How can you tell whether or not you’re playing a good poker game? This simple rule will make it easier for beginner’s to judge their poker performance.

When you’re new to poker, it’s hard to judge how well you’re playing over the course of an entire game, and managing your bankroll can be difficult.

There are lots of different schools of thought when it comes to managing your bankroll while you’re playing on-line poker, but the simplest and most effective tip that I’ve ever heard is one that can be applied to all kinds of poker – limit and no limit, Texas Hold’em, and Omaha hi/lo.

That tip is known as the “30 bet rule”. Essentially, the 30 bet rule says that you should never lose more than 30 big bets in a game. The size of a “big bet” depends on the type of game you’re playing, but it should give you an idea of how much money you will be risking in a game, and has the added bonus of making sure you’re ready for your chosen limits – if you can’t afford those 30 big bets, don’t even sit down at the table.

The 30 bet rule is useful for many reasons. Firstly, it stops you from staying at a table when you’re losing. Secondly, it encourages you to think carefully before you play poker, and may help you to adopt a more conservative style.

Thirdly, it acts as a form of automatic bankroll management – even for more experienced players. If you are a good player, and you’ve lost 30 hands in one night, then it’s likely that you need to step away from the table for a while. Not necessarily because you’re playing badly, but because those 30 losses – even if they were simply down to bad luck, will have had a massive impact on your table image.

If you look weak to other players at the table, your performance suffers – even if you’re good, you end up getting called on more hands, and you’ll end up losing more often just because of the way the other players perceive you.

The 30 bet rule ensures that bad table image won’t be as much of a problem.