You are able to play your best poker only when you play in the level that is right for you. So, it is very important to think and to know, which level is right for you?
The money you put in the game must matter to you little bit, but it can't matter too much.
If you play at too low stakes, the money you had put in to game doesn't matter to you. That means, neither does the game either. You start to think with many hands: "Oh well, this doesn't matter. Let's see what happens." And that is terrible mistake!
That attitude grows in to your backbone. It starts to affect in to your player attitude and all your games and in to all your hands you play. "It doesn't matter." Then you are very far away from your best game. You won't become to be winning player.
As an opposite, if you play at too high stakes, you start to think too much about the money and not about the game itself. You can't play your best game, if you think in your mind: "I got to win this game. I got to win this hand." If you think even at once like that during the game, you won't win.
Playing at too high stakes makes you scary and shy. Those words doesn't include in to vocabulary when talking about playing your best poker.
Playing at the right level the stakes are not too high, so that you can be bold and aggressive and in the top of your game. The stakes are not too low either, so that the money you have put in to game matters to you just a right amount, so that you want to win that game.
And there is the difference: "Must win", "Want to win" and "It doesn't matter". Play only on the level you always want to win! Not on the level in where you must win or winning doesn't matter.
As a conclusion, your bankroll is more important for you when choosing the level than your skills.
Let's say you have in your bank-account 500'000 dollars. You are just starting a poker and decide to deposit 10'000 dollars in to poker-site. Now when you have 10'000 dollars in your poker account it doesn't make any sense for you to play (for example) 10 dollars sit&go-games! The money is too low. You start to play with attitude "This doesn't matter" and it becomes to grow in your general attitude. You might as well burn your money.
The other way around: iif you are very experienced poker-player, and your bankroll is 500 dollars. Then you shouldn't go and play (for example) $1,00 cash-tables. The risks are too high for you and you think more about the money than game itself.
The world's best bank-roll manager, Chris Ferguson, says player should never put more than 5% of his bank-roll in to game. That is good advise.
And... from the experience I can say, there are very good and very bad players in all the levels. The game itself doesn't change very much, no matter if you play at $0,10 cash-tables or high-stakes. So play at the level in where you can play your best poker, according to your current bank-roll.
2 comments:
Thank you for this. Made me think about my game. I think this text got right to the point and I have to think my attitude towards poker in a new light. I have been playing wrong levels all the time! Thank you thank you thank you!
Thank you so much for this post! Personally, I realized that the problem with playing lower levels wasn't that I didn't care about the money, because it was only 2ct here and 20ct there, but the players were just so bad that I didn't have any clue what they were doing. Now that I moved up the ranks a a bit and play higher buy-ins, my results have improved drastically, and my strategies seem to work much better! Thank you!
Post a Comment