Fairly Simple Bankroll Question - My Plan

[Goodie54]

I've been playing for about five years, both live and online and I've made a decent amount of money but I've always cashed out of my online account before I could build the bankroll up to a substancial amount. I'm finally able to build the bankroll but I still do want to cash out from time to time. Here's my plan:

For the game I want to play (for the most part) which is 10-20 on pokerstars I now have 200 BB. My plan is to build that to 300 BB then cash out 50 BB evertime I make that much. Essentially, build my bankroll to 6000 then cash out 1000 everytime I get to 7000.

Is this sound? Should I build my bankroll to more than 300 BB, less?

Thanks for any advice. I appreciate it especially since this subject has probably passed through this forum a million times over.

Peace

Goodie

[goofball]

well, yoru bankroll doesn't just consist of what's in the online poker account.

I play the party 15. when my accoutn gets to 10k I cash out 5k of it. 5k is clearly a very short roll for that game, but it's ok since that's not my entire roll. In otherwords as long as your roll is sufficient it doesn't have to physically be in the online account.

[Luke]

I'm no bankroll expert but the rule of the thumb that every limit player spits out is a MINIMUM of 300 big bets.

But for aggressive games with a lot of variance like the Party 15-30, a lot of players on here like to have a roll of 400 or 500 big bets.

I don't know how the PStars 10-20 game plays but in general you probably want to have bankroll of at least 300bbs.

And as goofball mentioned this doesn't necessarily mean you need to have the $6,000 in your PStars account. You may want to keep some of it in there and some of it in Neteller and possibly even have some reserve in your personal checking acct... you get the idea.

The reason for the healthy bankroll is because for top winning players, a 200, 300, even 400 bb slide is not unheard of.

Good luck,

Luke

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
In otherwords as long as your roll is sufficient it doesn't have to physically be in the online account.

[/ QUOTE ]
I completely agree. Similarly, a roll for live play doesn't have to be cash that you physically have on hand. Keeping $15k cash in your apartment or a similar amount of money on a server in the carribean seems foolish to me, unless you are playing in games large enough that amount of money to play right now. If you are playing in a 15/30 game or similar and only need that much money in a very unlikely case that you run very bad for a long time, then why not keep somewhere secure that you can be collecting interest on it? Frankly, needing to keep your conceptual bankroll physically (or electronically) separate from the rest of your money always seemed to me like a crutch for people who can't manage their money well (for example, who would spend it all if they had it in the bank, even though they know that it is their bankroll and they can't spend it) or who don't have the discipline to keep good records and know how big their bankroll is without needing it under the mattress away from the rest of their money.

[ggbman]

[ QUOTE ]
well, yoru bankroll doesn't just consist of what's in the online poker account.

I play the party 15. when my accoutn gets to 10k I cash out 5k of it. 5k is clearly a very short roll for that game, but it's ok since that's not my entire roll. In otherwords as long as your roll is sufficient it doesn't have to physically be in the online account.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is right on, but if you plan of spending the money you cash out or putting it in stocks, then it's a bad idea. You should always have at least 500 BB (in my opinion) available for the stakes you play.

[TStoneMBD]

if you have 300k in your bank account, and have 1k in your party poker account, you have an ample amount of money to play in a 15/30 game. the bankroll system was developed to keep people from going broke, and to make it so that the swings of the game wouldnt be too stressful on a player playing above his means. i have an ample bankroll to play 20/40 live. i plan on getting into online poker shortly, as soon as i can get firepay to work. when i start playing 15/30 i dont think its necessary for me to have 12k in cash to play 20/40 live, and 9k in my party poker account to play online. i add the money i have to play with live, and the money i have to play with online together, the sum of which is what i consider my bankroll. my plan is to have firepay take 2k out of my bank account, and deposit that money on party poker. if i lose that money playing 15/30, it could be simply because i had a bad run of cards, or may symbolize that PP15 is above my head. 2k is enough money for a good player to build a bankroll out of, according to the laws of averages, as long as he has enough money that losing the 2k wont force to start selling his things off to a pawn shop.

[Peter H]

i disagree, 2k is not enuf to start playing 15/30 on party. the games are rip roarin wild and u can burn thru that in a really bad couple of sessions.
i only say this b/c i respect ure play from ure previous posts and i kno u could beat the 15/30 party games so if u lost ure initial 2k it would be merely a statistical abberation.

[bugstud]

2k swings in the party game will happen very often. I'd suggest more than that for an initial foray.

[ggbman]

I was personally quite surprised reading this post. You seem like a very solid player more then capable of beating the 15-30 game. That said, you are talking about a BR of less than 70 BB if i understand correctly that you are only going to alot 2 grand for online. First of all, that isn't nearly enough to endure bad swings at 15-30. I don't know if you plan to multi-table or not, but even playing 1 table you are going to need much more than this. Also keep in mind how much faster online play is than live play. You might get in 30 hands/hour at the turning stone. You can get several times that amount in playing online, so the upswings will be quicker but so will the downswings.

[TStoneMBD]

i understand that a 2k deposit can easily go under with swings endured by the PP15 table. however, im not interested in losing more than 2k for online poker at this time. if i deposit this money and lose it, i plan on continuing live play for the time being and giving up online play for a little while. now, even if i didnt care about the 2k and my plan was to continue playing even if i lost the money, i could simply redeposit another 2k and continue. my bankroll for online poker is not 2k, it is the sum of both my live bankroll and online bankroll. i think that method is more than suffice for most people. i realize that 2k is a losable amount for online play, but if i am a winning player, on average, i should be able to turn that 2k deposit into much more. it is impractical for someone with a 17k bankroll to deposit 9k into party poker, leaving themselves with 8k for live play. then you would argue that my bankroll isnt large enough for me to continue playing in live games, and therefore have to step down to 10/20. thats silly. i have enough money to sustain an average loss at both levels of poker, and therefore i dont think its necessary to have 21k in order to play both live and online.

thank you for the positive comments.

[bobbyi]

You're right that if you are a winning player, your expectation will be positive in the 15/30 game, even if you only have $2k. You will lose that money the large majority of the time, but sometimes you will build it up into a huge bankroll, so you will win on average. However, that doesn't mean that using $2k as a bankroll for an online 15/30 game is a good idea. The reason why is similar to the reasoning behind kelly betting in blackjack. Even though you have +ev in the online poker games, you don't want to bet so much that you have a large risk of ruin because whenever you go bust, you miss out on lots of profit you could have made in the future by playing. If you only have $2k to play online, jumping into the 15/30 will not be as good overall as taking it into a smaller game and trying to run it up and then taking shots at the 15/30 occassionally with your winning, leaving enough behind that you will be able to continue playing online if your shot fails, rather than having to quit and missing out on years of profitable online play. Similarly, suppose I offered right now to flip a fair coin with you for your whole bankroll. If it's heads, I get the bankroll. If it's tails, not only will your bankroll double, but I will pay you 11-to-10 on your money. Should you take it? Obviously, the bet is +ev. But you still shouldn't take because half the time it will result in you having to quit poker and losing out on all the money you could have made by continuing to play.

[TStoneMBD]

can you explain how i will lose my bankroll a vast majority of the time? if im a winning player, wouldnt i double my bankroll a vast majority of the time? truthfully, i plan on playing 3/6 or so to start off, because i want to develop the knack for 4tabling. after i feel comfortable i plan on moving up to 15/30. it doesnt make much logical sense for me to stay at the 3/6 level until i build up a 9k bankroll to move up to 15/30, because i will almost certainly maintain a much larger hourly rate playing live 20/40 than online 4 tables of 3/6. if you could prove to me that staying at 3/6 until i build a 9k bankroll for PP15 is correct, i would just continue to stay away from internet poker until i build my bankroll to 21k by playing live 20/40, at which point i would deposit 9k on Party.

another point id like to make is that there are many players who play on multiple sites. they may even play on 4 sites at different times for 15/30. would this demand that they have a 36k bankroll? of course not, as they can simply transfer funds from one account to the next when their luck runs dry under a particular account. the same method can be done transferring live money to online money via neteller.

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]

can you explain how i will lose my bankroll a vast majority of the time? if im a winning player, wouldnt i double my bankroll a vast majority of the time?

[/ QUOTE ]
If poker results are normally distrubted (not sure if they really are), then yes, you will double your bankroll more often than you will go bust. But doubling your bankroll is irrelevent. $4k is still not a sustainable $15/30 bankroll. If you get to $4k, you will often go bust anyway. The difference between starting with $2k and going bust, on the one hand, and starting with $2k, running it up to $4k and then going bust, on the other, is merely that in the latter case you have wasted more of your time. The relevent question is: starting with $2k, how often will you build it up to a sustainable bankroll (rather than going bust). It's certainly not true that just because you are winning player, this amount must be more than 50%. By that reasoning, a winning player could start with a bankroll of ten cents or a trillionth of a cent playing $15/30 and usually run it up to a sustainable bankroll, which is clearly not true. Note that you have to double your bankroll not once, but a few times, so even though you are better than 50% on each doubling attempt, you are much worse overall. I am not a statistics expert by any means. If you want to know exactly what your risk of ruin is for your bankroll, expectation and standard deviation, you should probably post on the probabilty forum (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=probability) , since I'm sure there are people there who know the formulas for risk of ruin.

[DcifrThs]

these scheme's are common...the fact is, i you do not consider what the opportunity cost of not having the money and using it was...

start with more.

-Barron

[ggbman]

[ QUOTE ]
can you explain how i will lose my bankroll a vast majority of the time? if im a winning player, wouldnt i double my bankroll a vast majority of the time? truthfully, i plan on playing 3/6 or so to start off, because i want to develop the knack for 4tabling. after i feel comfortable i plan on moving up to 15/30. it doesnt make much logical sense for me to stay at the 3/6 level until i build up a 9k bankroll to move up to 15/30, because i will almost certainly maintain a much larger hourly rate playing live 20/40 than online 4 tables of 3/6. if you could prove to me that staying at 3/6 until i build a 9k bankroll for PP15 is correct, i would just continue to stay away from internet poker until i build my bankroll to 21k by playing live 20/40, at which point i would deposit 9k on Party.

another point id like to make is that there are many players who play on multiple sites. they may even play on 4 sites at different times for 15/30. would this demand that they have a 36k bankroll? of course not, as they can simply transfer funds from one account to the next when their luck runs dry under a particular account. the same method can be done transferring live money to online money via neteller.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a little advice from my previous experience. I started an online poker account with $200 not know as much about bankroll management as you do. I was very fortunate to not go bust, (although i was down to my last $47 at one point) and right now a key focus for me to ensure long term sucess is managing my bankroll very cautiously. Playing 4 tables, it is very common for me to have a 70 BB downswing in a day. It isn't even uncommon to win it all back and more. Remember, you are talking about playing 200-350 hands an hour. Think about this way. The question is will you turn 2k into more then 10k more often then you lose it? Probably not. You can still go on a slide once you have 5k and lose it. Also bear in mind that 4 tabling 3-6 can be a lucrative and safe way to build your bankroll. Good player can do over 3BB/100 easily with this competition. if you play say 250 hands/hour, that would be $45/hour, which will held you build your roll pretty quickly and safely. I wish i could go into more detail but i'm in a rush. Good luck to you.

Gabe

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
If you want to know exactly what your risk of ruin is for your bankroll, expectation and standard deviation, you should probably post on the probabilty forum

[/ QUOTE ]
Conveniently, there is a thread there now on this issue (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=1621051&page=0&view=e xpanded&sb=5&o=&vc=1) . Here's the part you care about:
[ QUOTE ]

For a win rate of w, Bankroll of B and std deviation of s, your chance of busting is

ROR = exp(-2Bw/s^2).

[/ QUOTE ]
We know that for you B=2000. You just need to estimate your w and s in the 15/30, plug them in, and you can find your ROR for a $2k bankroll.