When you first start playing poker you should always start out at the low limit tables. It doesn’t matter if you play cash games or tournaments, you should always start on one of the lowest staked games. The unique thing about playing online poker is that you can find cash games starting at $.01/$.02 and going all the way up to $100/$200+. You will also find that poker tournaments have a wide variety of stakes starting with tournaments priced at roughly $1. You don’t need to start on the lowest limit poker tables, but you shouldn’t exceed the $1/$2 limits in cash games and $5-$10 tournaments.

Once you find a low limit game that you’re comfortable with playing on FullTilt, you should stick with it until you’ve accumulated a good amount of data on your stats. If you want to become a better poker player then you need to constantly analyze your stats to find your weaknesses and strengths. When you’re actually playing the game you’re constantly thinking about a hundred different things and often a lot of stuff won’t sink in right away. If you spend the time to look over your stats and hand histories you’ll be able to improve upon your game at a much better rate. The best poker players in the world spend hours every day going over hand data and that’s what makes them the best.

After you’ve played thousands of hands you’ll have a good idea about how well you’ve been doing and whether or not you’re ready to move up. The players that win a couple thousand bucks and start moving up the limits instantly are the ones that end up broke and back at the $1/$2 games. The last thing that you want to do is go broke and stuck rebuilding your bankroll because you moved up limits to fast. It’s a lot better if you end up moving up limits slower then you’re supposed too.

When you feel that you’re ready to move up limits the most important thing to look at is how profitable you’ve been on a regular basis. If you’ve played for six months at a certain limit and you’ve only posted profits for two of those months then you’re probably not ready to move up limits. Even if you’ve won $5K from the two months of profit you’ll end up losing it if you move up limits. You need to be posting profits on a month to month basis before you move up limits. Once you move up in the poker tournament limits you should make sure that you’re still posting the same stats as you were at the lower limit games. A lot of the time players move up limits and start doing a lot worse. If you compare your stats and notice that you’re doing significantly worse then you should just move back down limits until you’re ready to try moving up again.

The most important thing that you need to remember when moving up limits is that you really need to be hungry for moving up to the next level. If you’re second guessing yourself or scared about losing your bankroll then you’re not going to be playing your best poker and it will usually result in losing money rather then winning money.