Internet poker players now have the luxury of being able to play pretty much any stake at any time online. So many poker games run around the clock and with so many different players, the choice of what stake to play is incredible. Poker players can choose to gamble from just a few cents to up to a million dollars at any on time. Choosing the right stake to play in poker is often the difference between being a winning player and a losing one.

Bankroll management

Bankroll management is a big part of finding the right poker tournament to play. Take Texas Holdem as an example. Poker players are advised that good bankroll management for no limit Texas Holdem is to have at least 2000 big blinds in their bankroll at any one time. This means that if a poker player is playing $1/$2 no limit Texas Holdem they should have at least $4000 in their poker bankroll. Though this is a very crude bankroll management technique, it works for the most part, if the poker player is a winning player. 2000 big blinds has been proved to be able to ride the test of variance that any poker player has in their career. By participating in good bankroll management, poker players can work out which stake they should be playing on the Internet.

Play with comfort

As soon as a poker player such as Negreanu is playing outside their comfort zone and it is effecting their decisions, they are playing at too high a stake. Some poker players will be scared about losing money and it will affect their game. This is known as “scared money” and will ultimately make a poker player play a long term losing game of poker. As soon as a poker player is uncomfortable with the stakes they are playing and it is affecting their play, they should move down until they are comfortable.

Play a beatable stake

As the stakes at the diferent online poker sites goes up, the competition generally gets harder. This means that if a poker player is a winning player at one stake they might not be at a larger one. Even if a poker player has the money to move up a stake, they should only be playing a higher stake regularly if they are able to beat it. Now this is harder to gauge in the short term, however; a poker player should track their play with a stats tracking piece of software to ensure they are not wasting their time. As a good rule of thumb as soon as no limit Texas Holdem rises above the $0.5/$1 mark, the competition starts to increase quite steeply.