Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 22 January 2009 / Leave a comment

One of the great contradictions of poker is how players have to approach money.

Although nearly everyone plays with the intention of winning money, in order to stay emotionally stable and successfully build a bank roll, you have to care very little about money so that you can just focus on making the correct choices. So you are there to make money, yet you have to not care about that money - how can this be right?

So you are there to make money, yet you have to not care about that money - how can this be right?

The problem with poker is that although over the long run the skilled players will be rewarded with large wins, on a day to day basis you have no idea who will win or lose. As a result, you have to be prepared to look at money just as tokens in the game on any given day, as otherwise the big downswings will drive you mad.

One of the best way to do this when playing online is to just not think of anything in your account as money until you cash some of it out. While it stays in your account, try and think of that money as nothing but counters to enable you to carry on playing or rise up the stakes.

Another key way to help you stay calm and composed about losses is to stick to good bankroll management guidelines. Even if you start to think of the money in your roll as counters, it can still be a horrible feeling losing half or more of these counters in a given session.

The basic reality of human thinking is that losing 2-3% of something simply does not feel as bad as long 50% - regardless of the money involved. This is one of the strangest features of poker, a phenomenon that allows someone to feel deeply depressed about the loss of $500, while someone else, playing in the same room, does not break sweat over the loss of $50,000.

Bankroll guidelines are there to cope with variance, but they are also there to help you stay emotionally stable about losses. Poker is a very odd game when it comes to peoples attitudes to money, being able to recognise how and why you should be thinking about money can really help in keeping your bankroll intact.

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