Build your Bankroll with Bonuses
In order to make a lot of money playing online poker, you need to play at least medium stakes.
Although you can win a lot of pots at the micro-limits, the $.01-$.02 and $.02-$.05 games, even the best players can’t win more than a dollar or two per hour per table playing that low, the pots simply are not big enough.
If you want to win a lot of money playing poker, you want to build your bankroll up so that it is big enough for you to play in $1-$2 NL Holdem poker games, or at least $.50 - $1 games.
Unfortunately in order to play at those levels and keep the up and down swings from breaking your bankroll, you need a fair amount of money. A general rule of thumb is that you should have 15 times the buy in for whatever level you are playing to mitigate possible variance in your results. Since it is always recommend to buy in to a table for the maximum, which is generally 100 times the big blind, that means to play the $.50-$1 games, you should have at least $1500 available for poker. To play the $1-$2 games you need at least $3000 for poker.
Many people, especially if you are just starting the game, simply don't have that much money to invest in poker. They might have a couple hundred dollars, but not thousands of dollars.
Fortunately there is a way to quickly build your poker bankroll using bonuses that online poker sites offer to get you to play with them.
Detailed below is an example of how you can build your bankroll from $200, which is enough to play in the $.05-$.10 or $.10 to $.20 games up to $2000-$3000 which is enough to play in some medium stakes games. Although you will need to be a winning player in order to do this, taking advantage of this method will drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to grow your bankroll at the lower stakes.
Start Your Game At PokerStars
To start, you deposit your $200 at PokerStars, doing so yields you a $50 deposit bonus, which brings your total bankroll up to $250. Your goal is now to play the $0.10-$0.20 games of No Limit holdem at Poker Stars and double your bankroll up to $500. Fortunately Pokerstars is a good place to begin your poker playing. It is one of the top poker sites in the business, and always has games going.
At low limits, a very achievable win rate for a good poker player is 5 big blinds per 100 hands. Many winning players can win more than this, in the order of 10-15 big blinds per 100 hands over large sample sizes while multi-tabling 4-10 tables. Although a 10-15 big blind / 100 hands is not achievable at larger limits, it is at these small limits.
You may have heard the expression that a good poker player tries to win one big bet per hour. The rule of thumb is generally applied to live poker games, where they usually deal around 20 hands per hour. Online poker games deal many more hands per hour, and since so many players multi-table, win rates are usually expressed in big bets (sometimes big blinds) per 100 hands. Thus 1 Big Bet in live games = 2 big blinds / 20 hands. That is equivalent to 10 big blinds / 100 hands, which is what the best players can make at the small limits.
If you start with $250, and want to win another $250, that is achievable in the course of a month at these limits. You play $0.10-$0.20 poker and practice good starting hand selection and understand how to play position. You avoid overplaying your good but not great hands such as top pair, and maximize your opportunities whenever you have a really big hand.
Those traits can be enough to allow you to win 5 big blinds per 100 hands, which means you will win $1 for every 100 hands you play. Since you are playing tight poker, and avoiding situations which would make you make tough decisions after the flop, you are able to play 4 tables at the same time. Each full ring table sees 70 hands per hour (average). Thus you see 280 hands per hour, win $1 per 100 hands, and so win $2.8 per hour. It takes you $250 / $2.8 = 90 hours of play, which is approximately 3 hours a day for a month, until you have reached your goal and won $250. Your bankroll is now $500 and it is time to move onto a new site and new limits.
The Full Tilt Poker Bonus Will Double Your Bankroll
Full Tilt Poker offers a 100% deposit bonus up to $600. You can move your entire $500 bankroll over there and get a bonus of $500. Unfortunately, you don't get the bonus immediately. You have to clear the bonus for it to be paid into your account. Fortunately, you can clear the bonus by doing to exact same thing you were going to do anyway, by playing poker.
Your $500 bankroll is large enough to mix it up in the $0.25-$0.50 No Limit Texas Holdem games. Since you just moved up in the limits the play is going to be slightly harder than at the lower limit. You will find less people playing complete crap, less people willing to call your large bets with the second best hand, and more players playing tight aggressive poker. However, the poker game is still very beatable at the $0.25-$0.50 level and if you play solid poker you can keep winning money. For some period of time your win rate will decrease, but as you get the hang of the game and your poker skills improve, you can get back up to 5 big bets per 100 hands.
As you are playing poker, your $500 bonus will begin to clear. It will clear in increments of 10%, so for $500 you will get it $50 at a time. You clear the bonus by earning Full Tilt Poker points. 16.6 Full Tilt Points will clear $1 of bonus, so every time you earn 830 points you will clear $50 of bonus. You earn 1 Full Tilt point for every $1 of rake the site takes at a table you are playing. Full Tilt Poker takes a 5% rake, and at low limits an average pot size of 5-10 times the big blind is a good estimate. If we assume an average pot size of $4.00 (8 times the big blind) FTP takes a rake of $0.20. This means you will earn 20 points for every 100 hands, which is equivalent to $1.20 for every 100 hands. Since without the bonus your hourly rate would only be 5 big blinds / 100 hands, or $2.50 per 100 hands, the bonus is netting you an extra 50% over the money you would expect to win anyway.
You stay at Full Tilt Poker until you clear the bonus. Since you clear $1.20 / 100 hands, it takes you approximately 40,000 hands to clear the entire $500 bonus. Over the 40,000 hands you have been winning $2.50 per 100 hands, so you win an additional $1000. Four tabling can clear 280 hands per hour, so it takes 142 hours to clear the entire bonus. You can clear it over the course of two months playing a little over 2 hours a day.
By the time you finish at Full Tilt Poker you have $2,000 ($500 you started with + $500 bonus + $1,000 won at FTP). It is now time to move up in the limits and change sites in order to get more bonus money.
Bodog Poker Has One Of The Best Bonuses Online
Bodog offers a 110% bonus up to $500. They also have a monthly 100% reload bonus up to $500. Since you have a bankroll of $2000 you can earn that entire $500 bonus, and whenever you clear a bonus you can move more money in to get another $500 bonus. Bodog clears it's bonuses by giving $1 in bonus for every 10 Bodog points you earn. Bodog points are similar to Full Tilt points and accrue at an approximate rate of 1 point for every $1 of rake.
With a $2,000 bankroll, plus your bonuses as they clear, you have enough money to play $0.50-$1 poker. Play at this level is going to be tougher, but fortunately poker is generally softer at Bodog than many of the other sites. Part of this is because many of their sports book players decide to join in the poker game, and aren't as skilled. Also Bodog limits multi-tabling to 3 tables, which keeps many of the grinders off of the site. Since you just moved up in limits, 3 tables is a good number to play. When you beat 3 tables consistently at these limits you can move to a site which offers unlimited multi-tabling, until then take the easy money at Bodog.
When you start play at $0.50-$1, it is a good time to invest in some tools to help you improve your game. One of the best poker tools is Poker Tracker. It will make a database of every hand you play and quickly show you which hands and which positions you are misplaying. Using Poker Tracker to tighten your game and plug leaks can drastically increase the amount of money you win.
Not counting bonuses, winning 5 big blinds per 100 hands at $0.5-$1 yields $5 per 100 hands. 3 tabling the poker game lets you play 210 hands per hour which equates to a rate of $10.50 per hour. The bonuses will add approximately 50% to that, yielding a rate of $15.75 / hour.
If you are able to achieve that kind of poker success then you are well on your way to making a lot of money playing poker. After you have built your bankroll up above $4,000 the poker bonuses won't be as important to you. More important is choosing the right site and right table which allows you to maximize your winnings. Fortunately by moving your money around as you were building your bankroll, you were able to experience some of the top poker sites out there, and can choose which one suits you best.
