Summary of special online bonuses

For every player will come a time when he wonders if it's time to play higher stakes. That's a legitimate thinking. If you make 1$ an hour on the NL10, why not move up to NL25 and make, hopefully, 2.5$ an hour?
Two factors will condition your ability to move up:

Your proficiency to beat the stakes you play.

Obviously, it's the main factor to take into account.
But it's not enough to show a profit on a given level of blinds to be ready to move up.
First, you have to observe your winrate on a big enough sample of hands.
Seasoned online players usually express their winrate in BBe (Big Bet) for 100 hands. That's because most serious online players use a statistical tool named pokertracker that uses that norm. This software is normally sold 55$ but there's a way to get it for free if you are ready to open a poker account through one the banners of my site (email me for explanations).
For instance, if you played 1,000 hands on a NL10 (blinds 0.05 and 0.1), won 6$, then this represents a winrate of 3 BBe/100 hands, 1 BBe being the double of a big blind.
But the luck factor makes it difficult to evaluate your winrate. Indeed, someone making 3 BBe/100h on a 1.000 hands sample can really be a very good player as well as a long run looser.
As you will discover quickly, a 1,000 hands sample is nothing: the luck factor is huge on such a small number of hands.
That's why one of the first things i put on my website is a confidence interval builder for winrate.
Let's try it with the following figures:

Number of hands played (n1)=10,000
Win rate (BB/100h)=3
Standard deviation on played hands (BB/100h)=30
Desired size for your true winrate confidence interval (%)=68

Clik on "Calculate".
The calculator will tell you that your true winrate, which you could get by playing an infinite number of hands, has a 68% chance to be comprised between 0 and +6 BBe/100h.
So, there's a 16% chance that you are a loser (on these 1,000 hands you had more luck that you should have had) and a 16% chance that your winrate is over +6 BBe/100h (on these 1,000 hands you had less luck than you should have had). By running a few simulations, you would see that it takes something like 150,000 hands to have a good idea of your winrate.
Of course, for 95% of players, 150,000 hands is something absolutely prohibitive: nobody will ever be willing to play that long on a NL10 before moving up.
There are other signs, in addition to your winrate, that should make you able to know if you beat the stakes you play. Are you able to put your opponents on a small number of hands? To laydown big hands when your opponent woke up with a monster? To adapt your play to your opponent stype (TAG, LAG, fish etc)? To understand where you played well, hence making your gain bigger or your loss smaller, and where the luck factor prevailed?
Example:
You have deposited 250$ on your Party account and started playing NL25. That's a sensible choice as you have 1,000 BB for these stakes.
In 1,000 hands, you won 100$.
100$ = 200 BBe (1 BB= 25cts so 1 Big Bet=50cts).
Hence your winrate is 20 BBe/100h.
That's an excellent winrate! But don't start thinking you are crushing these NL10 tables. After all you only won 4 buy ins and maybe a big part of that profit can be explained by short run luck.
Maybe you won 25$ going all in with TT, your opponent had AA and you made trips? Maybe you won two additional buy ins with your ace high flush against two opponents, one had the king high flush and the other flopped a set? Then, well, out of these 100$, that's already 75$ that you don't necessarily deserve!
On the TT vs AA hand, you played incorrectly. On the ace high flush hand, you wouldn't have been able to get away with the second best flush or a flopped set. On the long run, you will face times when you are on the losing end of such confrontations.
In the end, you can consider you lost money on the TT vs AA hand (precisely you lost 81% of your preflop all in) and you won nothing with your ace high flush. Now you are almost break even on your 1,000 hands sample and you only looked into 2 big pots you won!
You can start withdrawing from your sample the 2-3 biggest wins and the 2-3 biggest losses to have a better idea of your real winrate.
Necessarily, on such a small sample, your winrate would be totally different. That shows how a small difference in your luck can make a huge difference in your winrate on a small sample.
What's the idea?
Basically, when you play poker, you don't make money when you are dealt good cards. You make money when you make better decisions than your opponents.
You are dealt AA, an opponent has KK, you stack him (25$). You will only make money with that hand if you manage, when you face the opposite situation, to lose less that your 25$ buy in (whether because you put him on aces and make everything you can to control the size of the pot, or because your opponent misplays his hand).
On the long run, 50% of the time you will be on the winning end of such confrontations, and 50% on the losing end. Your overall profit will reflect your ability to outfox your opponents: win more with aces, lose less with kings.
Of course, on a 1,000 hands sample, the AA vs KK situation won't occur often enough to even out.
With that principle, even on small samples where the winrate is not significative, you should be able to understand if you are beating the table, i.e outplaying your opponents.

The poker player enemy: denial
Be aware that's it's easy to use that principle to persuade yourself that you are better than your opponents and your mediocre current results only result from an "obvious" lack of luck.
That's called denial. Among other things, that's what explains why poker tables are populated not only with twerps who will lose their bankroll in 1 or 2 weeks but also with mediocre players, only slightly losers, but who continue to play as they think that one day their bad luck will cease and then, at last, their "remarkable" skills will allow them to make up for their previous losses.
Denial is every poker player's greatest enemy. It makes it impossible to learn, makes people bitter, transform the enjoyable game that is poker into a self destructive activity in which the poker addict doesn't take any pleasure and which gives him a low self esteem.
Denial make people play like slot machines addicts: they stay for hours at the same place, routinely doing the same gestures, without any entertainement.
Don't let denial ruin your poker experience: be able to accept that your remarkable current results maybe (in fact probably) come from a hot run of cards.
The major online poker forums are populated with tens of thousands of players of which the vast majority open an account, post the same questions (how much can a poker player clear every month? should i move up? is there a way to laydown kings preflop? etc) and disappear in less that a year. Many people have had a streak of good cards, have moved up, had good cards again, moved up, never making a pause that would have given them a better estimate of their true winrate.
Finally, they find themselves playing on big tables, cards are suddendly cold for them (at least that's what they think, maybe they just run normal now), and they lose everything they previously accumulated.
Even among the players you can see on TV, in the WPT and such, some are not long run winners. They will end up losing what they won on one of those big tourneys and they will never be heard of again. In the meanwhile, the gambling industry will have replaced them by new "champions", coming from nowhere, who will be presented as the new Daniel NEGREANU or Phil IVEY.

A sensible compromise would be to play at least 10,000 hands on each level before considering to move up.
As we already saw, 10,000 hands is not really enough to get an accurate estimate of your winrate but at least that will give you some time to improve, understand how, as you move up, the dynamics of the game has changed.
If you respect these 10,000 hands stages, you shouldn't find yourself playing big stakes very fast, just because you ran hot and climbed the ladders too fast.
At the end of each 10,000 hands stage, look at your winrate: if higher than 5 BBe/100h on a NLHE table, then you can move up if you wish. On the contrary, play another 10,000 hands, try to understand where you could have played better, read, talk with other players etc.
More precisely, your winrate will usually be higher on short handed tables (6 players max) than on full tables (9-10 handed). So a good winrate would be 4 BBe/100h on ten handed tables, and 6-7 on 6 handed.

I don't beat the NL25 games, there are too many d**b f*****s!! Let's try the NL100.
That's something i hear from time to time.
For me, that's the kind of sentences (like "online poker is sooo rigged, that would never happen in a live game") that directly put a beginner/sucker flag on the forehead of my interlocutor forehead.
If you don't beat small stakes, you are a mediocre player.
There's no shame in being a mediocre player, that's something every player was at the beginning. It's not an insult! There are many activities in which i am mediocre.
Being a good poker player is essentially being able to adapt to the game: knowing to play good and bad cards, knowing to play sharks and fishes, knowing how one's position in a hand and relatively to the other players styles (to my right, is it an aggressive or passive player? and to my left?) etc. That explains why, when you ask a seasoned player how he would have played a given hand, he will likely answer "it depends". That's frustrating but it's the truth. You have to give a lot of details about the hand to get a real answer. In a hand, there are so many parameters to take into account. The more experience you have, the more parameters you know.
If you don't beat small stakes, that means you are not able to adapt to the poker that is played on them. Some players beat a few tables (for instance NL50SH) but are losers everywhere else.
It's just that they found a game/structure that suits better their style. They don't understand the dynamics of the game, they remain mediocre players but they found a game where their flaws cost them less.
When the dynamics of the game change, they will be lost. When the WPT made short handed games popular, droves of fishes left full tables to play 6 max. Seasoned players had to follow the tuna. Some immediatly became winners on these short handed tables, others experimented more difficulty to make the transition, others never succeeded to win money on these new tables. I had to face that transition, so i know from experience.
Such changes happen permanently: the game can change drastically or slowly (games becoming rock gardens on some poker rooms). If you don't accept that you will have to be able to adapt to the game conditions then you will never be a good player.
So start beating small stakes. If you can't, try to understand why and try again.
Soon enough will come the time to move up and then you will see the reality of bigger stakes: tougher competition making your winrate smaller and its variance bigger. Say goodbye to easy double ups when you flop a set of threes while your opponent can't lay down its aces. You will have to fight for each pot, know when to lay down AJ when you put your tight opponent on AQ, when to push your draw to make your opponent lay down his kings etc.
Certainly, that's something a beginner don't want to face right now, trust me.
So play your 10,000 hands on this NL25, accept the bad beats, rebuy and continue to play your a-game: you will eat alive all those fishes in a few months.

Your bankroll

To play a given level of blinds, you need a minimum of 1,000 BB (=10 buy ins on a standard table) for NLHE and 300 BBe (600BB) for LHE.
Let me say it again: that's a MINIMUM!
If you plan on playing professionally/semi professionally, you will need a lot more. As a regular of party poker NL100 "For your bankroll, with these stakes, anything under 10k would be gambling".
Consider too that, for smaller stakes, it's almost harmless to lose your bankroll: it takes 2 minutes to deposit with your credit card and be back at the poker table. But, when the stakes become "conséquents", it's not tha easy... Having an appropriate bankroll (a reserve of money, generally the money of your poker account, reserved to poker) is then vital. What's more, the higher the stakes, the lower the winrate and the higher its variance. So the bigger the chance of losing the entire bankroll on a bad series of cards thaht would last on more than 10,000 hands (yes, that may happen...).
So for a professional/semi professional NLHE player, and against opponents that begin to be competent, it would be safer to have between 2 and 4,000 BB.
Another parameter to take into account: in a loose and aggressive game, variance is higher, so should be your bankroll. Hence, expect bigger swings if you play SH.
To determine precisely, depending on your winrate and its standard deviation, the minimum level of your bankroll, i suggest that you use the bankroll evaluator.

Once you have a good winrate (see previous paragraph) and if your bankroll represents a minimum of 10-15 buy ins for the next level, you can take a shot at the next level.
Example:
With a 250$ bankroll that you built by 3 tabling the NL10, you are able to test the NL25.
2 table the NL10 and play on an additional NL25 table. You can seize the opportunity to follow a fish of your buddy list who sat down at the NL25. That way, you will still play with people you know you can beat. That will help you play with confidence the same game that proved to be effective at lower stakes.
Confidence is an important factor: if you take a shot on a bigger table and start thinking "now i'm gonna have to play real smart, conceal my hand strength, stop playing by the book etc", that's the best way to transform a good player into a looser.
When you move up, the average level of your opponents will increase a bit, but not dramatically. There are still fishes on Party's NL2000 so, on intermediate stakes, there's still room to make significant money!
If you have respected these recommendations, you should already be able to beat the next level by playing your usual a-game. As you play on these new stakes, you will learn how to tune your game, which new tools you have to use to increase your winrate and then be ready to move up again. Take your time, you're not in a hurry!
Be careful: some of you may find it difficult to play multiple levels. Do what seems to be the best for you: take the big leap and play all your tables at the new limit or play at multiple levels at the start. Obviously, if you prefer to take the big leap, you should have a bigger roll than if you move up gradually.
And, once you moved up, you should still be ready to go back whenever a cold run of cards weakened your roll. Going back to your previous limits will allow you to rebuild bankroll and confidence.
Consider yourself as a NL10-25 player and play where you can find the best opportunities. If the NL25 looks "tough" one day, there's no shame to play NL10 for a few hundreds of hands.

Cash out and small stakes
When you play small stakes, you shouldn't make any cash out: your profit should be used to strenghten your roll and allow you to move up when you feel it's time.
Making a cash out when you consistently beat the small stakes is limiting your ability to move up, which results in limiting your profit.
Anyway, what would you make of a 50 or 100$ cash out? There's nothing interesting you can buy yourself with such a tiny amount while, if keeping them into your roll helps you to move up, you will find that playing NL50 or 100 will earn you a substantial complementary income.

In conclusion

Even if you play small stakes poker, you should already adopt the proper state of mind or, like for any sport, that will limit your improvements.
Keep in mind that this 10,000 hands constraint is a mere MINIMUM. If you moved up a couple of times lately, maybe you ran hot. So, even if on each level you played 10,000 hands, stay on your current level a bit longer, a few tens of thousands of hands for instance, to take the time to confirm your winrate and understand what makes your game good, what could be improved etc. If you don't find any objective reason for that success, then be careful: you're not likely to be the new poker wiz who will revolutionize the way to play poker, you're just another guy running hot.
Keep in mind too that your biggest profit comes from the time you don't play poker, when you take the time to think about your game, try to fix your leaks etc.
Playing continuously without taking the time to learn is like being a rusher in a real time strategy game: buid 100 infantry units and attack your opponent after 30 minutes. But if that strategy doesn't earn you a fast victory, then the opponent who will have taken time to develop new technologies instead of spending all its ressources on quickly available units will crush you.
A RTS game lasts between 1 and 3 hours while a poker session never ends, it lasts all your life. So, being a rusher can't be the best strategy at poker. You may run hot for 10 or 20,000 hands but when the deck gets cold for you, you will be playing such big stakes that you will burn all your profits very quickly.
Take the time to learn, be aware that your bankroll will grow faster than your skill. You may have the roll to move up, that doesn't mean you have the skill to.

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