10 Tips For Preventing Chip Leaks

10. Control Your Bankroll
Bankroll management is one of the most important things you can do to protect your chips. This is often hard for some players, as they don’t think of chips as cash money, but simply round plastic disks that allow you to play the best game in the world. But the truth is that it is your chips that are the livelihood of your game. Without them, you will no longer be in the action. In cash games, by staying at the limits that your bankroll can afford (300-500 X the big blind), your poker session will last longer and most likely be more profitable.

9. Use Your Chip Stack As A Winning Tool
In tournament poker, you will want to keep your bankroll hefty enough to carry you through the coming stages. Always plan ahead and try to keep your chip stack large enough to bully your opponents when necessary, steal blinds, knock out the short stacks when they go all in, and protect yourself from bad beats. By utilizing all of these tactics, your bankroll will grow naturally anyway, decreasing your risk of going out in a later stage.

8. Switch Up Your Game At The Right Times
If you play tight in the early stages of a tournament, only playing the best hands, you may double up, you probably won’t, but you’ll survive 9 out of 10 times to see the next stage of the tournament. Since staying alive is your number one goal in tournament poker, playing risk-free will keep you in there longer. However, you can get into trouble this way if you don’t get a good hand as the blinds go up. You could ultimately go out just from paying the blinds. A good balance between tight and light-aggressive play will allow you to eat some of the other less experienced players’ chips, so that you can be intimidating when necessary.

7. Play Smart When Your Stacks Up
There are many benefits to having a large chip stack and possessing an overall awareness of all of these will ultimately improve your game. First and foremost, the biggest chip stack is the biggest winner in cash games or tournaments. Secondly, a fat chip stack is a resource that you can use to take other players out all together, either by having the cushion to call an opponent’s all-in bet or to just wear down your opponents slowly over time. Also, a large chip stack will allow for mediocre hands to stretch further, allowing you to act more aggressively on big bets and showdowns. And finally, when you can afford to throw some chips away, your bluffing strategy becomes more viable.

6. Use Your Chips As A Tool
If you’re large chip stack is big enough and you merely want to fatten it up a little more before getting up from the table, play cautiously in order to keep your current chips while at the same time developing your payouts to be as large as possible.

5. Your Chips Are Your Security Blanket
By being able to feel safe with your chips backing you, your game will become more confident. The more chips you possess, the safer you will be in bad situations like increasing blinds and bad beats.

4. Don’t Play To Tight or Too Loose
If you have the largest chip stack at the table, playing too tight can cause you to miss the opportunity to stay in the lead while affording other players the opportunity to quickly double up and knock you out of the lead. On the other hand, assuming a big chip stack gives you free reign to loosen up will also hurt your chips dramatically. A large chip stack can quickly become a breeding ground for bad choices, influencing you to chase too many draws and, over time, feeding your opponents your chips is small amounts. Finding a middle ground is one of the biggest factors of maintaining a healthy chip stack.

3. Use A Tight Aggressive Strategy
Using your chips to intelligently and tactfully push your opponents around and using large bets at the right time to steal pots is a hard skill to perfect, or even refine, for that matter. Know when to call and don’t get yourself into trouble by bluffing at the wrong time. Ultimately, every poker hand, table, and game is a unique experience. If you consider every session as a learning experience and an opportunity to practice, you will eventually gain the knowledge of enough hands to hone your own techniques into the perfect balance of tight and aggressive play. It’s truly something that is best practiced, not taught.

2. Be Smart With Risks
Don’t risk too many chips on marginal hands. Evaluate your situation and make the call to stop when your pot odds aren’t panning out. If your chances are good or the risk is small, go for it, but if the conditions aren’t right, wait until they are. In tournaments this is especially important because once you’re out, you’re out. In cash games, depending on your availability of funds, you could essentially keep re-buying chips if you can’t control yourself. But if you’re trying to come out ahead, you’re going to end up disappointed very quickly if you can’t learn to be patient.

1. Your Chip Stack is The Most Important Thing
In tournaments, your chip stack is your bankroll; in cash games, it’s a little less serious, but may be just as important to your game. Don’t be afraid to use your chips, but only when necessary. Your chips will grow if you consider them in all of your decisions at the table. Think of your chips as part of the game, not just a means to play.