Poker blog
Strategy that survives contact with a real table, honest notes on how club apps and unions actually work, and what changes in our network. Written by people who play and run clubs, not by a content agency.
Common Poker Mistakes and What They Cost
The mistakes that cost the most are dull. Nobody remembers the rivers they called on hope, which is exactly why those cost more than the hands people do remember.
Read the article →Starting Poker: What to Learn First
Almost every new player loses to the same three things, and none of them are advanced. Playing too many hands, calling too often, and sitting at stakes the bankroll cannot support.
Read →Common Poker Mistakes and What They Cost
The mistakes that cost the most are dull. Nobody remembers the rivers they called on hope, which is exactly why those cost more than the hands people do remember.
Read →Getting Value From a Poker Coach
Most wasted coaching money is wasted in the first ten minutes, when a student who brought no hands asks a coach to teach them poker in general.
Read →Bots and Collusion: What Actually Protects You
Bots and colluding pairs exist in every online pool. What differs is how quickly somebody acts on a report, and that depends on who runs the game rather than on the app.
Read →How Much Can You Earn From Poker?
Poker income is volume multiplied by winrate multiplied by stake. Each of those has a ceiling, and understanding where yours sits answers the question better than any figure.
Read →When to Call on the River: The Maths
Pot odds tell you how often you need to win to call. What they cannot tell you is how often this particular opponent is bluffing, and that is the number that decides it.
Read →Concentration and Stamina at the Tables
Your decisions get worse late in a session, and the change does not feel like tiredness. It feels like the game got harder, which is why almost nobody stops in time.
Read →How to Play Poker Alongside a Full-Time Job
With eight hours a week you cannot out-volume anyone. What you can do is play only the good games, which is an advantage full-timers rarely have.
Read →Playing Poker for a Living: The Real Trade
Going professional trades a predictable income for an unpredictable one and a workplace for a room on your own. Both cost more than people expect.
Read →Setting Poker Goals You Can Actually Hit
A monthly profit target is a goal you do not control. Volume and study targets are, and they stay hittable in a losing month, which is exactly when you need something to hit.
Read →Poker Bankroll Management That Survives Variance
There is no single correct bankroll. The number depends on the format, the softness of the field and how you handle losing, and getting it wrong is what ends most poker attempts.
Read →How to Get Maximum Value From Weak Players
A weak player at your table will lose their stack tonight. Whether it comes to you depends on where you are sitting and whether you are willing to bet hands that feel too thin.
Read →PPPoker Cash Game Strategy That Fits the Field
PPPoker cash tables are loose, passive and heavily multiway. That combination rewards a specific set of adjustments and punishes charts written for tougher games.
Read →PLO5 Strategy: Why Nut Hands Decide It
In five-card Omaha everybody flops something. That single fact turns second-best hands from unlucky into the main way players lose money in this game.
Read →How to Beat Tilt: Six Things That Work
Tilt is not a single condition with a single cure. Losing tilt, entitlement tilt and boredom tilt look similar from outside and need different answers.
Read →What Is a Complete in Poker?
Completing is calling from the small blind for half a big blind. It looks like the cheapest decision at the table and it is one of the most consistently misplayed.
Read →Sit and Go Strategy on PPPoker
A sit and go gives you tournament structure in about an hour. Most of the money is decided in the last fifteen minutes, and that part is more learnable than any other format.
Read →Multi-Table Tournaments on PPPoker
Tournament fields in club apps come from your union, not from the whole platform. That makes them smaller and softer than a big room's, and it changes how the late stages play.
Read →Signs Deep Tournament Runs Are Not for You
Deep tournaments reward a narrow set of traits. If you do not have them, the format will quietly cost you money for years while you blame variance.
Read →Eight Exploits That Work at Low Stakes
Balanced play is built for opponents who punish imbalance. Low-stakes pools do not, and eight specific adjustments beat them more than any equilibrium strategy will.
Read →Poker Session Routine: Before, During, After
Most of what a session costs you happens in its first twenty minutes and its last twenty. A start ritual and a written stop rule are worth more than another preflop chart.
Read →How to Play Against a Maniac at the Table
A maniac is the most profitable player at the table and the one who busts the most opponents. Which of those happens to you depends mostly on where you are sitting.
Read →How to Choose a Poker Affiliate
Every poker room and club app pays part of your rake to whoever signed you up. If you registered on your own, that share simply stays with the operator.
Read →How to Spot a Recreational Player
You can identify a recreational player inside one orbit, before a single showdown. Finding them and sitting in the right seat decides more of your winrate than any strategy tweak.
Read →ICM in Poker: Why Chips Are Not Money
In a tournament a chip you win is worth less than a chip you lose. That single asymmetry explains most of the folds that look too tight near a bubble and are not.
Read →How to Avoid Difficult Postflop Spots
Most impossible postflop decisions were created preflop, by a call made with no plan for what happens next. The fix is upstream of the spot itself.
Read →What Is a Squeeze in Poker and When to Use It
A squeeze is a re-raise made after somebody has opened and somebody else has called. It wins because the caller is caught between two players, which also explains exactly when it stops working.
Read →Open-Raise Sizing: How Big Should You Open?
There is no single best open-raise size. The correct one depends on whether the players behind you fold, call or 3-bet, and club-app pools sit at the wrong end of that scale for the standard advice.
Read →How to Download and Install PPPoker
Installing PPPoker takes two minutes on any device. The part that stops people is what happens next: the app opens on an empty lobby, because every real game sits inside a private club.
Read →Why Poker Players Burn Out and Quit
Almost nobody quits poker because of one brutal session. They quit after months of playing the same game at the same hours with nothing to show for it, and by then the damage is habit rather than mood.
Read →How to Study Poker Away From the Tables
Most players study the wrong thing. Solver charts feel productive and change almost nothing, while the hands that cost real money go unreviewed because losing them was unpleasant.
Read →How to Beat Micro Stakes Cash Games
Micro stakes are not beaten by clever play. They are beaten by a tight preflop skeleton, value bets that keep coming, and a rake deal that stops the room taking your edge.
Read →What Are PPPoker Clubs and How to Join
A PPPoker club decides which tables you see. The union behind that club decides your opponents, your rake and whether your money comes back. Most players only look at the first one.
Read →When to 3-Bet: Ranges, Sizing and Spots
The choice between a linear and a polarised 3-bet range is not a matter of taste. It depends entirely on whether the player you are attacking folds, calls or 4-bets.
Read →How to Tell if a Recreational Is Bluffing
There are no physical tells online. What gives a recreational player away is sizing, timing, and one population fact worth more than any read: most of them almost never bluff the river.
Read →HUD for PPPoker: What Actually Works
PPPoker writes no hand histories, so a classic HUD has nothing to read. Here is why, what the third-party tools actually risk, and what serious players use instead.
Read →How to Move Up in Poker Stakes Without Going Broke
Almost every player who stalls at the same limit for two years tells the same story: the game got harder, the fish disappeared, the money never came. Almost none of them stalled for that reason. They stalled because they never defined what moving up actually requires — how much money, under what rules, and what changes at the table once they get there. Moving up is not a courage problem. It is a bankroll problem with a shot-taking procedure attached, and both parts are solvable on paper before you ever sit down. Why most players stall at the same limit The usual answer is discipline, and discipline matters — but it is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is that most players move up on emotion rather than on a rule. They run hot for two weeks, jump a limit while their bankroll still fits the old one, lose four buy-ins, and drop back down feeling like the higher game beat them. It did not. The bankroll beat them. The second cause is a currency error. Winrate is measured in big blinds per 100 hands, but variance is felt in money. Double the stake and every downswing you already know how to survive doubles in dollars while looking identical on the graph — so a routine 15 buy-in stretch reads as proof you do not belong. The math nobody runs before moving up Here is the calculation that decides whether the move is worth making at all. Say you beat NL25 for 6bb/100. That is 6 x $0.25 = $1.50 per 100 hands. You move to NL50 and your winrate halves to 3bb/100 — a realistic drop against a tougher pool. That is 3 x $0.50 = $1.50 per 100 hands. Identical money, roughly double the variance in dollars. So the rule follows directly: moving up pays only if your winrate drops by less than half. If you expect it to fall further than that, you are buying volatility with no raise attached. If you expect it to hold above half, the move is correct even when the first month feels worse. Rake and rakeback sit on top of this and matter more than most players account for. At micro and low stakes, rake is a large share of the pot, and a deal that returns a meaningful percentage of it can be worth more to your hourly than the extra ten buy-ins you were waiting to save. Two players with the same technical skill and different rake deals do not have the same winrate, and at low limits the gap is often larger than the gap between the limits themselves. How many buy-ins you actually need Thresholds depend on format and on how soft the pool is, not on how confident you feel. NLHE cash, soft field: 30–40 buy-ins is workable if you have a stable income outside poker and can reload. 50 if poker is your only income. NLHE cash, tough field: 50–75 buy-ins. Lower winrate means longer downswings, not just shallower ones. PLO cash: 100+ buy-ins, and that is not a conservative number. Equities run close, so swings are structurally larger regardless of skill edge. MTTs: 200–300 buy-ins for a regular schedule. Field size drives this far more than buy-in level does. SNGs and short-handed formats: 60–100 buy-ins depending on structure and payout spread. One adjustment that matters in club apps: soft fields raise your winrate but they do not lower your variance. Loose-passive pools produce more multiway pots and more flips against ranges that should have folded, which widens outcome spread even while it raises expectation. Do not treat a soft game as a reason to run a thinner roll. Shot-taking rules to set before you sit A shot without rules is just a bigger session. Decide all four of these before the first hand, because you will not decide them well after buy-in three. Shot size. Allocate a fixed number of buy-ins — five is a common and sane figure — and treat that as the entire budget of the attempt. Stop-loss in buy-ins, not in money. Two buy-ins down at the new limit and you go back to the old one, same day, no negotiation. Check it between hands rather than mid-hand: the decision to quit is the first decision tilt takes away from you. Table selection as a precondition. Take the shot only when the game is worth taking it in. One limit up with two recreational players at the table is a better spot than your usual game full of regulars. A-game only. No shots after a losing session, on short sleep, or in the last hour of a long grind. The higher limit is where your C-game costs double. Going back down is not failure — it is the rule working. Players who treat the drop-down as a defeat stop taking shots at all, which is a slower way of never moving up. What actually changes one limit up Less than most players fear, but not nothing, and the changes are specific. Preflop: your opens get 3-bet more often, and cold-call frequencies drop. Fewer multiway pots means your suited connectors and small pairs lose implied odds while your offsuit broadways gain — the opposite of what most players assume. Postflop: the biggest single change is thin value. At lower limits you get paid by pure stations, so a third barrel with a marginal made hand prints money. One limit up, that same bet is called by better and folded by worse, which flips it from value to a spew. Meanwhile bluffs gain: opponents who fold more make your barrels work more often. A hand that plays differently one limit up 100bb effective, 6-max cash. We open CO to 2.5bb with KhQh, BB calls. Flop Qs 8h 4c — we c-bet 33% (2bb) into 6bb, called. Turn 2d — we bet 60% (6bb) into 10bb, called. River 5s, pot 22bb. At the lower limit, the third barrel is a clear value bet. The calling range is full of 8x, pocket pairs and weak Qx that will not fold, and you are ahead of most of it. One limit up, run the same range through a tighter pool: the hands that call two barrels and arrive at the river are mostly Qx with a better kicker, sets and the occasional 8x that has decided you are barrelling too much. Now you are getting called by better and folding out worse — the definition of a bet that loses money. Check back, capture showdown value, and take the free look at whether this opponent bluffs rivers. Same hand, same board, same sizing. Different pool, opposite decision. That is what moving up actually asks of you: not a new strategy, but the discipline to re-check which hands your opponents are still calling with. What moving up looks like in mobile club apps The classic advice assumes fields that stiffen predictably as you climb. Inside club apps that assumption breaks, and it breaks in your favour more often than not. Club-app pools stay recreational further up the ladder than pools in classic rooms, because entry is club-gated rather than open, and because a large share of players are there for the game rather than for a career. In practice this means the winrate drop from one limit to the next is frequently smaller than the model above predicts — which shifts the entire calculation toward moving up sooner. Two things matter more here than a marginal strategy edge. Table selection first: with clubs running many tables at once, the gap between the best and worst game at the same limit is usually larger than the gap between two adjacent limits. Prime time second — take your shot when recreational traffic peaks, or you burn the buy-ins you allocated on the wrong game. We run clubs across six poker apps and have been at this since 2019, with rakeback reaching up to 60% depending on app and volume. When you are deciding whether the roll supports the next limit, that deal belongs in the calculation — it is a component of winrate, not a bonus on top of it. FAQ How many buy-ins do I need to move up in poker? For NLHE cash in a soft field, 30–40 buy-ins at the new limit if you have outside income, 50 if poker pays your bills. PLO needs 100+ and MTTs need 200–300 because of structural variance, not because of skill. When should I move back down? The moment you hit the stop-loss you set before the session — commonly two buy-ins at the new limit — or when your bankroll falls below the threshold for the limit you are playing. Set both numbers in advance; deciding mid-session is how a shot turns into a downswing. Does rakeback really change how fast I can move up? Yes, and more than most players expect at low stakes, where rake is a large share of every pot. A better deal raises your effective winrate at the current limit, which both builds the roll faster and makes the next limit profitable at a lower raw winrate. Why do I win at low stakes but lose one limit up? Usually thin value. The bets that print against stations get called by better hands one limit up, and players keep firing the same third barrels out of habit. Check your river betting frequency before concluding the game is beyond you. Is it better to take shots or wait until I am fully rolled? Structured shots with a fixed budget and a stop-loss get you there faster, because they build experience at the new limit while the roll is still growing. Unstructured shots — no budget, no stop-loss, taken on a heater — are the single most common way players lose a bankroll they had already earned. Do the same rules apply in mobile club apps? The bankroll math is identical, but the winrate drop between limits is often smaller because the pools stay recreational higher up. Table selection and playing during prime-time traffic matter more than in classic rooms. Play where the move up is easier The fastest way to make the next limit affordable is to pick a game where the field does not harden as fast and the rake deal works for you. We run clubs across six mobile poker apps, including Suprema Poker and PPPoker, with rakeback up to 60%. Tell us the limits you play now and the ones you are aiming at, and we will point you to the club where that step is shortest. Write to us on Telegram at @rpunion — 24/7. If you run a club yourself or work as an agent, our terms are on the clubs and agents page. 18+. Poker is a game of skill with real financial risk. Play within your bankroll and stop when it stops being a decision.
Read →What the All Time Money List Hides
The all time money list ranks gross live tournament cashes. It does not subtract buy-ins, it cannot see staking deals, and it ignores online results entirely.
Read →Five Poker Books Worth Reading
Most poker book lists are twenty years out of date or padded to ten titles. Five are enough, and the order you read them in matters more than the list.
Read →Our Unions: Seven Unions, Five Apps
We run seven unions across five club apps. The union you join decides your tables, your field and what comes back to you, which makes it the only choice that really matters.
Read →Telling Your Family You Play Poker
Hiding poker from the people you live with costs more than the conversation would. Here is what to lead with, what to show them, and what never to promise.
Read →Poker Facts That Are Actually True
Poker trivia spreads faster than poker theory, and most of it is wrong. Here is the version that survives checking, and the arithmetic inside it that changes how you play.
Read →How to Become a Poker Agent
An agent brings players into a club and earns a share of the rake they generate. It is a real job with real obligations, not a referral link.
Read →Running a Club on Suprema Poker
This page is for club owners rather than players. Here are the terms inside Suprema EU, and what the union carries that a club would otherwise pay for itself.
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