Any advice is welcome :))

Hi guys and girls.

I am new to this forum so please be gentle lol.

I have already posted this in the "Introduction's" Message Board but thought I would get some more replies from in here.....

I have been playing poker, mainly online but some live stuff at home and a couple of times at a casino too, for almost 12 months.

The first probably 6 months of that i was really just playing for fun and wasn't really studying the game much.

However, more recently I have decided that I want to learn more, be more skilled, understand the game better, develop my game etc and ultimately make money from playing.

I tend to have three major problems at the moment.

1. I don't really have a bankroll

2. I tend to playing above my bankroll.

3. I don't have as much time as I would like to play.

The bankroll thing is an issue because i tend to only deposit $50 at time but don't really have any money 'set aside' for poker, just whateve I have available at the time sort of thing.

With that $50 I usually play either NL $0.25/0.50 or NL $0.50/1.

I have in the past managed to turn it into around $180 but then I seem to lose it all.

I have read the articles about building a bnakroll here recently and it seems that I should probably be playing $0.05/0.10 games? I just always feel that in these micro-limits that people will call with anything and the bad beats are more evident....

The articles also seem to suggest I should be playing Limit instead of No Limit? Is this the case? Should i change to playing Limit to build a bankroll?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated and I look forward to posting my questions and opinions on the boards.

Cheers

save up all those $50 deposits and make a bigger one if you want to play that high of a level. With $50 you are bound to lose it playing $50 and $100 NL. Playing those levels with $50 you are just asking to be busted out.

you need to have 10-20 buy-ins at NL and 300x the big blind at limit both of which you dont have. When I play live I always dont follow bankroll management because im not playing every day I can do that but with online poker you play almost every day so you need correct management skills.

Well, my personal opinion is that with $50 total bankroll you should be playing $.01/$.02 tables. These are usually $2 max to buy into the table. You could set a daily goal of 1-2 double ups ($2-$4) per day profit. That's around 5% of your bankroll per day!

Sure, players at this level tend to call with anything. But you need to learn to play against this kind of player, anyway. Plus your losses will be less if you bust. Your key at this level should be to build skill and confidence, then building the bankroll comes along by itself.

I believe the stakes level you play has as much to do with your confidence as it does your bankroll and that there is what I call "poker psychology" relating to how the stakes affect your play. Others call it "scared money", but there's more to it than that.

I wrote a couple 3 articles about it in my blog that might be of interest to you. If so, start here:

Stick's Poker Blog: Your Stakes Level DOES Matter: Bankroll Psychology II

Good luck.

You are definitely playing too high of a limit for your bankroll. Sticker is probably right about where you should play - but if you can't discipline yourself to .01/.02 then at least stick to .02/.05.

If the micro limits aren't your cup of tea, switch to $1 SNGs. If you are a good enough player you can build that bankroll up to move up in buyins.

Full Tilt has the single table SNG's for $1+whatever the rake is. Stars only has those for multi-table SNG's.

At Stars, by the way, the max buy-in at the .01/.02 NL tables is $5. When you consider rake, the impossibility of collecting FPP's, etc., Stars isn't very friendly to the micro player.

With 50 bucks, you could try rampaging. Check out this link:

http://fellknight.blogspot.com/2006/02/rampaging-how-to-build-bankroll.html

I've tried it a few times. Most of the time, it's good fun...

E