Online Poker: A Blueprint for Future Success

Let's speak honestly here. The lower limit online games suck, and have, in fact, sucked for quite some time now. This is no longer 2003, where anyone who understood the basics of hand selection and protecting their hand on the flop could reasonably expect to make 2.5 big bets/ 100 hands on as many as six tables at one time. The glory days are behind us, the fish have been cleaned, and what's left are a ton of multi-tabling grinders who are fighting over the few scraps that weren't devoured in 2005.

That's the God's honest truth, and there's no use pretending it isn't. But how did this happen? Let's look at a few of the contributing factors, and then we'll explore how a low limit online player can combat this ugly change.

First, the online card rooms screwed themselves. They did this in three ways. First, they introduces the ‘6 max' games. There's a reason why you never saw these in a brick and mortar casino, folks, and the reason is obvious; the card room managers wanted to make ‘x' amount of money per table per hour, and they knew if they spread a short handed table then the players there would have to pay twice as much rake. If you're playing at a 10 person table, your share of the rake is x/10. If you're playing 6 max, it's x/6. It doesn't take Isaac Newton to see that so long as ‘x' is a positive number (and the rake is never ‘negative') then the latter quantity is larger then the former. Of course, this assumes the pot size remains constant, but anyone who's ever played 6 max knows that the average pot size in a six man game tends to be close to the same as the pot size in a ten man game. While fewer players are in each hand, those players that elect not to fold pre-flop will put in more money, on average, then the players in a ten handed game, since they're doing more speculative raising and reraising. Thus, the pot sizes in the two games remains close to constant.

Now six max isn't a terrible idea, but it needs to be accompanied by a lower rake. The card rooms have, it appears, realized this, as most of the card rooms that rely heavily on 6 max action to keep their tables busy have begun offering rake back deals and frequent reload offers in order to keep players in action. But this only works for players that take the game seriously. The average schmuck—that is, the players who we all yearn to play against—isn't going through the trouble of finding rake back deals, or checking for reload offers. They're just depositing $200 every three weeks or so and playing. So, while the decent players are getting a rake reduction the bad players are not, which means the bad players are going broke at an alarming rate. And if there are no bad players, there are no games worth playing. It's that simple.

Second, they allowed players to multi table. This was a terrible idea. Now I'm not going to lie to you- I multi table. You probably multi table. In fact, everyone I know who beats the game and plays smaller than 30-60 multi tables. But we can't ignore the effect this has had on the long term health of the games. Back in the days of the brick and mortar card room I had access to the bankrolls of at the very most nine fish at any one time. With the advent of multi-tabling, however, that number went up to as many as 32. You give decent players the opportunity to beat thirty-two bad players over the head simultaneously and I promise you the game quality will eventually suffer.

And the third thing they did was spread no limit hold ‘em. This is tantamount to poker room suicide, since the edge that a good no limit player has over a bad no limit player is world's bigger then the edge a good limit player had over a lousy limit player. If you're the kind of no limit player who just can't fold pocket aces after the flop, or can't release a flush draw, you're just never going to win. And if you never win it won't be long before you hang it up and try another hobby.

In other words, the online poker scene was set up to send as much money as possible to the winning players and to the house, with no regard for how this would affect the losers. But effect them it has, and that, my friends, is why you now see $2-$4 games with a VP$IP of 18%.

What, then, should one do about it? First, we need to understand that there still are bad players out there, playing at every conceivable limit, and that the games are still beatable. No, they're not ‘as beatable' as they were 3 years ago, but there's still money to be made. You just have to go about your business a little differently. Here are a few tips I have for those of you who've seen your win rates drop over the past year or so and aren't quite sure what to do about it.

1. Don't play lower limit (by which I mean 3-6 or lower) 6 max tables without a rake back deal, and NEVER play these tables with four or fewer players
If you've ever played in a casino you probably know that once the game gets six handed the floorman usually comes over and instructs the dealer to lower the rake. If the game goes four handed they do it again, and if the game gets heads up they'll often abandon the rake all together. Why? For the reasons we mentioned earlier in this article, and also because their primary concern is to keep the game running. Nobody wants to play four handed with a full rake, so the floor drops the rake in the hope that the four players will keep playing and that maybe the game will fill back up in an hour or two. An example of this took place about seven years ago, when I played ‘rake free' at the Soaring Eagle in Mt. Pleasant for 29 consecutive hours. A snowstorm had hit, nobody was coming in, and after a few hours it was just me and two other guys. The floor told us he'd eliminate the rake if we kept playing, and so we did. When we asked him why he made this offer he explained that he didn't want the game to break, and that he was paying the dealer anyway for her shift so she might as well be pitching cards.

You don't see this in the online games. With the exception of a couple rooms almost everyone charges as much to play 6 max as they do ten handed, and the rake—which is already just ridiculously high, even at a ten handed game—is nothing short of obscene at 6 max. Most games rake 5% of the pot up to $60, which means you're essentially paying 5% of every pot. Unless you're playing against the world's biggest idiots this game just cannot be beaten for any appreciable amount of money. If you're playing 4 handed (or less) the problem is magnified, to the point where nobody has much—if any—edge or anyone else.

Why is this? Because you make your money in 6 max by accumulating small edges. In a full game you tend to make your money by playing very tight, and usually very cautiously, and then sweeping in every hour or so with a flopped set or two pair and dragging 10 big bets. You're hitting ‘home runs' at a full table, as the edge you have on your winning hands is often quite high. But 6 max doesn't work this way. You're frequently putting a lot of money in the pot with a very small edge, which means it doesn't take much of a rake to eliminate this edge all together. In a four handed game, where your often calling the river with ace high, or value betting a pair of threes, the edge from any one particular hand can be so small that it's hard to even quantify. It's there, and if you exploit that edge often enough you'll make a handsome salary, but it doesn't take much of a rake to turn you into a long term donator.

2 Adjust your limit
The games that have suffered the most from these developments are the 2-4, 3-6 and 5-10 games. We're used to thinking of games as getting tougher as you move up in limits, and that's still more or less true, but the fact is that you'll often find a 10-20 or 15-30 game now that's far, far easier to beat then the 3-6 running on the same site. Ask yourself this: Who's playing the 3-6 and 5-10 games now? I'll tell you who; underfunded college kids who have read about the game, learned to take it seriously, and who were good enough to crush the $1-$2 and $.50-$1 tables. These are NOT the people you want to be locking horns with. The $10-$20 and bigger games, however, still have a lot of recreational players in them. Most poker players have one large Achilles heel—that being money management—and this alone has kept hundreds of excellent poker players out of the bigger games. There are lots of very good players out there who have never taken the time to build the bankroll needed to compete in the larger games, which means the fish-to-pro ratio in the larger games is smaller then you might expect.

A second option is to get serious about bonus hustling and step down to $1-$2. These games are still quite soft (at least most of the time), which means it doesn't take a lot of skill to beat them. Anyone who takes the time to set up dual monitors and plays 8 tables of $1-$2 simultaneously should have no trouble making $25-$35 an hour provided he only plays when working through a reload offer, a sign up bonus or a rake back deal.

3.  Learn Game Selection
This is something else that most good players don't do very well. I was on the pokeroom network earlier tonight (playing in a 10-20 with an average of 5 players seeing every flop, I might add) and was shocked to discover a 2-4 table that had an average pot size of $8. What?! Who the hell is playing in this game! The other 2-4 games had pot sizes of $14,$16 and $18 respectively. Now let me tell you something; the way you make your money in lower limit games is by playing against opponents who make significant mistakes pre-flop. Even in a 10 handed game you really need players who cold call raises with K8o, or 96s, in order to achieve a respectable win rate. The rake is still fairly high, and the only way you can overcome it by a significant margin is by taking on players who make big mistakes pre-flop, as these are the costliest mistakes a player can make. If you find yourself in a game where you're scared to raise with pocket aces in early position for fear that everyone will fold, or you notice that it's being folded around to the button every third hand, it's time to click off the ‘auto post blinds' button and look for another game. If you can't find another game then go hustle an online casino bonus somewhere, or take the dog out for a walk. But don't continue to play in that game! There's no money in it. Some people will say that ‘the real money in hold em is made post flop', and that's true so long as the rake is not a factor. When you're fighting the rake—and you're always fighting it in small games—you need players who don't understand the finer points of hand selection. It's just that simple.

If you must play in a game where everyone has a clue pre-flop then scour around for a table where the play is fairly predictable post flop. This is the next best thing, and while I doubt that even a game like this is worth 2 BB/ 100 hands it's sure as hell better than a tight aggressive game where 80% of the players have a poster of David Sklansky hung over their beds. You can eke out a win in a game against tight but predictable players if you're capable of laying down a hand that seems ‘big' but it clearly beaten. For instance, there are a large number of tight players out there who will never check raise the turn in a multi way pot unless they have two pair or better, or who won't three bet the flop without top pair- top kicker or better. You can do all right against players like these because you'll almost never find yourself in a spot where you're giving them good implied odds. If they flop a set, for instance, you'll know all about it by the turn and can play accordingly. If, however, you're the type of player who's genetically incapable of folding the Q Q when you get check raised by a tight, predictable player on the turn with a Jh 9h 4s 7h board then you're better off avoiding these games as well.

One final thing: Always remember that when it comes to winning at low limit poker how well you play is far, far less important then how badly your opponents play. I don't care what kind of post-flop wizard you are; if the rake is high enough and your opponents are reasonably competent you're just not going to have much of an edge. Take this advice to heart as you venture into the new era of online poker.

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