Online Poker and Bankroll
Everything you need to know before playing online poker for the first time.
This article goes over getting you set up to play your first poker session online.
Online Poker Sites
We highly recommend playing for real stakes, even if it is only a $2 buy-in. Play money poker has very little incentive for proper play and optimizing your play for those games will not meaningfully develop your poker strategy.
There are many real money sites to choose from, but we recommend picking one of the more established sites like GGPoker, ACR Poker and WPT Global.
Bankroll
No-Limit Hold’em is a game of massive variance. You are considered a crusher if you’re winning anything above 5bb/100. So you’d be crushing 10NL if you win an average of $0.50 per 100 hands. This might sound like very little, but remember we are doing this to gain experience and move up the stakes.
On the flipside, variance in 6-max NLH is typically around 90bb/100. A losing player may consistently win even across thousands of hands, and a winning player may lose many buy-ins, simply due to variance. Because of this, it is often recommended to set aside enough money to cover this variance. This is called your bankroll:
| Bankroll Strategy | Required Buy-ins (100bb) | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Aggressive | 20 – 30 buy-ins | Recreational playing, or low stakes where you can easily replenish your bankroll if you run out. |
| Standard | 40 – 50 buy-ins | Regular grinders looking to minimize risk while actively moving up stakes. |
| Professional/Conservative | 100+ buy-ins | Playing full-time where you cannot afford to go broke. |
Since we are starting with 2NL we can get away with going small since we can always replenish our bankroll if we have to. We recommend depositing $20 (10 buy-ins) to start with. It is not unrealistic that we can grow our bankroll to thousands of dollars with our winnings by starting from a few small deposits to play microstakes.
Go Play!
The Microstakes Ramp is meant to be a combination of practice and play. We recommend a 50/50 split but you should adjust it to what makes sense for you. Before getting started, play a few hands at 2NL and find out what settings work for you in terms of visuals and bet sizes.
Important: set the chip display to show in big-blinds instead of dollars – this lets you easily generalize your play as you move up the stakes.