Home    Poker Rules    Hand Ranking     Poker Terms     Pot Odds     Online Poker     Links     UK Card rooms                                                                                         UK Poker Players

Online Poker Strategy

Signing Up	Online Poker Tells
Building An Online Bankroll	Player Notes, Hand Histories, Netstats & All In
The Lobby	How To Deal With Support
Playing Two Games	Paranoia & Cheating Tips
Monitor Stack Sizes & Prompt Play	The Rake & The Conclusions
Careful In Using Turn Buttons

Building an Online Poker Bankroll

Building an online poker bankroll and keeping it are fundamentally important because afterall we all want to make money.  The first big difference you come across between playing online and in a casino is when you go to buy chips. Some of the online card rooms limit you to $500 a day and $2000 a week in purchases. When they are offering $30/60 as a limit, the daily/weekly restrictions seem limited to say the least. No decent poker player can play $30/60 with a $500 bankroll. One of the fist times I played was at a $5/10 ring game, I lost the first three hands and was down nearly $170.  I could not carry on playing at my best after this hit, taking into account the swings involved when trying to play a sensible poker strategy. If I were to lose the remaining $330 of my bankroll, I was finished for the day. If you want to win at ring game poker then you have to put in the hours. If all poker games are equal, and you consistanly play the same winning way, the more hands you play, the more you will eventually make. So, by not being able to play poker because you have lost your bankroll for the day is not too clever.  

When playing poker in a casino, you can grab more cash from your pocket at any time you see fit. This is not the case with online poker rooms. The first thing you will need to do is build an online bankroll. No matter if you are properly bankrolled to play $40/80 in a casino, when you first join, you should avoid playing anything higher than $5/10 for 48 hours. (This also makes sense just to get used to the technology.) If you want to play bigger than $5/10, charge up $500 the first day, then $500 twenty-four hours later (even if you don't play), then $500 the next day. Now with a $1500 bankroll you can carefully play $10/20 -- at least as long as you stay above $500. If you sink that low, it is important to again play smaller, even $3/6 or $2/4, until a week passes and you can again add another $1500 to your bankroll. Basically, you can't play correctly online until you have accumulated a correct bankroll.

The online cardrooms have their reasons for limiting buy-ins, from protecting players from blowing their brains out in one session to not wanting to deal with substantial contested credit card charges. While these are legitimate concerns on the cardrooms' part, the restricted buy-in is an artificial obstacle to winning that has to be overcome by new players. After establishing a record of play over a period of time, players can Email customer support for an increase in the different bankroll restrictions.

The current best deposit and withdrawal choice available for online players is through Neteller. Its website details convenient ways to get paid, including direct deposit into your checking account. Even though it might seem complicated at first, Neteller is an easy way to promptly and securely move money around online, and into your pocket. also now it is pretty easy to add cash to your online account via your credit/debit card.