John Stephens

So, you want to learn to play poker?

Wait, you say you know how to play poker?

Excellent. I’m glad you already know, because I’m a bad teacher for this particular game. The reason I’m sitting here talking to you today is because many people want to go from playing poker to making money playing poker. Today, I hope to start you down that path.

First, it is important to discuss the two ways in which you can make money playing poker. I might be the only person who sees things in these ways, but in my mind these are your only two choices for making money while playing poker.

1. Go to a card room and play the game live.

2. Play the game online.

That’s it. If you want to make money at poker you have to do it in one of those two ways. Now, that may seem simplistic, as there are many different poker games, but all of them come down to playing in one of two places.

So, let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages to each place you could play. We’ll stick to the general ideas here again, with online poker and live poker as the two items for comparison.

Live Poker

Playing poker in a live poker room means that you leave your house, head to a casino or poker room, and sit around and play with real people. There are numerous reasons that this is good, and numerous reasons why this is bad. Some of these reasons are practical, and some of them are far from it. First, let’s take a look at the good in playing in card rooms.

First, you get the opportunity to interact with real people. This is good, both from a development of social skills standpoint and a poker standpoint. Interacting with real people, watching them play the game, will help you improve your poker skills. Reading a ‘tell’ is an important skill for people to have, not just in poker, but frequently in life. This skill can only be learned at a live poker table.

Second, being at a live poker table gives you the opportunity to handle cards, which I feel leads to a greater appreciation for the history and majesty of this game.

Third, you can show off the chip tricks you practice at home in your spare time.

The fourth good reason to play live poker is really simple...two words actually...

Free Booze!

Now, after that last one, where is the bad in live poker? Some of what I want to talk about isn’t necessarily bad, but are downfalls I see when playing live poker.

First, you’ll have to shower. Now, you may have just laughed. I was being serious. Many poker players are inherently lazy and just don’t want to shower, shave and get dressed. You really need to do these things if you’re going to play live poker.

Second, you have to look at the “taxes” on earnings at the live poker table. Regardless of where you play a table game, live or online, you’re looking at losing money from the pots you win in the form of a rake. For those of you who only play home games a rake is the money the house takes out of every pot. It allows them to keep giving you free booze and to the pay the dealer.

Now, the other part of those “taxes” is something that you’ll only see at a live table. This is the toke, short for token, that a person with class tosses the dealer on each hand they win. It could be as small as $1.00 or so, or in rare cases as large as $5.00. The fact is though that dealers are woefully underpaid and the toke is important to keep them there to deal you cards.

When I play live, I like to toke liberally. I feel like the dealers deserve it. On the other hand, I’m a cheapskate who would rather keep that money for myself.

The third major problem with playing at a live table is that it is less efficient than playing online. At a live table you will see far fewer hands each hour. If your goal, as we’ve stated, is to make money, this can be a detriment.

Online Poker

So, now that we’ve looked at the live game, let’s take a look at the online game. For our purposes, online poker is online poker. You can play anywhere you’d like and it doesn’t matter for our case here.

We looked at the advantages and disadvantages to live poker, and in many cases these are simply reversed.

The first major disadvantage to online poker is that you don’t leave your house. I have already seen people who were caught in online poker and didn’t realize they hadn’t seen the sun in fifteen or more days. I’m not a doctor, I’m an editor, but I still feel qualified to offer this medical advice.

That ain’t healthy.

Regardless of whether you play online or live, it’s important to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a healthy balance between poker and reality. In the poker players I know who play exclusively live this is rarely a problem, as each day and each night they go home and then back to the card rooms or casinos where they play. In the people I know who play exclusively online this is frequently a problem, where too much time is spent staring at a computer.

The other major problem with online poker is the turnover at a table. If you go to a casino, it’s possible to sit at a table with the same people for hours at a time. You get to know them, learn their tendencies, and maybe make some new friends.

In contrast, online poker is frenetic. I grab a seat at a table and frequently find that fifteen minutes later I’m one of only two or three people left from the first hand I played. This makes the game a little less interesting because you can’t really learn the way people think or play.

The Good Outweighs the Bad

That said, if you want to make money playing poker, playing online is the place to do it. I will now tell you why.

First, you can play anytime you want, for as long as you want. You have an hour to play, go do it. You don’t have to drive anywhere to do it. It’s right there on the coffee table, or the kitchen table, or wherever your computer is hiding at. You can get in 30 hands or so in many cases in that hour, and make a decent amount of money if the hands go your way.

Compare that to the need to go to a card room, and that hour is now worthless. Go read a book.

Second, the online card rooms are offering great incentives. They have sign-up bonuses for you and bonus money for signing your friends up. Earlier in the article I gave you a great two-word reason to play in poker rooms now here is the great two word reason to play online.

Free money!

Take FullTiltPoker right now. They’re matching your first deposit up to $600.00. Now, you have to play a certain number of hands to get to the point where you’ve received all your money, but what happens when you get there?

Free money!

If you can manage to play your way all the way to the complete $600.00 bonus and never lose money or make money, you’ve made $600.00. Just play even money poker and FullTilt will give you $600.00. If it takes you a month and you’ve made your $600.00 in bonus money that’s free money.

If you lost some money playing during the month, that $600.00 can keep you in the game while you improve as a poker player. Now, if you’re managing to win, and you get that $600.00 back, it could mean a leap into some higher limit games.

The third thing I want to talk about is the sheer number of hands you can play. If you’re going to win 15% of all hands you play then you want to play as many hands as possible to win more money. Playing online allows you see tons more hands than playing live. I feel like this accounts for the huge success of the young computer savvy players at the World Series the last two years.

We’ve talked now about where to play poker if you want to make money, now let’s talk about how. This is particularly directed at players with limited monetary resources. Take a journey with me through this step-by-step guide to making money at poker online.

Step One—Deposit $100.00 in your online poker account Step Two—Play Free Money games to learn the software Step Three—Play $.50/$1.00 limit hold’em games.

At this point the steps require some explanation, so let’s look at step three. You’re going to play $.50/$1.00 for two reasons. The first reason is that it’s a cheap way to make sure you understand the software and the game of poker. The second reason is that the players are really bad.

You’re going to play a very tight but very aggressive style of poker. You’re going to raise with pocket Aces in late position pre-flop and you’re going to throw away pocket nines in late position if someone else already raised in front of you. You are going to play when you have the best cards and fold when you don’t.

This is an important skill to learn, and at these tables is the best place to do it. You can expect to lose about $50.00 if this is your first foray into poker. Your goal here is to play 1000 hands and be over $100.00. If you’re able to double your $100.00 into $200.00, that is ideal.

If at any time you’ve lost all $100.00 at the $.50/$1.00 table, find a new game. Poker isn’t for you at this point.

Now, once you have played more than 1000 hands and have more than $100.00, preferably more than $150.00, it’s time for Step Four.

Step Four—Move up to $1.00/$2.00 tables

Some people will tell you to play multiple $.50/$1.00 tables instead of doing this. There is more money to be made playing at this table well than at two or three lower tables and doing it poorly. Your goal here is to turn your $100.00 or $150.00 into $300.00. At $300.00 you can move into where the real money is at.

Step Five—Move up to the $2.00/$4.00 and $3.00/$6.00 tables.

Too many people have too much money. This is a fact of life, and if you’ve turned $100.00 into $300.00 you’re now ready to take real money from dumb people.

Online $3/$6 games are filled with people we refer to as ‘calling stations.’ These people believe any two cards can win the game and will call any bets you make all the way to the river just for the one in eighty chance that they catch runner-runner flush. They will lose a ton of money in the long run will be happy when they make their flush and beat your pocket rockets.

You love these people. Earlier I advocated playing super tight on the lower end tables, and while I didn’t repeat that in the section on $1/$2 tables, I wanted to make sure you understood that. As you play online poker you will learn that the tightest players always end up leaving with the most money.

Using Your Resources

I majored in journalism in college. I have problems doing 2x2 without a calculator. But when I play poker online, I have a calculator. More importantly, I have a spreadsheet.

Want to know what the odds of catching any ten and any Jack are on the turn and river?

Let’s say you have 89o in the hole. The flop came with 27A. You want to know what the chances are that you’ll get both the Ten you need and the Jack you need. Here we go.

Row 1 – Column A. We enter in here a simple formula, in this case =4/47. We find out that this is .085, or 8.5%. We have an 8.5% chance of catching either the Ten or Jack on the flop.

Row 2 – Column A. This is another simple formula. We enter =4/46 in this box and find out that we have a .087 (rounded up) chance of catching the other card on the river. So, what’s our chances of actually catching them both?

Row 3 – Column A. In this box enter =A1*A2. You’re going to get an answer of about .0074. You have a less than 1% chance of catching both cards you need. You should fold.

The day will come when you can do this in your head, or maybe not. While you’re playing poker online, you can use the resources available to you to give yourself that edge over the people around you.

The next time I check in with you we’re going to discuss two topics. The first thing we’ll discuss is the art of playing multiple tables online. The second thing I want to talk about is combating boredom during online play.

Until next time, see you online.