Are you really such a good Texas Hold’em poker player that you can simply throw money away and leave it behind? This question when looked at another way could be phrased differently, are you so rich and well off that you can basically spend money and waste money like it is going out of fashion? The answer for most people is no but yet millions of players the world over waste millions upon millions of dollars every year. How do they do this?
Well firstly all poker sites have bonuses and rake deals and other such incentives that many players fail to take advantage of. For instance let us say that you play online poker regularly and you play without rakeback. Let us also say that your best friend who plays at exactly the same site as you and at the same levels with a similar game has a 33% rake deal. Both players break even on the actual tables themselves but one player breaks even over all their play while the other is getting $1000 in rakeback per month.
Suddenly we have a situation where one player is making $12,000 per year while the other is breaking even. Or how about the player who never moves from site to site and so never takes advantage of sign up bonuses which at some sites can be $1000 or more. While you have to play so many hands to get the bonus, a regular player who plays often will clear the bonus in no time at all.
It is exactly the same with reward points or player points. These are points awarded to players for giving a certain level of action based on the stakes that they play and the time that they put in. These points can be converted for prizes, free entries into tournaments or even cash. But free entries into poker tournaments or satellites have a theoretical value because sooner or later you are going to cash in these events. A full-time or semi-professional player could make thousands of dollars a month in bonuses, rakeback and other rewards and they can literally make the difference between being a winning and a losing poker player.
Most poker players fit into the category of not being anywhere near good enough to throw this kind of money away and it is always the case that the players who do throw this money away are the players who need it the most in order to make the game pay long term. In poker then it is often a combination of lethargy and wastefulness that leads to players being lifetime losers. If you are a regular player and play 20 hours a week and you are also a decent poker player and you have lost $2k in the last year then you have basically engineered your own downfall if you failed to take advantage of sign up bonuses, rakeback and other such financial incentives.
Tags: Poker, Texas Hold'em