There are no hard and fast rules for determining how much you can afford, but there are guidelines that suggest how much cash you should have on hand to get into the game in the first place. Some experts say that you should have at least 50 times the size of the Big Blind (BB) before you get into a Limit Hold’em game. That means if the blinds are $1 and $2, you shouldn’t sit down unless you have $100 to play with. A bankroll of that size should allow you to be able to weather the inevitable swings in the game. Other experts will say though, that you should have at least 1000 times the Big Blind. So – to be safe, split the difference and try to have 500 times the Big Blind on hand at the start of play.

During the course of play the ratio of bankroll to Big Blind will change. If you started out with $1000 but quickly see that cut in half – you have two choices: risk losing it all fairly quickly or, drop down in limit. That’s one of the benefits of online poker: you can move up or down in limits fairly easily. If your bankroll ratio (bankroll/BB) is getting low, dropping down to a lower limit game will give you more time to build up your bankroll.

In a tournament of course, you can’t change tables – and in No Limit (NL) games you could be risking everything you have on every hand so.. in either case your beginning bankroll should be larger. The rule of thumb is to have access to 40 times as much as the tournament entry fee, or 100 times the big blind in a NL game. If the tournament fee is $100, you shouldn’t sit down unless you have $4000.

With those ratios in mind, the clear suggestion is that you start out low, and slow, and work your way up.

If you can keep a respectable ratio at a lower limit, that may indicate that you are ready to move up.

If you can’t, go back to Free Play and work on your game.

First of all, note that there is a difference between a player that is strategically aggressive – and a bully. When you have the biggest stack at the table, it’s important to remain aggressive. A smart player also varies his or her approach, to keep other players guessing. A bully is someone who is unreasonably aggressive, betting big early and often in an effort to scare off the competition and build a stack with small pots.
If you are confident that you are really facing a bully, there are certain strategies that can help you defeat them.

BAIT THE TRAP: One approach to dealing with a bully requires that you adopt a conservative approach, getting out early if you have a suspect pair, and generally confirming the bully’s suspicions that you can be intimidated. When you do have a really good starting pair or see a strong hand developing, try to get the bully to do the betting. Position is important here and should be factored in. Move in slowly. If you bet big early the bully will probably fold. Let the bully build the pot – like a raccoon moving into the trap, then spring it at the last moment.

FIRE WITH FIRE: The other way to deal with bullies is to bully them. This a technique that works best when you can afford to lose a few large pots, usually after you’ve been at the table a while. If you start out aggressive, and lose a few big pots you may not be able to stick to this strategy for long. So again, begin conservatively and, when you have a reasonably large stack, switch gears and bully that bully around.

Survival: That’s your first objective. You need to make it to the next hand, and from there to the next table, and from there to the remaining tables, and so on.. To do that you can’t just sit on the beach and wait. You have to get off your butt and do a little exploration of the island, take a few chances. You have to find food (chips), water (chips), and to a way to deny these necessities (chips) to the other passengers. So what’s your strategy?

Weapons: What do you have in your arsenal? What makes poker interesting is that everyone has access to the same weapons: rules of the game, knowledge of the odds, insights into character: it’s how you handle those weapons that makes the difference. Your weapons are only as effective as your expertise in handling them. Know the odds, and know your opponents (or at least be actively assessing them as you play)

The Stack: As you move through a tournament each level will bring with it a new crop of generally more skilled players, bigger blinds, and greater pressure. At all times you should be aware of your stack, and how to protect it. While you need to have a consistent strategy and stick to it, that strategy must be adapted to circumstance. You won’t take the same risks in the early part of a tournament as you will toward the latter stages. Be patient, but know when to strike. And when you are confident you hold a winning hand, work the table to build that pot.

Energy and Focus. The difference between a champion and a good player is often very simple: focus. We’ve all seen the speed skater heading toward the finish line suddenly ‘lose an edge’. He may have been the strongest and the fastest, but a momentary lapse of focus and everything is lost. You may have the greatest knowledge of the game, a sure-fire strategy, and a big stack of chips but if you lose focus, aren’t paying attention, and let yourself get pulled into a duel with another player who is paying attention, that may be all she wrote. To maintain your energy and focus in a long tournament take advantage of any breaks to eat well, drink water (never alcohol), stretch and revive. If you get a chance, take a relaxed walk around the block, a bathroom break, and maybe wash your face and brush your teeth. (Back at the table though, don’t let anyone know how refreshed you feel..)

Strategy: No one can tell you what your strategy should be: you know best what works for you. Of course there are plenty of examples (books and books) of strategies that have worked well for others, and a familiarity with these approaches is important. More important to tournament success however, is that your strategy is not obvious to others. Especially at the beginning of a tournament, or when you first sit down at a new table, it’s important to mix it up. Be aggressive one hand. Limp into another. Make a bad play or two. Remember, the good players are paying more attention to how you play, than their own cards. If you don’t mix it up, especially in the beginning, the good players will soon figure you out and – no matter what cards you are dealt, will minimize your effectiveness.

Be Lucky.

Don’t bluff early and often. There are always exceptions but early in a game or a tournament you probably don’t have a good sense of who you are playing against, what their tendencies are and – just as importantly, who they think you are. If you play it tight early on, when and if you choose to bluff the other players will give you a little more leeway.

How many are you up against? Forget who you are playing against for now, just count heads. It’s always easier to bluff one or two, than five or six. The point of bluffing is not to fool some of the people some of the time: it’s to fool one or two people every time. If you bluff early and before too few have folded, the odds are against you.

The Flop. Don’t bluff if the flop has given too many people a shot at a good hand (unless of course, it’s given you a great hand. Then again, that’s not bluffing..) When you bluff after a ragged flop your chances are better, because their chances aren’t too good to begin with.

Down and Outs! Smart players don’t often bluff without some chance at a decent hand. A good time to bluff is often when you are hoping to draw to a straight or flush from an otherwise undistinguished hand. You still have a few outs that could bail you out if your bluff fails.

Odds are ‘Stacked’ Against You. Don’t bluff if your heads-up opponent can afford to lose. If he or she buys the bluff, you’re probably not going to be winning a large pot and, if you lose, you are probably going to be headed home.

Take Your Medicine. Luck often overrules skill. Odds are a great bluff will run head-on into a great hand every so often. When that happens hit the re-set button. Don’t change tactics, or drop bluffing from your repertoire. If you work at bluffing as hard as you work on the other aspects of the game, it will serve you well.

The truth is that they do have knowledge that you don’t possess – yet. The truth is that their cockiness comes, in large part, from knowing the odds.

Come on, admit it: even if you are fairly well versed in the value of various power poker hands, you really don’t know the odds that you will be able to make a particular hand. And without that knowledge you really don’t know when or how strongly to bet. If you’re not confident of your chances – especially from the flop forward, you probably won’t stick around long enough in each hand, to have a shot at big winnings.

The skill you need to develop is called ‘Counting the Outs’.

Outs are cards that give you the hand you are hoping for.

For example… you are dealt two diamonds and on the flop two more diamonds appear. Assuming that there’s no possibility of a better hand for you than a flush, how many outs do you have? In this case counting the outs is simple: you have four of the 13 total diamonds available, so there are nine possible outs.

Consider the difference between going for a ‘gut-shot’ straight draw and an ‘open-ended ‘ straight draw. The ‘gut-shot’ draw is missing one card in the middle to complete the draw. Only one card can make that draw happen – so you have four chances (1×4), or outs. The ‘open-ended’ draw is four cards that can make a straight if they get the right card on either end. Therefore there are eight outs (2×4).

Which is the better bet? The gut shot, or the open-ended straight draw?

Let’s make it even simpler. After the flop all you’ve got is a pair of Twos. What are your odds of getting a third, to make a set? How many Twos are in the deck? Four! Minus the two you already have, you are left with two Outs. Get it? And if you have only two outs (or chances) to make a set, that’s not exactly something to bet the house on.

Of course what makes poetry interesting is that, if you know the odds of the outs, and your opponents knows that you do, it becomes a bit easier to bluff. But that’s another story, for another time.

For now, make yourself a chart of possible hands and flops, and figure out the outs.

Remember too, that as you are figuring out your outs, you should also be considering what your opponents might be able to do with the flop. It may be that some of the cards that you are looking for, could make their hand as well. The rule here would be to subtract those cards from your total outs.

Once you know your outs, you’re going to be in on some big pots. Once you know your outs that guy with the cocky, close-mouthed grin – that guy will be you!

Do you really want to know the history of poker?

Poker is now, right now. It’s the fix you’re in, the cards you’ve been dealt.

The history of poker goes only as far back as your last hand.

Not buying that?

How about, the history of poker is.. a bit muddled, a bit muddied. Some people will tell you its origins are in Persia, in a game called As Nas, which might explain some of the problems we’ve been having over there in recent years. Others disagree.

Wikipedia speaks of a German game called ‘Pochspiel’, which translates literally as ‘the poke game’, and means something along the lines of, ‘okay bud, if you don’t believe me, put your money where your mouth is’. That German game, and the other European variations that came after, had one thing in common, bluffing.

Anyway, whether it was with a 20-card deck (which is the way they often played it in the eighteenth century and sounds like a game of pure bluff), or the standard 52 cards, a game that required the ‘temerity’ of what we now understand as poker, made it over to New Orleans in the early part of the nineteenth century and like jazz music, spread from there through that great artery of industry and commerce, the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river system, into the very marrow of America.

Poker was, in those early days, already synonymous with the pioneer spirit, as it was the game of magnificent Paddle-wheel riverboats that were loaded with equal parts cotton and culture. Mark Twain – who began his adult life on the Mississippi, knew the game, and chronicled the American taste for risk taking.

I like the jazz metaphor myself, because at its best, poker is a kind of beautiful improvisation. Coltrane could take a few basic notes and turn them into a religious experience, and a talented card player could turn, perhaps, a humble Ten and a Two into enough folding money to fill a ten gallon hat.

Anyway, somehow, Poker got into our blood, and it might have stayed there, hidden, a subtle influence on literature, an easy way to add character to a cowboy movie, a diversion for bachelors and college kids, would have stayed that way if it were not for technology.

Really, and once again, the history of poker is most honestly defined by the last hand, and the last winning hand dealt to the history of poker was the Internet – and to a lesser degree, cable television.

Yes, in 1970 the first World Series of Poker championship was held, and out of that smoke-filled backroom emerged the now almost mythic personas of Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson and others. And yes Hollywood, which is always looking for authenticity, so they can market the hell out of it, came calling. But in terms of the average, fun-loving person, The World Series of Poker was not a revolution. In 1970 there was more of an audience for pocket billiards (as least in England), than poker. There were Rock Stars in 1970, but none of them were poker players.

But when Internet access to online poker and the hole-card camera were introduced at the end of the 20th Century, ‘pochspiel’ finally came of age.

Suddenly it wasn’t just heavy-set mustachioed oil-men from Dallas that could play the game at a high level. Suddenly it wasn’t just the stuff of eighteenth century melodramas where men in powdered wigs lost fortunes by candlelight.

Suddenly an unknown kid named Chris Moneymaker could not only hold his own, online, but without a moustache or a fondness for Bourbon he could enter and win that World Series bracelet.

The history of poker is there, right now, face down on the felt.

Real-money poker – at least the online kind, is illegal in this country. Attached to anti-terrorist legislation signed by President GW Bush in 2005, were regulations known as the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which prohibits US Funds from being transferred from a financial institution to an Internet gambling site. The legislation is in a kind of legal limbo right now, but it has already had the effect of closing many online sites and driving the poker business overseas.

If you’re reading this the chances are that you are a poker player, and want the ability to play for money online. It is convenient, fun – and if you are an American, could mean billions in tax revenues that could be put to good use.

Look at the revenues from your local, government-run lottery. In many states it is mandated that profits from government lotteries go directly to schools, arts programs, or local government. The revenue that could be realized from online poker, could do even more.

Right now, if you’re sitting at home, do more than play a few hands of poker. Take the time to write your Congressman or Senator a little note, asking them to consider the benefits of a regulated, taxed, American-based online poker industry.

Such a government regulated industry could add strict penalties to a system that is now self-regulated. Right now, the fox is guarding the hen-house. Right now the top players are the stock-holders. Right now professionals are colluding with one another to take someone else’s money. In the past several years there have been numerous stories of Poker Industry insiders manipulating software.

Poker is an individual game (or should be) with you – the player, taking on all comers. The fears of the established professional sports (football, baseball, basketball) that legalized gambling could cast doubts on outcomes, is real – but a separate issue altogether. In fact re-writing the UIGEA regulations to include additional protections for our traditional sports, is critical.

Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s make sure that poker players, baseball fans, and those who have a casual interest in these past-times, have both their freedoms ensured and and their checkbooks protected.

Tell your representative that you support sensible, comprehensive online gambling legislation.

But poker just goes on and on, without regard to the light, without a concern for the weather, with not even a nod toward Puxsatawney Phil’s prognostication. And that can be depressing. Especially now, in the dead of winter.

In poker the game is never called because of rain or snow, or even darkness. In poker the darker the better.

But does that bode well for this new, universally accepted, globally practiced game? Perhaps when it was just Doyle and Amarillo and Telly Savalas, the excess of poker was a big part of its appeal. But today – when anyone can sit in at the main table, there seems to be a clear need for a poker pre or post-season.

Wouldn’t it be great to head to – lets say, Albuquerque in the off-season (August/September), enjoy the mountain air, and watch the top players just fooling around. Maybe it could be a mini-season with all pots going to charity? Maybe there could be an all-card playing pre-season where Bridge players and Pinochle fanatics and Poker players mixed with tarot card readers, and bubblegum card collectors.

Sure I know, poker players want to maintain the mystique, but that mystique will always be there because it comes from the players, from their characters, their idiosyncrasies. Poker is now as mainstream as horse-racing, as accepted as Jazz. It needs to find both its season, and its off-season. It needs to realize it is a part of the everyday and, so as not to wear out its welcome, it needs to take a little break every now and then.

Okay so I thought I’d give ‘Rush Poker’ a try, on the Full Tilt site. They show you how to play, offer a $5 bonus for trying, but then I can’t figure out how to get started. Is it only for real money? I’ve got a few hundred ‘play’ chips? A $5 bonus for trying something that looks like it could suck a lot of money out of my pocket in minutes, doesn’t seem like a good bet.

Okay I figure it out, and got into a game, and lost every chip I had in under five minutes. Mistakes, I’ve made a few, but then again, here’s a few to mention.. I went in on a no-limit game. In one hand, in about 15 seconds or less, I lost 2000 or more chips. I stayed alive a few more hands, won two in fact, but then went all in, by default, and was stoned. I shouldn’t have played at all without a better sense of when to go in and when to get out, fold. Then again, it seemed more real, more like real poker, like what you see on TV, might in fact be better ‘training’ for real poker. It happened so fast, it didn’t even hurt.

“I went back, sure, after a week off, and I was pretty bad. I started off with a few hundred chips, lost those, tapped some more of my ‘winnings’, lost those. I started to think I knew what I was doing. I had a strategy. I folded if I didn’t have a minimum hand, face card suited, or at least a pair, something. But it seemed like those at the table with me were more risky, and were lucky too. I thought, at first, that I needed to play for real money, if low stakes. But then I thought, if you can’t figure out how to win for fun, what the hell do you think you’re doing? I am not sure that makes sense. Maybe playing for fun alone, no cash, is just putting yourself at the mercy of the odds. You have to beat the odds, don’t you? I mean if you can’t see the other people’s faces, their real faces – then all you can go by is the odds, and I suppose, if you were real paranoid, the way the funny heads played. But do people really follow other players around, compile statistics? For what? Maybe if I was playing for real, I mean real money. But is that the same thing? I mean is poker not just my cards against yours? Is it mean against the machine?”