I keep losing at Online Poker?

What can you do if you keep losing at online poker?

The good news is that at least you are aware of losing and you want to improve. There are a lot of players who are delusional about their results and refuse to admit that they are consistently losing.

Each of us plays online poker for our own reasons, and winning money is not necessarily the top priority. Poker is a fun game and if you love this entertainment while losing money that you can afford to lose, it is fine.

But if you are reading this article, you probably want to know how to stop losing at online poker.

Do you want to stop losing at online poker?

Simple. You must change! The only way to solve this problem is to change. There is a so-called "formula for change" which summarizes this well.

You need to have D x V x F > R, where D measures your dissatisfaction, V measures your vision of where you want to be, F represents the first steps leading to the vision, and R is your resistance level.

Let us clarify this formula. There are four components. D is dissatisfaction. If you are not dissatisfied enough, nothing will happen. V is vision. You must have a clear vision of where you want to be in online poker within a given horizon.

Where do you want to be 6 months from now? You can define this vision with respect to your monetary results. One easy goal is to become a breakeven poker player within 3 or 6 months.

F stands for the first steps leading to change and we discuss this later in the article. But before that, there is a hurdle to leap over, called R in the formula. How much resistance do you have to change? Do you have old habits deeply ingrained in your psyche or do you have a flexible personality? This makes changing easier or harder.

First step to reduce online poker losses

The first steps necessary to change from where you are now to where you want to be in 6 months depend on your personal circumstances. What are the most common reasons for losing at Online Poker? Here is a list of the usual suspects:

Alcohol: you play under the influence
Distraction: you play while doing other things
Action: you play mostly for fun & excitement
Emotional: you let your emotions control you
Discipline: you do not follow the plan
Wealth: you do not care about losing the money

All of the items in the list can be corrected except item 6. If you are very wealthy, it is extremely hard to become a profitable poker player because losing money at the virtual table does not really hurt you. The billionaire Guy Laliberte depicted on top of the page is rumored to have lost 18 million dollars in 2008, but this is not going to affect his lifestyle, is it?

Item 1 & 2 relate to your setup when you play. If you fall into these categories, be aware that playing either with alcohol in your blood or with distractions around you such as television will always hinder your results.

If you are serious about poker, stay sober and fully focused while playing if you want to stop losing at online poker. If you feel thirsty or want to watch Tiger Woods' golfing prowess on the TV, just disconnect from the virtual tables. You can always come back later.

Generally speaking, items 3, 4 & 5 are the most common factors plaguing online poker players. If you want to make money at online poker, you must have a plan and you must follow the plan without deviation.

So for most people reading this article, the pivotal question is F, the first steps of the plan. The first step on the road to profitable poker is the so-called ABC style of poker. Play mostly in a straightforward manner avoiding fancy play. You can find plenty of relevant articles in our strategy and leak sections, as they teach such a solid poker methodology.

Learn the ropes first. If you apply a solid ABC strategy, you cannot lose large sums of money playing online poker at the low-limits.

More steps to reduce online poker losses

ABC poker means first that you should follow a tight-aggressive style. Tight means to be very selective with the hands that you decide to play, aggressive means that you should prefer betting or raising to calling. This is summarized through the so-called VPIP/PFR/AG statistics.

Use poker-tracking software such as Holdem Manager, which let you monitor your statistics and highlight potential leaks in your game. Study optimal play and make the necessary adaptation to your game.

Let us take for example the most frequent source of loss at online poker, calling too much. In full ring No-Limit Texas Hold'em cash games, it is recommended to have VPIP between 10 & 20%; if your VPIP is 50%, you cannot be profitable. This is a low hanging fruit, as you just need to establish a much more stringent starting hand requirement chart.

Check out our leak section for the top ten online poker leaks. If you can make sure none of them apply to you, then you will have made a very big leap toward stopping to lose at online poker. Beyond ABC poker and plugging leaks, there are other more insidious reasons for losing.

Use proper bankroll management. Your bankroll in poker is the money specifically and exclusively allocated to online poker. Bankroll management means that you have to play the limits that your bankroll permits.

Typically in no limit hold'em your bankroll needs to be between 3,000 & 5,000 times the big blind that you play. So if you have $5k, you can play $0.50/$1 NLHE, but playing $1/$2 puts your entire bankroll at risk.

Playing at the correct limit means that if you have lost money, you must move down to a lower limit. In our previous example, if you lose half your bankroll or $2.5K, you must move down to $0.50/$1. Failing to do so is a serious error that will lead to recurrent losses.

If you manage to be profitable at the lower limit, you can then move up in limit. Moving up and down as your bankroll increases and decreases is the secret for minimizing online poker losses.

Finally we would like to remind you of the biggest source of online poker losses: tilt. Tilt is your most dangerous enemy in poker as it can lead to humongous losses.

Make controlling tilt your number one priority and your online poker losses will diminish.

What makes an Online Poker Winner?

This is probably the most important question that you face if you are surfing this website. As this is the most important question facing any online poker player.

Annette "annette_15" Obrestad pictured on the left is one of the most successful online poker winners of the past five years, and she is only twenty.

She won many tournaments for large prizes, but we consider that her most remarkable achievement has been to win one online poker tournament with a field of 20,000 players.

It is very hard to be a profitable online poker player. We provide here our analysis of this subject matter. We list below the most important elements in descending order.

Love the game & play a lot of Online Poker

This is a truism, is it not? It does not matter, as this is the number one criterion. If you do not love the game, you cannot be a very profitable poker player.

But it is not enough to love online poker as millions of people do. You need to play tons of online poker in order to integrate the game into your soul. Annette mentioned above is known to play ten hours a day if not more. Not just one table at a time, but multi-tabling many tables.

Experience is always important in any field. But Texas Hold'em Poker is a game with so many unexpected situations, tough decisions & psychological warfare that only intense immersion into the action can teach you what type of situations might arise.

Study Online Poker intensely

This sounds like a truism as well, does it not? Sorry we are just telling the truth. If you play poker and do not study poker, it is very unlikely that you will become very successful. There is almost no known top poker player who does not put hours of study, day in and day out. If you are not willing to put the time into learning the in and outs of poker, perhaps you are better off playing online bingo at www.partybingo.com where the risks aren't as great.

Studying poker consists first in reading the leading theoretical books. You can find a list of relevant publications in our poker book reviews section. You may not agree with everything written within these books, but if you do not know their content, you will not be in the loop. And your most dangerous opponents will.

Here again it is not a well guarded secret and not different from other fields. Poker books are often written by top poker players such as Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu or Phil Hellmuth. Note that these four players are all holders of WSOP bracelets, for an amazing total of 35 bracelets for just four players. They must know something if they win so often!

Reading books is just one part of studying poker. Other parts are reading forums, blogs, web articles and magazines. Books are like long thought treatise on a given topic, whereas these lighter reading materials provide snapshots of ideas or plays which complement book reading. Their content is more recent and more dynamic so to speak.

Also reviewing hands and discussing hands with your friends in online poker forum is what many online poker winning players said help them boost their understanding of the game. Texas Hold'em Poker is such a difficult and sometimes non-intuitive game that by arguing your views with other players, you can integrate a broader perception of the game.

Develop a winning methodology - Plug your leaks

Ok, now we are starting to talk about less trivial matters. But this is just a continuation of the previous two sections. In Texas Hold'em Poker, there is very often a "standard play". Know and execute the standard play or the optimal play.

Becoming a winning online poker player consists in mixing a very strong knowledge of standard moves with your own personal style. All grand masters in chess know the right or standard move especially at the beginning. Their personal style is what differentiates them.

Similarly in poker there are many standard actions. Say, if you play No-limit Texas Hold'em poker, the standard preflop raise is normally 3 times the big blind, and can range anywhere between 2 & 5 times the big blind. Everyone knows that. And you add one big blind for each limper in front of you.

This was simple. But there are hundreds of possible actions that you must know.

How often should you attempt a three-barrel bluff with air against a TAGfish regular? With what frequency do you steal the blinds in a mid-stakes full ring NLHE game? How do you play small pairs preflop within your set mining strategy? What is your range for calling preflop allin bets at the early stage of a MTT?

Use poker software tools to help you calculate all sorts of statistical measures and evaluate your tendencies. So-called poker tracker software such as Holdem Manager are mandatory if you want to bring your understanding of poker to the next level.

Determine your leaks and plug them. If the poker tools that you use determine that you are too passive, this is a leak in your game which will prevent you from becoming an online poker winner. You have to increase your aggression. If the software says that you lose money by betting too often when your AK misses the flop, decrease your betting in this case. Etc.

Develop the proper psychological behavior

The cornerstone of winning online poker is psychology. Everyone can satisfy the conditions defined in the first three sections. Beyond that, what makes the difference between the winners and the losers is psychology.

The problem with online poker is that is will expose you to all sorts of mental distress.Have you heard of bad beats stories?

You bet all your money with a full house, just to be beaten by a one-outer quad at the river. Or there is a maniac at the table, who drives you crazy. Or you are on a huge downswing which seems to never end.

Undying discipline is necessary to withstand the duress of poker and become a winning online poker player. The correct move in poker often results in a loss. This is part of what is called variance and this is why it is so important to be disciplined and to continue to make the correct move even though it may decrease your stack size.

In Texas hold'em poker, there are often very long periods without good cards. In such case, your stack will slowly melt like an ice cream in the morning sun. This is like a slow tormenting pain, which can drive you insane and make you deviate from optimal play. At some point you will lose your patience and make a costly wild move.

Your discipline, patience, fortitude, endurance & resolve must be unwavering. Control yourself emotionally and avoid tilting as much as you can. Use discipline to follow proper bankroll management and play at a suitable limit.

If you follow all the advice in this article, you are half way to becoming an online poker winner.

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Poker Bad Beats & Coolers

Online poker & Texas Hold'em in particular have exploded in the past decade. A lot of people who do not play wonder why that is so. This is the topic of another article, but we can provide a short answer here.

Poker is a game that can stimulate a tremendous level of pain and pleasure. What psychologists believe is that human beings feel and remember extreme pain much more strongly than extreme pleasure. Here we are, the bad beat is the extreme pain in poker.

Poker is like boxing. A bad beat in poker is like a punch in the face in boxing. It is unavoidable and if you can take it stoically, you are one step closer to mastering poker. Otherwise you will never make it.

Anatomy of a Bad Beat

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What is a bad beat?

You probably already have a good idea of what a bad beat is, but if you want to see the largest bad beats in online poker, you have to watch the largest high stakes ring games, and these take place at  Pokerit.eu

Anyway a technical distinction must first be made between a bad beat and a cooler. Both occur when a big or sometimes huge pot is unexpectedly lost to a stronger hand. Oftentimes in a heads up situation. And oftentimes both opponents are allin by the river, if not earlier.

A cooler is a situation where both players have very strong hands that they would never have folded. In such a situation, it is a near certainty that the opponents will be all-in by the river no matter what. Hence, your very strong hand will be beaten by an even stronger hand.

To take an extreme example, let us say that you have AA and the villain has KK. He raises preflop, you 3-bet and he calls. The flop is AK4 rainbow. With such strong hands on each side of the felt, it is inevitable that this ends up in an allin pot.

If a king shows up at the turn or river, this is a cooler for you. No one played badly and this was inescapable. Note that the villain had 4.34% chance to win this hand from the flop.

Another example is taken from a NL50 holdem game played at PokerStars. Hero is UTG+1 with 9♥9♠ and ends up playing a multiway unraised pot with six other players. The flop is 9♣8♦3♥.

After a few raises and reraises, this hand only involves the hero and one villain who flopped bottom set with 3♣3♠. Admittedly it is hard and usually bad to fold a set, especially with an unthreatening board like this one. The turn is 5♣ and the river is 3♦.

Villain only had 2% chance to win this hand by the turn, as the only way for him to prevail was to get the last 3 in the deck. He was trying to catch a one-outer and he got lucky. This is a cooler, not a bad beat, because no one will convince us that villain played this hand poorly.

A bad beat is different from a cooler as it implies that the villain is a player who "sucked out" on you. If the villain called your monster hand all the way as an underdog with very few outs and then miraculously hit the right card at the river, he gave you a bad beat.

One real bad beat hand went as follows. Hero who had rockets raised 4 bb preflop and got 3-bet by a villain who had a pair of eights. This is a 3-bet light with has a high component of bluff and normally cannot withstand a 4-bet, because a solid player will 4-bet with a rangethat dominates low or medium pairs.

Hero 4-bet but villain called, which is almost always a bad play in a full ring game, and quite bad in a 6-max game as well. As you have guessed there was a bad surprise in the following cards. The flop came 2♥5♦6♣, and hero increased his pot equity from 80% to 87% with his overpair. Then came the 9♣ and the 7&spades, giving villain a runner-runner straight. 

Bad beat often induce tilt. It is very important that you control your reaction after a bad beat orcooler. Do not let the bad beat pain overwhelm you and do not seek immediate revenge. This is the recipe for additional losses.

The best way to understand how painful a bad beat can be is to watch one of Phil Hellmuth numerous online poker videos. The poker brat will get crazy if he gets a bad beat. You can check this nice bad beat video, but we spared you and Phil behaves very nicely in this one.

Bad Beats Jackpots

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One interesting development in online poker is that a number of online poker rooms such asPartyPoker are trying to leverage on the notion of bad beat by offering Bad Beat Jackpots. The idea is that if one player takes what is considered an improbable enough poker bad beat, he will be rewarded with the jackpot.

All players at the table will also share some of that bad beat jackpot as well as all players who played at other tables of the same limit, but to a much smaller extent.

Note that these poker rooms do not make a distinction between cooler and bad beat. The minimum threshold for a hand to qualify as a bad beat is typically at least a Four of a Kind 8's defeated by an even stronger hand, such as a higher quad or a straight flush.

The largest ever bad beat jackpot as of 12/10/2008 (as this will certainly increase) was awarded at a 6-max $0.5/$1 Fixed-Limit Hold' em poker table for the astronomical amount of $821,670.

Your Poker Table Image

Table image is one aspect of poker and online poker that can only be understood with experience. This is a perfect example demonstrating how poker is based on psychology, mental pictures inferred from incomplete information, and ultimatelydeception for those who know how to abuse this concept.In a nutshell, your table image in poker represents what other people at the table think about the way you play poker. If you play online poker at a high traffic room such as Full Tilt Poker, a large proportion of the players at your table will not know you from before.

The only information that they have about you is the hands that they have seen you play so far in the current session. From a small sample of hands, they need to infer your playing style.

The concept of table image applies to all form of poker, ring games, tournaments, full ring, 6-max, holdem, omaha, etc. Indeed it applies to many types of games and even to chess. Many great masters have won big titles by changing their style, such as Kasparov when he defeated Karpov for the world title.

Use your Poker Table Image

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For illustration of the table image concept in poker, let us say that you have been playing at one online table for about one hour with a few unknowns for a total of fifty hands. The question is how much difference could there be between the way you played these fifty hands, and your real playing style. The simple answer is: it depends.

Usually 50 hands will suffice to provide a pretty good picture of how a player plays poker.Maniacs can be spotted very rapidly as they dictate most of the action at a table. Conversely a rock will not attract attention, but will be labeled as such if you use a head-up display. The key is to use a poker HUD that will profile all players quickly.

If you are new to online poker, you need to know that regular players will very quickly detect you as a novice player because the HUD does not lie. From the beginning of your online poker career, you should focus on having correct VPIP/PFR/AG in order not to look like a fish and attract the floating sharks.

The more interesting aspect of poker table image is that sometimes you can use it to your advantage, and some renowned players like Mike Caro are famous for their table image manipulation. In the case of this 50 hands example, imagine that you normally play a quite standard style somewhere between LAG & TAG, and that you were mostly dealt bad cards, hence you have folded a lot in the current session.

For players who do not know you, you will appear like a very cautious rock only playing premium hands. One way to use your current table image given this situation is to start making some aggressive moves with hands that you would normally fold. You should steal the blinds more frequently. You should attempt a few pre-flop raises or 3-bets in position if the players in front of you do not seem too dangerous.

Change your Poker Table Image by mixing your game

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The result of having developed a very tight image "by chance" is that you should now expect a lot of respect from your observant opponents who consider you like a solid player even though they do not really know how you play poker. Change gear now and start to increase your VPIP/PFR. If you become loose enough, your image will deteriorate to the point where some of your opponents will start doubting your bets.

This is part of what is called mixing your game. At this stage you want to start building the image of a loose or very loose player. You may attempt some cheap bluffs, and if you get finally caught, this is not only bad news.

Now your image is the one of a loose fish with no credibility. Your image has totally changed and most players will have forgotten that they initially though that you were a rock. Anyway after one hour of online poker, half the players will have changed and will have only seen your more recent image.

You are now waiting for premium cards or for flopping a very strong hand. This is when your new table image will pay off. Bet aggressively and get called or raised by unbelievers. This is how you win the big pots, by making people call your huge hands.

Let us say that this session lasted 100 hands, the first 50 you played like a rock, the last 50 very LAG. The average of these 100 hands will appear like an average TAG-LAG style with nothing noteworthy. But what the HUD cannot tell (not yet) is that you mixed your game a lot and projected the wrong image in order to mislead your generously donating opponents.

Using your table image at the poker table depends on how observant your opponents are, but note that all players are observant to some extent. Also note that image has some "latency".

Say, if you are perceived as a rock and start bluffing like a psycho maniac just escaped from the asylum. It will take a few hands for your opponents to adjust. Initially they will tend to always fold to your bets. Quickly you will tend to always getting called. Master the latency and you have mastered the mixing style strategy.

Table image is one of the weapons in the arsenal of great players. Use it for yourself and know when your opponents are using it against you by changing gear and trying to lull you and your chips.

Playing video poker online can be great fun, and can be experienced from wherever in the world you are. For example, there are many online poker UK websites which offer a great range of online poker games, complete with their own signup offers and bonuses, and at some websites you can even play video poker slots, a twist on playing slot machines.