of an intimidation factor at limit hold’em as you cannot put the question to a player for their entire stack in that form of poker.

So I will play at the $10-$20 level mainly when I play limit but I also sometimes multi-table at levels like $2-$4, $3-$6 and $5-$10 if the rake is reasonable and I can obtain decent rakeback. I have never had an ego to massage by insisting that I always play at a certain level. In my mind the best poker games are the ones where I have to work the least in order to obtain an hourly rate that I deem to be worth my time. I remember hearing an old saying from the world of Darts some years ago that went “trebles for show and doubles for dough”. Basically this meant that scoring high on the trebles was fine but worth little if you could not finish.

This is similar to poker in many ways. People see and hear about top players playing for high stakes but let me tell you one thing. Many of those top players will not be winning players and the only reason that they are playing at that level is either because they have the money to do so or because it feeds their ego. The high stakes poker games may be very “showy” but for the vast number of players this isn’t really where the money is. There are many players earning $50,000 to $100,000 a year in online cash games. These amounts are being earned in middle stakes games or through lower limits and multi-tabling. This is not as news worthy and flashy as someone who is playing $300-$600 no limit at the Bellagio.

But getting back to the point, at the higher levels in limit hold’em then good players will still find them tough to beat and you can spend more time finding an acceptable game than you can playing. I don’t know about you but if I had to choose between playing forty hours a week at $10-$20 and earning 3 big bets per hour, and sitting and watching and waiting for twenty hours and then only managing twenty hours of playing time in what will be a far tougher game while only earning one big bet per hour at say $20-$40 then I know which game I would rather choose.

One scenario is earning me $2400 a week while the bigger game is earning me a mere $800. If your livelihood depends on playing online poker then it is better to be playing poker and earning say $20 an hour than not playing at all in my opinion. I have played full time in the past although at the time of writing this article, I am no longer a full time player. But there have been times where I have done whatever it takes to earn my money by the end of the month.

I have put in extra hours and played at levels that were well below what I normally played at in order to pay the bills at the end of the month. But I want this series to teach you one thing and that is to be flexible in not just how you are learning poker but also playing poker and this applies to cash games as well as online poker tournaments. Read this series and re-read it but under no circumstances should you blindly copy what I have said. Selecting the proper limit in which to play is not a straight forward process and depends on many factors.

What levels of money you are prepared to play for and lose for one, your bankroll size, your level of skill compared to that of your opponents, the rake, rakeback…..I could go on and on. But I feel that it is worth repeating one more time, finding the proper limit to play at is a key process because playing too high and you will run into the top players and playing too low with the affect of the rake will also kill you and especially without adequate skills.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”