Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 07 May 2009 / Leave a comment

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, you will be more than aware that the entire planet seems to be in financial meltdown, with no signs of it letting up in the near future.

Whilst many businesses are struggling during these tough times, poker tracking site, Poker Scout, reports cash game traffic is up approximately 25% year-on-year so it appears the credit crunch has not affected online poker as much as other industries.

Traffic across sites may be up but this does not necessarily mean the tables are full of weak players who are willing to donate their hard-earned money to anyone who has the remotest idea of how to play poker. In fact it is quite the opposite.

As people have less spare money, the micro and lower stakes games have become tougher. Yes they are still very beatable and highly profitable but they seem much tighter than in recent times, meaning you have to adjust your starting hand requirements if you are to continue taking their money.

There are players at all stakes that want to keep their money online for as long as possible so have invested some of their bankroll into training sites, thus making the games tougher to find value in.

All of the above paints a sorry picture of the state of online poker but like I said, the games are still very beatable, you just need to adapt to the new styles of players and follow two important skills.

The first is bankroll management. Playing within the limits of your bankroll is now vitally important to a poker player, especially if you will not be able to reload your account. Moving down in stakes should not be frowned at; it shows you are a realistic player who is prepared to drop to lower games in order to prevent going bust. After all, playing for half the stakes may be demoralising but not being able to play at all is worse.

Table selection is now also key when you decide to play a session. In the past I have been guilty of having poor table selection as I usually just sit at the first open seat available and start playing. However, I now take the time to check the lobby for the loosest games with the largest pots and try to watch that table for a couple of orbits to see which players are the fish and in what seats they are situated in.

Times are hard for everyone but by being strict in terms of the games you play, you can survive the credit crunch.

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