Introduction
First of all, you may be thinking: “Online poker in 2022?” To which, I say yes. In an age where millions are flocking to web3 investments, food delivery gigs, alternative income sources like YouTube and Etsy, online poker has been severely overlooked as an income option, and yet, it provides one of the best working environments if you’re in the market for stable, consistent earnings.
That’s only if you know how to navigate the scene of online poker, of course. This guide will serve not as a sure-win strategy, but rather as a framework for consistently cashing out at tables. This means working on your game strategy and preparing thoroughly.
In 2022, we have new tools, new perspectives, and new meta-strategies. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a greenhorn, you can learn something from this low-stake poker strategy guide. Lastly, if you’re looking for an online poker site to play at, Americas Cardroom looks like a good deal this year.
1. Game Strategy
Play Fast, Stingy and Tightly
Fold often pre-flop. While this sounds like the surefire way to lose blinds, think about blinds being the cumulative entrance fee. In total, you should be playing only about 15-25% of total hands, with the numbers increasing as you move from a nine-person game all the way down to tables with four to six players.
If you don’t know what these hands are, they change based on your playing style, but a few good guides. Most lists of top hands in poker will consist of Broadway Hands, meaning two cards ranked from 10s to Aces. Another good bet is strong paired hands.
When you do get these hands, though, play aggressively and with controlling stakes and execution. The reason for these two maxims (fold pre-flop, play cold and aggressive), is in the nature of online poker these days.
If you have a boring remote-working day job, want to run multiple instances of online poker at once, or simply want to increase your earning consistency, playing this way lets you save your attention on crucial moments of the game, instead of always thinking about whether to play a Jack 6 unsuited.
Play Positionally
Remember, that with lower stakes, you want to be playing to maximize individual positions over a long period of time. This means that you should be adjusting for your position and not just hand strength, as this gives your play a certain level of fluidity that would ensure you are paid out appropriately for your skill.
When you are in an early position and in the blinds, you should be playing extra-tightly, being stingy and precise with your bets, and relying hard on pot odds. When you are in the cutoff position or better yet, on the button, play loose, fast, and try to score impactful, positionally influenced wins.
2. Preparation
Play Prep
The interesting and wonderful thing about online poker in 2022, is that you get most tables where all the players are across not only the fundamentals but more in-depth analysis too. This is because the amount of resources and the availability of said resources about poker theory has exploded due to the internet.
Be careful when using older resources as they might not be up to date with recent play-tested or data-driven findings, instead, prioritize new resources that give plenty of new and fresh ideas to what is at this point, a classic game.
When it comes to resources, you specifically should use resources from WSOP pros, poker analysts, poker websites, and anything you deem well-researched and worth your time.
Learn the cutting edge strategies and don’t waste time on anything else, since everyone is doing the same in an age of smartphones and data.
Personal Preparation
When it comes to playing poker over a long period of time, what tends to matter is both the physical and the mental factors. Contrary to popular belief, the psychological and the physical are heavily related, since your body is by nature, a series of physical processes that, when not given enough sleep, exercise, or nutrition, can fall apart both physically and psychologically.
It’s very important to work on your physical state alongside your mental state of mind. Poker is a high variance game with plenty of stressful situations that may not leave your mind hours after concluding a session if you are not disciplined.
Discipline is key here. In 2022, we have so many resources to manage our health better, and much increased transparency about the harmful effects of sedentary habits.
Exercise regularly, and eat well. This will give you good mental clarity that you can carry with you to the tables. It also helps you prepare your body to be physically exhausted and to clear your mind for a good quality of sleep at night.
Reacting well to adversity
The 2020s have gone off to a horrible start. The world has set itself on fire, and as a whole, people are more destitute and hopeless than they were a few years ago due to prolonged periods of staying indoors and social isolation.
This already predisposes the Poker player in 2022 to be a little more on-edge and on tilt. Not to mention, you might feel like it is important to earn lots of money every day due to the unstable and strange economic times.
As such, short-term back luck will kill most players, and in order to win consistently, you need to be better than tilting after a series of losses and playing emotionally. Poker is a high-variance game, as I’ve mentioned, and it is imperative that you recognize this immediately and let go of day-to-day or even week-to-week profit and loss.
Focus on improving your game, and see each table as a different lesson in the ongoing conversation of poker. More concretely, a lesson that costs three buy-ins at the most. Place a stop-loss there.
Conclusion
As with any other way to earn money, poker comes with its own professional challenges that tie into our unique and unchangeable human-ness. Learning to optimize your body and mind for play and overcoming key hurdles like tilting under pressure and procrastinating daily careful study can mean the difference between suckers and players.
