Through the past couple of months I have gone through great highs and lows in my online poker and live poker career. I will start on the negative which would probably be in my online game. I have gone on swings where I have been up over 1K, and I have also been in swings where I have been down about 500 bucks. Now for any type of player getting started online it is necessary to layout some goals for yourself. Something that I seem to be lacking is the role of money management.


Now for most professional players money isn't much of an issue, so it is easy for beginners to see them playing a $250-$500 game online and say, oh wow look at how much money they are winning/losing. So in comparison when you lose say 100 bucks, it is meek in comparison to what these pros are doing. Now if your goal online is to just become a better player, then I would suggest to stick to some low limit cash games and do some online tournaments. Where I got started on my upswings of money was always in tournaments. A tournament is a great way to get valuable experience since it requires a low amount of money (as low as a freeroll or as high as 1K plus online, more on freerolls later) and you normally will have a lasting and fun time in your tournament. Now playing in freerolls can be a fun time, I know some of the funnest tournaments were when me and a buddy spent night after night playing in the Pokerstars Hubbles NL tourneys (top 27 were entered into another freeroll, norm. 10K people entered) I would be cautious if you are getting your first start in tournament poker in a freeroll however. Most freerolls are structured in a way so that you either have to win the whole tournament, out of probably 2K plus people, or you have to take top 1% of the entrants in order to receive a substantial payout. Even if you do win a freeroll the prize is sometimes a DVD or an advancement to another tournament. The thing to watch out for is the people who really don't care what happens, they either want to double up right away or get out of the tournament asap.


Now this is not the case in any other type of tournament (with the exception of rebuy tourneys) and so playing in a bunch of freerolls and then transferring to real money tournaments without a change in strategy is really a foolish thing to do. With all of this being said, and assuming you have a winning tournament strategy it is really a great thing to build a bankroll by playing in some lower limit tournaments, $3 + .30 $5 +.50 or even $10 + 1 are all very beatable online and it should not be hard for you to go deep in any of those. Personally my best finish in a 10 + 1 is 4th place, which earned me about 273 bucks. Now if you are feeling frisky (yes frisky) it might be smart to start playing in some satellites to some bigger tournaments. This is an even better way to build yourself a healthy bankroll, buy in for $5 bucks and win a seat worth $50, it is really a great deal. Now satellite play is much different from regular tournaments when you get down to what is called the "bubble". In normal tournaments a good strategy to use when getting down to the money bubble is to be aggressive, since most of your opponents are trying to squeak into the money. Now there is no advantage in doing this in a satellite since everyone will normally win the same amount of money, so sometimes if i have a healthy chip stack I will just click the sit out button when at the money bubble.


Now lets say you have built yourself a healthy bankroll, now what? The big mistake that many people do (including me) is to move up in stakes in tournaments or cash games. This is when the lure of big cashes get into your mind. You will probably think to yourself, "Well if I could just win this $100 sit n go I would have around $500!!! Before you go out and make a rash decision about moving up consider who your opponents are. The higher you go the more advanced the player you are playing against is, are you really ready to play against a higher caliber player? If so then go for it, but it is extremely important to truthfully answer that question before you have the possibility of blowing the bankroll you worked so hard to create. Believe me when you do blow the money you won you feel like complete crap, sometimes you feel like you should just play higher to get the money back that you just lost, trust me this is just a bigger drain on your bankroll and I do not advise it at all!