Are you sick of smashing that deposit button? Want to take your game to the next level, where you join the small % of winning players? Whether you just started playing or you're an experienced player who has fallen behind the curve, the good news is that there are crucial ways to significantly improve your play and improve results. In this article, we'll share five ways that will boost your chance of turning those deposits into cashouts.

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1. Bankroll Management

The most important aspect is managing your bankroll intelligently. This requires setting and then sticking to your limits that should be devised to limit your risk of ruin. By setting clear rules for yourself and adhering to them by playing within your limits, you can play more confidently with less anxiety about short-term results. If you are not sufficiently bankrolled for the stakes you are playing, you will eventually go broke even if you are a winning player because of statistical variance.

Tournaments

Your bankroll should be between 100-300 buy-ins for most poker tournaments with at least 200 runners. The higher your bankroll in relation to your average buy-in, the lower your risk of ruin and the more equipped you are to handle negative variance.

Cash Games

You need at least 30 buy-ins but preferably 50 or more of the MAX buy-in for the stake you are playing.

For more detailed information, check out my Ultimate Bankroll Guide for Online Poker Players.

Starting from Scratch

If these numbers are daunting because you are starting from scratch then I completely understand. If you don’t have access to the capital needed to get started with a proper bankroll then what can you do? I got you covered, check out my post about starting from nothing. If I ran up from Freerolls in Ontario Poker to $150,000 bankroll in 2 years, so can you!.

Do You Have a Skill Issue?

That being said, bankroll management can’t make you into a winning player. It’s a crucial foundation, but if you don’t improve your skills to be able to beat the field then all you will do is bleed your money much slower than you had been. You’ll need to follow my other 4 tips to get on the right track.

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2. Study GTO

In 2024, you need to study and understand game theory optimal (GTO) strategies to be competitive at the poker table. GTO strategies are based on the idea of making "unexploitable" balanced plays that opponents cannot outplay because there is no effective counter-strategy that can gain EV (expected value) from it. By vigorously learning and executing GTO strategies, you'll be able to play competently against ANY opponent and learn how to adjust to different situations. Once you get good at doing this, you will be less predictable, and your previous leaks that players were exploiting will be eliminated. You can get started practicing and studying for free at GTOBase.

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3. Focus

One of the less talked about edges in poker is a players ability to reach high levels of concentration. I cringe while watching poker streamers because while streaming it is so obvious they are not playing optimally because they are not zoned into the table, but into speaking for the stream. Multi-tasking doesn’t work. On top of that I will see various people walking into and out of the room, interrupting the player. They will be chatting on discord while playing multiple poker tables. I watch it and I smile, as I realize I have a huge edge on these people in this area. People seem to underestimate the effects of being optimally focused and mentally sharp while playing. Grinding poker is demanding, and it's easy to get distracted or make mistakes when you're tired or not fully present.

How can you stay sharp?

a. Get Enough Sleep

It cannot be overstated how important having adequate sleep is to cognition and performance in tasks requiring mental effort. Limit caffeine and screen time in the evenings. Go to bed at the same time every night if you can, and get up at the same time. It doesn’t matter so much if it is 6 hours or 8 hours, what is more important is that it is consistent. Different people have different tolerances for the duration of sleep. If you haven’t yet, find your sweet spot that makes you feel the most energized when waking up and aim to make that your consistent routine. If you suffer from insomnia, sleep apnea, or any other sleep disturbance issues, see your doctor or local sleep clinic and get that sorted out. You won’t play at your best until you do.

b. Avoid Multitasking

Remember that multitasking does not work. Any energy or attention you are giving to anything else is attention and energy you are taking away from analyzing your spot at the table. This leads to completely avoidable mistakes, regularly. More than that it leads to suboptimal C-Game play because you are never truly engaged properly in the task so you won’t be drawing on your experience and poker knowledge effectively.

c. Limit Interruptions

Your work setup and surroundings are extremely important, and you need to minimize potential distractions when undertaking activities like poker that require intense mental concentration to excel at. Speak to family members, roommates, and/or your significant other and explain to them that in order to do your best at your occupation (or hobby), you require intense levels of focus. The less they know about poker, the better job you will need to do in making them understand this. Make analogies like a chess master, explaining that while he is deciding what play to make next, he needs to be focused and not interrupted, or he will make the wrong play. Tell them you are taking poker seriously and it is the same for you, in order to play your best you need to be intensely focused. Another strategy you can take here if you are a professional player, is to tell them that this is your career/job and to perform your job, you need to be without interruption. Make an analogy like if you were working outside the home in an office, would they be calling you all day to interrupt you from work? Would they be just walking into your office to ask about the laundry (or whatever)? Tell them to treat when you are playing as if you are working and that you can’t be interrupted while at work. This will only go over well if you carve out time in your schedule to spend quality time with them (if we are talking about a spouse or family). If it’s a roommate, get a lock for your door and put on headphones if they don’t seem to get it. Furthermore, TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Do not check social media notifications. Do not browse the internet. If you want to listen to music, set your playlist beforehand. You want to succeed at this, right? Then stop jerking around and take it seriously.

d. Don’t Play When Preoccupied or Under Duress

If you are stressed out because of some crisis or life issue, stay away from the table until your mind isn’t turning and churning on whatever is bothering you. You can’t focus properly on assessing the volume of information needed to play poker optimally if your mind is elsewhere and especially so if that elsewhere is mired in negativity.

e. Resources for Focus

Intense focus and engagement in a challenging activity has been studied and labeled as the  "Flow State". Read up on that and do your best to cultivate it. This is how you reach peak performance with your mind in top form for achievement. Otherwise known as “the zone”, this can give you the ability to maintain your A-Game as often as possible and be equipped to make the best decisions you can at the table. There are also distraction blocking apps such as Freedom which can block distractions on all of your devices for you for set periods of time. I find listening to nature sounds, classical music or binaural beats can enhance my focus greatly and prime me for the Flow State.

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4. Play and Review

As in physical sports or any competitive endeavor, the best way to get better is to practice and play as much as possible. Put the hours in. I used to have a poker backer, most of their advice was trash but one thing they said sticks out as succinct but valuable. It was “if you want to get better and make money at this game, just PLAY WELL AND PLAY OFTEN”. The more time you spend grinding and executing the GTO strategies you have learned, the more they will come natural to you. Playing and gaining experience helps even sloppy players improve who don’t follow these tips. Imagine how much your game can blossom if grinding often while implementing everything else said in this article to ensure you are at your best as much as possible.

In addition to putting in the hours on the felt grinding, it is also helpful to study and analyze your own play and your opponents play. Although we are aspiring to play close to GTO, we still need to adjust and make exploitative adjustments to maximally profit off of the mistakes of our opponents. That is what we are here for after all, right? This can be done through software that tracks and analyzes your play and opponents play with hand histories. By looking at your own play in detail, you can identify areas where your frequencies are off, where you are making mistakes or missing opportunities, and make adjustments to your strategy accordingly.

Don't be shy to ask for guidance from more experienced players. You can hit up the forums, sign up to a coaching site and watch training videos and gain valuable insights. While this won’t replace your GTO training, it will augment it and make you well-rounded.

It would benefit you to get into a “study group” where you can review yours and others play and get feedback from players you respect. By seeking out like minded grinders to bounce things off of, you'll be better able to identify and address any weaknesses in your game, and enhance your improvement as a player.

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5. Control Tilt

Learning how to manage your emotions effectively is a major life skill that will serve you well in many walks of life and situations. If you have deficiency in this area, you are at a major disadvantage at the poker table. It's important to stay cool, calm, and collected to be able to access your potential to play at your best. Especially when you're on a downswing or experiencing frustration in the middle of a session. By learning how to manage your emotions, you'll be better able to stay on track as far as bankroll management, staying focused and making rational decisions. Tilt will cloud your judgment with disastrous results if you don’t have a strategy to contain it. Ideally, you want to maintain a Stoic attitude and be indifferent to short-term results while focused on making optimal decisions in each and every hand in the moment. The amazing thing is, if you are already doing the previous four tips in this article, this fifth one can sometimes kind of handle itself because you will already be in the optimal mindset. If you do implement all these things and still find yourself struggling with tilt, I recommend the work of Jared Tendler. Specifically his work on the mental hand history concept has shown enormous promise in addressing this problem for poker players.
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In conclusion

Poker is an increasingly competitive field and if you want to have any chance of excelling at it, you need to get these 5 areas honed and consistently stay on top of them. If you do this, whether you are an experienced player or just starting out, I believe you will take your game to the next level. You will absolutely become a stronger player and, if not already, on your way to being a successful player.

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