Poker Podcast Review: Full Tilt Poker's Tips from the Pros, Episode 5 -- Your Online Poker Bankroll feat. Howard Lederer

I see the Two Plus Two Pokercast guys have conducted their interview with poker’s most interviewed subject of late, Howard Lederer. They posted the show just a few moments ago, actually. Four hours long, this one.

As I was saying a few days back, I’ll certainly be listening in, even though I have a feeling that while there may be some new nuggets, there will be a lot that will be similar to what we heard last week in the PokerNews interview -- i.e., deflecting blame, rationalizing inexcusable decisions, selectively forgetting unflattering details, and the like.

Before I listen, though, I wanted to share one little find I had while sorting through some old files, something that kind of relates both to the Two Plus Two Pokercast and to Lederer.

When I started the blog way back in 2006, I was inspired to do so by a few different factors, one of which was the poker podcasts I had begun listening to just a few months before. In particular it was the Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio podcast on which the subject of poker blogs occasionally arose that got me thinking of trying something similar.

Among those early podcasts was Rounders, the Poker Show, the one hosted by Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz who later on would move over to host the consistently excellent 2+2 show. Those early Rounders shows were good, too, many of which focused on one lengthy interview with a poker personality. Indeed, given their track record and experience with interviewing, I do look forward to hearing how Johnson and Schwartz handled the interview with Lederer (and am inclined to guess they likely did well).

Anyhow, just yesterday I happened to be searching for some old music files among a stack of CDs and DVDs and noticed I had a few on which there were folders labeled “Poker Podcasts.” During those early days of listening to podcasts I’d save them onto the computer before listening, and for some reason I was compelled to back those files up along with everything else.

Looking through those folders I am seeing a bunch of old episodes of Rounders, the Poker Show as well as Card Club, Poker Diagram, The Circuit (from back when it first appeared on the CardPlayer site), Ante Up!, The Poker Edge (with Phil Gordon), and some other obscure ones like California Poker Radio, NetBettor, and so on.

Also tucked in there are some old files labeled “Full Tilt Poker” which upon closer inspection turn out to be episodes of a kind of half-hearted attempt at podcasting by the FTP crew. The shows were all just a few minutes long and featured members of Team Full Tilt being interviewed by a host (who doesn’t identify himself) to talk about various strategy tips -- e.g., how to play ace-king, slow-playing, heads-up play, and so on. I think most were recorded either late 2005 or early 2006.

One of those I found featured Lederer, of course. The topic? Bankroll management. I had to listen.

“The number one consideration when it comes to bankroll management is working on your game and making sure you have the best of it,” Lederer begins. “If you don’t have the best of it, no bankroll management system is going to help you win.”

It’s an obvious point, of course, that if you aren’t a winning player then you can’t possibly come up with a scheme to prevent your bankroll from dwindling rather than growing. Lederer follows that with a few other guidelines regarding how much you need to have in your account in order to play different games comfortably (e.g., SNGs, limit games, no-limit).

Lederer then gets into other standard stuff about how, say, if you are a limit hold’em player you want to have a certain number of big bets in order to avoid going broke (Lederer says 500 big bets per table). He goes on to recommend “limits per session” (i.e., “stop-loss” limits) and the need to walk away once you’ve lost a certain amount.

“Poker’s going to be there, you know, Full Tilt Poker’s going to be open,” he says with a laugh. “There’s always going to be a game.”

The discussion then moves on to address the importance of tracking one’s play and keeping good records. “Being a good poker player takes a lot of self-honesty,” says Lederer. “Keep accurate records of how you do... those records won’t lie,” he adds. And for players who are losing overall, a check of the ledger can be especially helpful. Says Lederer, “you need to be objective, you need to be self-critical, you need to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and you need to fix it.”

I know, I know... it’s an easy target. Still, pretty funny hearing all of this advice about how to avoid risk of ruin coming from one of those involved with losing track of hundreds of millions of dollars. By the way, there’s another episode featuring Chris Ferguson also on the topic of bankroll management advice (talking about the “The Chris Ferguson Challenge.”)

(I’d point you to the shows on the web, but am having trouble finding them anywhere anymore.)

Will be thinking of all of these tips, then -- about the need to keep accurate records, about the value of setting limits for oneself, about the importance of self-honesty and figuring out what’s one is doing wrong -- when listening to Lederer’s 2+2 interview.