Poker Talk: Choosing the right stakes to play at

It’s often said that in poker your losses should “sting”; meaning when you lose money at the poker tables it should be a noticeable amount. Of course, to some people a noticeable amount is merely $10, and to others the threshold can be much higher. So, the question remains: How do you determine what stakes you should be playing at? Well, most people would say it all depends on your bankroll, but there is another aspect you should also weigh just as heavily, and that is; what are you comfortable losing?

Your comfort level in poker isn’t totally determined by what you have in the bank; instead it is determined by the stakes you need to play where you can keep your composure, while at the same time play in a game where the wins and losses are meaningful. Like most everything in poker this requires a serious balancing act!

The simplest way to explain what I mean by comfort level is the following sentence: In poker your losses should be annoying, not disheartening. The way I look at it, on my worst day –the day I lose every coin-flip; when my sets lose to rivered straights and flushes; and when my draws never get there– I should leave the game annoyed, not feeling heartbroken. I want to feel like the Red Sox blew a 9^th inning lead during a game in April, not during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series -Get the difference between annoyed and disheartened now?

The trick is to play a high enough level so that the losses do not become so insignificant that you simply don’t care. And this is where most players fail in their logic. Sure you may be bankrolled -even over-bankrolled– for $5/$10 No Limit, but are you ready for the $10,000 swings that playing these stakes will present? Well if you’re not, obviously you should play lower. But suppose you’re a poker pro/semi-pro trying to scrape out a living at the tables, and $2/$4 or $3/$6 No limit is too low a level for you to survive on. Here is where problems start to arise, because you’re uncomfortable at the limit you need to play, and will therefore play slightly scared or even worse, tilt really easily.

The reality is that for some people no amount of money will ever allow them to play comfortably at a certain level, and because of this they play poorly -or simply slightly off their ‘A’ Game-which turns them into long-term losing players. If everything about the game was the same with the sole exception being that the stakes were cut in half they would make a nice living, but because they are playing out of their comfort zone they simply can’t beat the game.

So, before you say, “I’m bankrolled for such and such limit”, take a minute and determine where your comfort zone is by figuring out whether a bad loss would annoy or dishearten you.