When it comes to setting goals for playing poker, there are three key aspects to focus on. Goals need to be:

• Achievable:
  
  When setting a goal it needs to be something that is possible to achieve. If you set yourself a goal that you cannot obtain, you will feel discouraged and eventually fail. So, for example, when we consider poker and goal setting, aiming for a WSOP bracelet may be a tad steep.




• Testing:
  
  Set yourself a goal which is exciting and you would feel proud of obtaining. If you set an easy goal, yes you would achieve it, but it wouldn’t challenge your skills and abilities. Aim at a goal which involves some commitment and effort to attain.




• Calculable:
  
  It is important to know when a goal has been achieved as well as how far away or close to the goal you are. A popular way of measuring goals in poker is by having financial stages. This also means that your bankroll can be closely monitored too. If you do not place ‘stages’ in your goals, you will find it difficult to set goals efficiently.

Now it is time to set your own goals for when you are playing poker:

1. To begin with, write down your goals so that you can revert back to them, at a later a date.




2. Once you have decided the long term goal, you need to break the goal down into small achievable parts (or call them mini goals.)




3. List these mini goals and the steps you will need to take in order to achieve them. For example, how often will you play poker at a casino or online? How much of your time will be spent reading and researching into poker and through using books, forums, videos e.t.c. Which games will you play and at what level will you play?




4. Finally, consider consulting the important people in your life as they may be affected by the goals that you set. Incorporate them into your goals and take on board what they have to say.

Here is who gets what when the badbeat jackpot hits

>>Win the IPN Bad Beat Jackpot today <<

Casual Poker Players

Casual players can have bankroll guidelines as loose as they want. If you’re not serious about poker and you just want to have a little fun, your bankroll is simply whatever money you have set aside for gambling. The only thing you need to worry about is making sure you don’t spend money that you didn’t plan on spending in the first place.

Serious Poker Players

As you get more serious about poker, you’ll want to increase your bankroll requirements to at least 20 buyins per level. So if you want to play $.50/$1.00 no limit, you should have a bankroll of at least $2,000 ($100 buyins x 20). This bankroll is fine to use as long as you understand that it’s a little riskier. If you always step down as soon as you dip below 20 buyins, you should be fine.

A good solid amount for serious conservative poker players is 40 buyins per level. Big downswings happen to even the best of poker players so keeping a 40 buyin minimum will help you weather most storms. You’ll have a bigger bankroll for your current stakes and if you ever have to move down when you reach 40 buyins, you’ll have a comfortable bankroll for the next stakes down.

Professionals

Professional players should keep at least 100 buyins plus 6-12 months of living expenses that are completely separate from the bankroll. If you’re paying the bills with poker, you have to maintain the strictest bankroll standards of all because big downswings will hit you every once in a while.

The living expenses are important too because if you hit a big downswing, your bankroll and your mindset will be in a precarious position. Making withdrawals from your bankroll to pay for living expenses during a downswing can very easily start a vicious cycle. During the tough times, that extra living cash is vital.

Closing Notes

None of the bankroll recommendations in this article are cut and dry or are absolute musts. Ultimately, you are the only person responsible for your bankroll. Pick a minimum bankroll amount and stick with it.

Also note that these guidelines are all minimums. As you play at a certain level for a while, you’ll move up above the minimum guidelines until you either withdraw or move up in stakes. Following these bankroll guidelines will also help you maximize your chances to win a bad beat jackpot by extending your time at the tables.

The smaller bankroll guidelines (like 20 buyins) are best for those of you who are more intent on moving up in stakes rather than withdrawing. If you constantly withdraw your money, you’ll want to keep a bigger bankroll. Tittering constantly on the edge of 20 buyins isn’t a very good idea.

If you play limit holdem as well you might want to learn about limit holdem bankroll manangement.

But even beyond that, the proper size of your bankroll really depends on your goals in poker. If you’re a casual player and don’t intend on moving up and sticking with poker for years, your bankroll will look totally different than that of a player who uses poker to pay the rent every month.

Casual Players

For casual players, your bankroll really just depends on how long you want to play. If you’re just looking for a single night of gambling thrills, you can play at any stakes you want with any amount of money. The only suggestion I have for the pure thrill seekers out there is to only play with money that you have set aside for entertainment purposes. Don’t go gambling with your kid’s tuition or anything like that.

You can increase your bankroll if you want to stretch your playing time further than just a single night. In that case, you will want to measure your bankroll in terms of big bets (BBs from here on out). Anything between 50-300 BBs for your stakes should be sufficient, depending on your risk tolerance.

Serious Players

Those of you who want to make a steady income at poker will need to increase the size of your bankroll tremendously compared to the casual players. You all will be playing more hands and therefore be more likely to experience greater downswings. You don’t want to have to start from scratch if you hit a big downswing so it helps to keep a thick cushion.

Your risk tolerance will primarily decide the size of your bankroll. I recommend 300 BBs for risk takers, 500 BBs for average players and 1,000 BBs for extra cautious players. Also keep in mind that the bigger your bankroll is, the more confident you’ll be at the tables.

Professionals

Professionals have to keep bankrolls that are way bigger than even serious players. Pros should keep at least 1,000 BBs in their bankroll at all times plus 6 months to a year worth of living expenses.*

If you’re a single college kid stuck in a dorm room and your living expenses are $800 a month, you can get away with living on a shorter bankroll. Professionals with 2 kids and a mortgage, however, will want to have a massive bankroll and at least 1 year’s worth of living expenses that are completely unconnected to the bankroll.

* – By living expenses, I mean living expenses, not your rent times 12. I’m talking about your rent, your car payment, your grocery costs, gas costs…everything! Being a professional poker player requires extreme discipline and planning your budget is just the beginning.

Stick With It

It’s easy to make bankroll standards but it can be tempting to ignore them when times get rough. If your bankroll ever falls below the minimum amount you set for it, move down in stakes so that your bankroll once again meets those minimum expectations.

Moving down is painful at first but it ends up being the right choice every time. Trying to stick it out at the higher stakes games while stressed out and sitting on a short bankroll will severely affect your play. Stay within your bankroll at all costs.

If you play no limit more often you might want to check out no limit bankroll management.

When it comes to the poker sites listed on this website, the quality is pretty high across the board. I don’t waste my time or your time with small, untested poker sites. I’m sure some of them are decent but I wouldn’t send my money to an unknown poker site and I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it either.

Anyways, as long as you stick with a poker site on this list, whether it’s the top ranked site or the bottom ranked site, you’ll be in good hands. The best order for bad beat jackpots is somewhat opinion-based anyways. At some poker sites, the jackpot is hit less frequently but it grows larger every time. At others, the jackpot is hit regularly but it doesn’t grow to such staggering proportions. See the latest poker bad beat jackpots.

1. Carbon Poker

Carbon Poker and the Merge network share this massive bad beat jackpot. It’s my number one pick because it’s just plain huge. It’s not hit as often as some of the other bad beat jackpots but it’s still hit surprisingly often for how large it grows. Carbon Poker is the home of the largest bad beat jackpot to date: $1,200,000.  Carbon Poker have soft cash games which makes the deal that much sweeter. Check out the current Carbon Bad Beat Jackpot.

2. Bodog Poker

Bodog has a bad beat jackpot as well. This jackpot is fixed with the winning player receiving a maximum of $1000. The bad beat jackpot is a little easier to win because you need to get beat with a minimum of Aces full of Kings. Bodog Poker has incredibly fast software for cash games but the games aren’t as soft as they are at Carbon. Check out the current Bodog poker bad beat jackpot.

3. Party Poker

Party Poker probably has the smallest bad beat jackpot on this list but it has the softest cash games of them all. It’s a big of a trade-off but I was almost tempted to list Party Poker as the number 1 poker site because it’s cash games are so soft. But if we’re talking strictly bad beat jackpots, it goes to number 3 because its jackpots are smaller. On a positive note, the party poker jackpot is triggered quite frequently.

Bad Beat Jackpots

The basic idea behind bad beat jackpots is the same whether it’s live or online but there are still two major differences between the two:

• Online bad beat jackpots are usually larger
• Online bad beat jackpots have higher qualifying requirements

At online poker sites there are way more people playing at the same time than you’ll ever see in a live poker room. With so many people playing online, the quantity of hands being played is exponentially larger than those played in live poker rooms. As a result, online poker sites have to make their bad beat jackpots harder to hit to avoid them being hit every day.

In online bad beat jackpots, the minimum qualifying losing hand usually has to be four of a kind 8′s or better. When you think about all the hands being played 24/7, it makes sense that the poker sites would need to make it harder to qualify for the bad beat jackpot.

The jackpots at online poker sites also grow larger because of the sheer numbers of people playing and contributing to the bad beat jackpot. A $1.2 million jackpot at Carbon Poker was recently hit, making it the largest bad beat jackpot to date.

Live bad beat jackpots are typically smaller but they are easier to hit. But just because they are easier to hit, it doesn’t mean you are more likely to hit one while playing live. You play far fewer hands in live play so the odds of hitting a bad beat jackpot during any given live poker session are very small.

Cash Games

The differences between live and online cash games are minor in themselves but they make the experience completely different. Here are the major differences between live cash games and online cash games:

• You can play many more hands per hour online than live
• Live cash games have easier competition
• Live cash games are more social

Online cash games move at a much faster pace because the software automatically deals and shuffles the cards and it limits the amount of time players get to make decisions. In addition to that, you can play multiple tables at a time when playing online. Those three factors combine to make it possible to play many more hands per hour when playing online.

But live cash games still have their own advantages. The biggest one is that live cash games are usually much easier to play in. For whatever reason, live games attract more tourists and more people unfamiliar with poker.

Cash games are also more fun to play in because of the social atmosphere. Sure, you can chat with people online but it’s not the same as being able to talk to people face to face. The social aspect draws many people to live play and it’s also probably one of the reasons why live cash games are easier than online cash games.

Be Tight-Aggressive

The first concept you should learn in no limit strategy is being “tight-aggressive.” This term describes a style of poker where you only play your strongest hands and fold the rest. When you do play your strong hands, you play them like you mean business – with lots of bet and raises.

For example, you should fold about 80% of your starting hands right off the bat. Don’t even play them if it’s cheap. Just stay away from them. The top 20% of your hands you should play, and you should play them by coming in with a bet or a raise.

The purpose of this bet/fold strategy is to help you play as efficiently as possible. Playing those weak, marginal hands only makes it harder for you to play after the flop and it ends up costing you lots of money with hands that didn’t pan out.

When you play the top 20% of your hands only, you’ll win a lot more of the pots you play. You won’t win anything near 100% of the pots you play, but you’ll do a lot better than people who play every hand.

Starting Hands

No limit holdem is a very fluid game, where the psychology and flow of the game are as important as pot odds and drawing odds. Because of that, there’s no such thing as a perfect list of starting hands.

But as a beginner, you’ll do the best if you only play the top 20% of your hands. You can play things like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT and AK to get an easy profit. Smaller pocket pairs can be played for set-value – in other words to hit 3 of a Kind.

By keeping a tight reign over the hands you choose to play, you’ll fare a lot better over the long run. You won’t have as many difficult decisions to make after the flop and you’ll end up with 2nd best hands a much smaller amount of the time.

After the Flop

You have to be especially careful after the flop in no limit holdem because you can potentially lose a lot of money on any single hand. In no limit holdem, your hand can be as strong as anything but if someone else’s hand is just a little bit stronger, you can lose an entire buyin just like that.

That is a part of the reason you want to be tight in picking your starting hands. If you play a lot of starting hands, you’ll get into those 2nd best situations a lot more often and end up losing money hand over fist.

The good news is that in small stakes no limit games, it’s easy to win lots of money. All you have to do is sit back, wait for the nuts and then bet your hand. It’s not particularly complicated and at the higher stakes it won’t work. But for making a profit at the small stakes games, it’s incredibly easy.

It’s important to start with the basics anyways because if you ever want to master the advanced strategies of limit holdem, you’ll need to have a solid base of basic limit holdem strategy.

Limit Holdem Preflop Basics

The most obvious place to start is at the beginning of the hand. Knowing which hands to play and which hands to fold will take you a very long ways to profitability. In some low limit games all it takes is an understanding of preflop strategy to turn a profit.

Having a tight preflop game is where the money is at. You can’t every hand and expect to turn a profit. Hand selection is the key. If you only play strong hands while your opponents play all their hands, you’ll already have a major advantage without even putting in any work.

On average, you should only play about 20% of your starting hands and fold the remaining 80%. It sounds overly restrictive but it’s actually a major advantage that works in your favor. By only playing your strongest hands, you are only investing your money in hands that are more likely to win pots.

Strong starting hands in limit holdem include the following:

In early position:

AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT
AK, AQ

In middle position:

AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99
AK, AQ, AJs, ATs
KQs

In late position:

All pocket pairs
AK, AQ, AJ, AT
KQ, KJ, KT
QJ, QT
TJ
45s – 9Ts (if there are at least two others in the pot with you)

*Note – If you’re wondering about the little “s” next to some of the hands, that stands for “suited.” So if you see AJs that means you can play Ace-Jack as long as both cards are of the same suit. Hand notations that don’t have an “s” next to them mean that you can play the hand whether it’s suited or unsuited.

You’ll notice here that you can play more hands in late position than you can in early position. This is because in late position you have the advantage of acting last in every round of betting. You know what your opponents actions are before you have to make your actions.

Being in late position allows you to play more hands but you still have to be careful with the weaker hands. Hands like KJ are fine in late position but you can’t get too attached to them if you only end up with something like a pair. Other hands like AK have better kickers and will wipe the floor with you if you both hit the same pair.

Limit Holdem Postflop Basics

Playing correctly after the flop is just as important as playing correctly before the flop. You should only continue past the flop if your starting hand connects with the flop to make top pair or better.

This is a very basic strategy but it’s a safe one for beginners. If you stick with the above starting hand guidelines and never continue past the flop with anything less than top pair, you’ll probably start turning a profit in small stakes limit games immediately.

After the flop you want to be the one making bets and raises, not calling them. If your hand is somewhat weak and you don’t feel comfortable betting with it, you shouldn’t feel comfortable calling with it. Instead of getting yourself stuck in that “should I call or fold?” question, you should just dump the hand.

One of the biggest mistakes new poker players make is chasing too many draws. Look, you will rarely have the odds to chase draws in limit holdem so don’t even worry about. Eventually you can learn about pot odds to know exactly when you should chase and when you should fold but for now, don’t even worry about your draws.

The vast majority of your profits in limit holdem will come from you hitting strong hands on the flop and betting them all the way down. The more money you can get in the middle with your strong hands, the better you’ll do in the long run.

Summary

Low limit games can get pretty loose and wild so you’ll suffer plenty of bad beats. Don’t let the bad beats get you down, though. When people put bad beats on you, it means they are making bad calls and you are making good bets.

Just sit tight, wait for strong hands and then bet them. If you do that while at the same time folding all your weak hands, you’ll start turning a profit in small stakes limit games in no time.

Player RUGGIO scooped the World record prize by being beaten on the lowest stake jackpot table where blinds start at $0.50/$1. He held a straight flush from 7 to Jack of hearts. He was “beaten” by AELANI who was holding the Queen and King of Hearts giving him a higher Straight Flush. AELANI still took down $208,698 for his part. All the other five players on the table received $41,739 for just being there.

Ruggio holding 8,7 of hearts saw the flop come 3d, 9h Jh, sensing he needed any heart for a flush & the 10h for a straight flush he called AELANI’s $4 bet. The turn card fell a Queen of clubs, AELANI bet out $8, which was swiftly called. The river fell 10 hearts giving RUGGIO the straight flush, at this point he is thinking about how he has AELANI beat. AELANI bets out $20, which RUGGIO raised to $35, AELANI then re-raises all in which was called. To RUGGIO’s horror AELANI turned over Queen and King of hearts giving him a higher straight flush. His horror soon to turned to joy when he realized he had scooped $417,396 and the chips began raining down on his screen.

“My first reaction when I saw that I hit a piece of the Jackpot was ‘oh my God’, I am paying for college completely on my own through student loans so first and foremost I thought about how I would be able to pay off all my student loans and start my life in the real world debt-free.” AELANI, from Northwestern University, Chicago said of his win.

“Congratulations to all players who made this a part of history and share in the jackpot of almost $1,200,000, however, the fun is not over, the bad beat has been reseeded and is already sitting at $240,000.” commented Jay Manning, a Carbon spokesman. “We are thrilled that the Bad Beat has gone off and we have set a new bar for the industry. We never envisagedthe Bad beat would take so long to hit, after all we have the lowest qualifying hand anywhere online”, said Manning.

The Bad Beat Jackpot, first introduced by Carbon Poker in mid 2008, this is the first pay out since its introduction, is seeded by $0.50 from every pot on all listed Bad Beat tables and pays out when a hand of quad 7’s or better is busted. Currently, this is the lowest qualifying hand for a bad beat in the online industry.

The Bad Beat Jackpot isn’t the only thing happening at Carbon Poker, with the highly anticipated 4.5 version of their gaming platform to be launched 1st March. The new software, which features an advanced mini mode and table customizer also coincides with the release of the new VIP program that will incorporate a brand new online store. “It’s a very exciting time at Carbon Poker, a lot is happening, the players love it and they are tuning in to what we are doing.” stated Manning.
See the live jackpot at: www.carbonpoker.com

About Carbon Poker
Carbon Poker is the fresh new face in the online poker world, growing rapidly and sporting a stylish look, Carbon Poker is an online poker room dedicated to providing users with the best possible online gaming experience. Carbon Poker accepts players worldwide and is focused on catering to all player groups through active promotions, game variety, quality software and security.

For more information, please contact:
Carbon Poker Media Relations Team on: media@carbonpoker.com