The costs of playing poker tournaments as your main source of income are high. Paying for flights, hotels, food and general spending increase when you are travelling the tournament circuit and you also have the tournament buy-ins to pay for too! Things get very pricey very quickly. I have read numerous blogs of tournament professionals who say that you need about $500,000 to $1 million a year to finance life on the road if you are constantly travelling and playing poker.

This is why many poker players look for stakes and take percentages of other players. Relying simply on your own skills is difficult. Could you cash for $1 million each year just to break even? Would you want those sorts of overheads? This leads us to another part of being a tournament professional, engaging financially with other players.

When I first started researching the realities of life on the road as a professional poker tournament player I was surprised at the extent of swapping percentages with other players and staking. It is not uncommon for one player to have 50% of their own action and 10% of five other players’ action. This means that if they bust they have five other chances to make some money back from the tournament. They have done a straight swap or bought straight into the other players.

Tournament stakers also roan around the casino lobbies looking for players who need a stake in return for some of their action. Eric “Sheets” Haber is a prolific staker who had a large piece of Joe Cada when he won $8.5 million when he won the World Series of Poker Main Event. Neil “Badbeat” Channing of the UK also stakes a large stable of players. They get good value for their money as they only stake players they know to be winning players and you are unlikely to get a stake into a tournament unless you can show an excellent record in live and online poker tournaments.

The reason I play poker is looking for that one big score. If I hit that score, travelling the tournament circuit only to be broke two or three years down the line would seem a waste of that big prize. Others would disagree and see the freedom of living life to the full as a great way of using that money. After all, you never know what life will throw at you tomorrow. I prefer a safer approach, although most poker players do not live life particularly safely in terms of financial planning.

You need a liberal attitude to money to be a tournament pro. You need to be willing to risk it to win big and keep risking it and believe you will eventually get everything back that you invest with interest! It can be a bumpy ride as a tournament poker professional, but if you have the guts and the tenacity the rewards can be very high if you are good enough.

By Malcolm Clarke

Because books can be critically analysed as good or bad I recommend getting two to three texts teach you the basics of poker. Buying a book like the Theory of Poker by David Sklansky is also good reading to understand some of the math fundamentals that are true to every poker variation. After you have studied your first three or so poker books then now is the time to sign up for a poker room like bwin.com, familiarise yourself with the software and games and become comfortable in the play money games. Do not risk money just yet and do not worry about your results at the play tables, they are not a true reflection of poker.

So you have the basics now. You understand the betting rules and that a flush beats a pair. Poker is easy to learn and difficult to master and now we set about moving slowly towards a good grasp of strategy. At this point I would watch some of the poker television shows like High Stakes Poker, where you can watch some of the best cash game players in the world play Texas Hold ‘em and then watch some of the poker tournament shows. This shows you professionals going about their business. Remember that the TV only shows the interesting hands, a lot of poker is raise and fold. Position and patience are key ingredients to winning poker. Whilst only interesting hands are shown you are getting information from the commentators and the action which you can think about and work out why they did what they did in the hands.

After you have watched some poker you are now ready to play a little yourself. Before you deposit, read and understand bankroll management. Deposit something relatively small into the poker room of your choice and learn about the poker rooms various bonuses you can earn through playing at their site. You should also sign up through either a rakeback provider or be fully aware of the benefits of the poker rooms own VIP programme.

Start by playing one table at a time and play some cash games, some sit and go’s and some larger poker tournaments. Research each discipline on the Internet and get experience in each type of game keeping a note of what you struggle with and what you seem to do well. This will make interesting reading as you get more experienced. Sign up with a poker strategy forum and read the posts made by more experienced players, but remember that they may not always be right in what they are saying.

At this point you may find it beneficial to sign up with a site like Cardrunners, Poker VT or Stox Poker that offer video poker training. You may find it better to get a personal poker coach or you may prefer to go it alone. This all depends on how you prefer to learn. The poker training sites will be useful if you want to play more than one table and their strategies will help you realise this wish more quickly by bringing you up to speed with key poker strategies you will need to multi-table. You should also try a bit of live poker and read about tells and putting opponents on hands. There is always one more thing to learn in poker!

Practising good bankroll management and remembering everything from the books, videos and forums that you have read and watched you can start applying these things to your play at the poker tables. Do hand history reviews with an experienced player to highlight your leaks and make the changes necessary to plug those leaks as quickly as you can. Think about the game when you are away from the table and read the poker magazines and enter hand discussion competitions. Take every opportunity to learn about hands and how to play them.

Soon you will be a real force in poker if you follow this sort of step by step process to learning how to play poker.

By Malcolm Clarke

This article will focus on tips for profiling players. When you first sit down at the poker table your classifying of players begins immediately. This is one of your poker rules as it were, you must watch everything at the table very closely.

Start by making the most obvious classification on the player, whether they are strong or weak poker players. They should be making the correct bet sizes. The most obvious weak move is minimum betting when the pot is larger. We all know that if the pot is 500 then we should be betting anything from 250 to 500 depending on the situation and only use blocker or probe bets deliberately. If the blinds are 25/50 and the pot has grown to 500 and a player bets 50 then we know they are not a great player. They are laying you 10/1 odds and this is not recommended.

Once you know if they are good or bad then you can focus in to their actual playing tendencies. You should watch how many hands per round they play and whether they continue after flops. Look closely at the flops they are folding when faced with. If they are folding to draw heavy flops this indicates they are a better player who understands flop texture. They may be laying down good hands like medium pairs knowing draws may have hit. This knowledge can be used to bluff at a pot on a draw heavy board if the player shows no interest in picking up the pot.

Working out a percentage on how many hands a player plays per round gives you assistance in narrowing their starting hand range. A player participating in three hands per round suggests they are playing around the top 30% of their hands meaning they will not always have a premium hand. This is a general figure, they may be able to limp in with any two with the right pot odds or make a loose call from their big blind. Remember also that some of the hands will probably be suited connectors (especially if they are a good player in your opinion) and you should note whether the pots they played were raised hands or limps. If your opponents participate in raised hands this gives more accurate information because it costs a higher proportion of their stack to play the pot.

Showdowns are important. When opponents turn over their cards they reveal their entire betting progression through the hand and hole cards. If you cannot see the hands when they go to showdown stand up and take a look. You need this information. Pay particular attention to hands you are not involved in. You are getting valuable information on two player’s without investing any chips! When the hand is played out review it in your mind and see how they played in relation to what you now know was their hole cards. This can help you form new opinions on their poker style or confirm that what you already assumed about their ability and style is true. Showdowns are very useful indeed for poker player profiling.

Player profiling should be done constantly whether playing online poker or live poker from when you sit down to when you leave the game. The more you do it the more accurate your opinions will be. In live poker you can learn a player’s game that is useful for next week’s poker tournament or real money cash game. To summarise, never stop watching and learning the valuable information that can help you beat your opponents. You need to do this as most of the time this is exactly what your opponents are doing to you.

By Malcolm Clarke