Playing online

[Prowler]

how do you play poker online? do you play when you have time or set aside an amount of time to play? do you decide on how much your gonna play with then see how long it lasts or if you win keep playing? or do you just play mtts and sng's?

personally i try to play ring games for at least 2 hours a day sometimes more and at least one mtt at night, lately this seems to be working for me after my little lapse and realised i was playing way too much and only seeing 200 hands a day instead of 800 odd seems to help in getting more value out of each hand i play, sort of a quality over quantity situation

anybody have any thoughts on what would be a good balanced playing system ie x hour cash + x stt's + x mtt's a day to gain a well rounded experience level and possibly profitable for a) beginners b) average players c) good players and d) strong players ?

also anything to be careful of, ie mistakes you made when you first started, playing over your limit, over expectation, over playing?

any input, big or small would be appreciated!!

[trustme]

Interesting topic.

I think one of the most important parts of poker or any other form of gambling is discipline. Thats why its good to have a sort of schedule lined up of what and when you are going to play and stick to it. I've always made more profit this way. When I am being disciplined I play single table games for a couple of hours in the afternoon and try to make enough to cover my tournament entrance fees for later and show a little bit of profit. Then I pick 4-5 tournaments that I like and suit my game. I generally play from 12am-4am, sometimes later buts thats ok coz Im an insomniac and dont have to work anymore. I find the late night games more profitable, even though they have less players than the evening and afternoon games and therefore a lower prizepool, I do a lot better in tournaments with less that 200 players.

Over playing can be a problem because you lose some discipline, you start going for longshots and calling all ins just to get that quick double up, knowing that if that goes wrong that you can sign up for the next tournament on offer straight away or go play a quick cash game etc. I've always kept records of amount of games played, for how long and how much profit/loss. This is helpful because you can always look back and see when things were going wrong or when they were going right. Complacency also sneaks in sometimes, being on a good solid run of wins can turn into a nightmare losing streak when little things sneak into your game, when you are winning you can start to under estimate the other players, just because they are bad does not mean that they dont have the nuts.

As for moving up levels, the first thing to look at is your bankroll, make sure you have enough money to take a hit, comfortably. Instead of just going up a level in cash blinds/tournament entrance fees, why not do half and half, half of the time that you have set aside for poker on your current level and the other half at the new level. This is good because you can keep earning on one while trying out the other...and hopefully earn from that too. If you keep records you can see which works out best and if moving up will be more profitable in the long run.

The other thing about poker is that you can do everything right and still lose.