Best Poker Sites with $10 Deposits

Online Poker Sites Accepting $10 Deposits

Why Stick to the $10 Minimum Deposit?

Starting small shouldn’t be viewed as a necessary evil. In fact, I’d argue that it’s the best way to start out in online poker.

Think about it: if you’ve never played football before, you don’t sign up for major league tryouts right away. You join a weekend league to learn the basics, and then move up the ranks.

Poker is no different. You need to walk before you can crawl. And playing at poker sites with a $10 minimum deposit allows you to do this.

It’s best to think of poker as a game of stages. Once you master one stage, you graduate to the next. Stages are periods of time to be passed through, over which you learn the skills that will allow you to succeed in later stages.

Stages are stakes, and each stake has its own characteristics. The $0.10/$0.25 cash games play markedly different from the $0.25/0.50 cash games, for instance. Without the skills you develop at the $0.10/$0.25 tables, you won’t be able to beat the $0.25/$0.50 games with any consistency. So you’re actually better off by starting small.

That’s all well and good, but are there actually any poker sites with a $10 minimum deposit? I mean, isn’t that too small an amount for any real money game provider to care about?

Of course there are poker sites with a $10 minimum deposit! In fact, some of the best sites around accept deposits even lower than that. Good poker sites know that players who grind up from the bottom pay dividends over time. It’s good business to keep deposit minimums as low as possible.

Once you sign up at a poker site with a $10 minimum deposit, you’ll need to decide how you’re going to grind your bankroll. Should you choose cash games, tournaments, or Sit-and-Go tournaments?

Count Multi-Table Tournaments out right away, because MTT buyins are generally too high to facilitate playing with a $10 bankroll. Cash games and Sit-and-Gos are your best option. Which you choose is largely a matter of personal preference.

3 Tips for Grinding Your Bankroll in Cash Games

Practice good bankroll management. For a given bankroll amount, there is a set of stakes you can play that reduce your chances of going bust. In cash games, you usually want to keep at least 20 buyins in your account for whatever stake you play. This isn’t really feasible with only $10, so just take this advice: play the absolute lowest limits you can until you grind out $200. Then, you can play $0.05/$0.10 comfortably.

Play a conservative game.You don’t need to make any moves or play in a fancy way to beat the micro-stakes cash games. Just play ABC poker, and you will clean up. Why? Because the players at sites with a $10 minimum deposit suck, and ABC poker beats terrible players every time.

Don’t multi-table. Focus on one game at a time. This will help you to build your skills, so you’ll be more prepared when you move up in limits.

3 Tips for Grinding Your Bankroll in Sit-and-Gos

Practice good bankroll management. If you play above what you can afford, you will go broke; that is a certainty. So stick to stakes where losing one or two games won’t break the bank. It’s a good idea to keep 30-40 buyins in your account for whatever stake you play. So at poker sites with a $10 minimum deposit, you can play games with $0.25 buyins safely. Not every site spreads games this low, but you should be safe playing whatever the lowest stake is on your preferred site.

Don’t play turbo Sit-and-Gos.It may seem like a good idea to play turbos, because you can play more games more quickly. But you actually increase your chances of going bust by playing turbo games. The variance is higher in turbo Sit-and-Gos than in regular Sit-and-Gos, which means your results will vary widely regardless of how well you play. The remedy is simple: only play regular-speed Sit-and-Gos when grinding up from your $10 minimum deposit.

Stick to single-table Sit-and-Gos.If you play heads up Sit-and-Gos, the variance will kill you. Same with multi-table Sit-and-Gos. Single-table Sit-and-Gos are a great sweet spot where risk is minimized and rewards are maximized. So stick to the STTs until you’ve got a cushion in your poker account.