Been Winning? What to do next

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 11 February 2009 / Leave a Comment

So it's finally all come together, you have had a long winning streak at cash, final tabled a few big multi table tournaments or have just been destroying hundreds of sit and go's, your account is firmly in the black and your feeling on top of the world - so what's next?

There are a range of options for any poker player when they start making a good amount of money at the stakes they are playing. The first and most common one is that a player will cash out most of their profit, go on a bit of a splurge and buy all the things that they believed were missing from their life. The second most common option seems to be to leave your account just where it is, add all the money to your bankroll and try and move up the stakes. The final option is to do a bit of both, maybe cash out enough to pay some bills, leave most of the money alone and try and gradually build a bigger and bigger bankroll.

The most crucial thing to remember when deciding what to do with your new found profit is that poker is arguably the most cash intensive business in the world - you have to have a large sum of money to be able to make more money. Without an adequate bankroll for the stakes you are playing you will always lose over the long run. Holding on to a large sum of money is critical to long term poker success - suddenly cashing out a large portion of your bankroll may mean that you have to drop down the stakes or stop playing high buy in tournaments which is often an unpleasant experience.

Psychologically speaking, cashing out can also be quite demoralizing if you are trying to build up a large bankroll. Taking out a large chunk can often feel similar to a large loss when you look up at the numbers on the screen or the cash in bankroll. It is important that you try to overcome these feelings - after all, logic like this will lead nowhere, as you will never be content with what you have as you will always be looking to add more to your bankroll and play higher stakes.

Winning is what you are there to do when you sit down at the poker table, but it can often be a bit of an anti climax if not thought about carefully. Any win you have in poker has to be considered in the context of future losses, and as such is not actually as big a win as it appears. Being able to understand this and behave accordingly is critical to long term success. By being relatively conservative when you win you will build up a large enough reserve to weather future storms that may occur, and this will stop you from losing all of your profit plus interest in the long run.

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