Bankroll Requirements

[yeau2]

In the past I've been mostly a sit and go and multi-tabled tournament player online, but I'd like to get into more NL ring games.

The FAQ for this section talks about having 20 times the buy-in for the game to be played. Now my question is this: does this relate to my buy-in, or the max buy in for the game? For instance, for .5/1 if i typically buy in 50 and the max buy in is 100, do I need 20 times the buy in of $1000, or 20 times the buy in for $2000.

[jenson]

if you think you are a better player than the average guy at your tables then i think you should really buy in for the full amount.

[ajmargarine]

20-30 buyins of the full buy-in amount, so 2k-3k.

That said, don't buy in for $50. You want to invest $50, go play NL50, and buy in for full. You'll make a similar or more $$$ at NL50 if that's your buy-in. Blinds are cheaper and so you don't have that autoloss every orbit. You get paid in full when you hit your hands, etc etc. You can't use every move in your arsenal when you buy in half-stacked. About 80% of a buy-in is the lowest I could recommend. But, I still think full is the way to go.

this is a good thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...rue#Post3051221 (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=ssplnlpoker&Number=305122 1&Searchpage=2&Main=3051221&Words=-RE%3A&topic=&Search=true#Post3051221)
probably should be in the faq (mods?)

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
That said, don't buy in for $50. You want to invest $50, go play NL50, and buy in for full. You'll make a similar or more $$$ at NL50 if that's your buy-in.

[/ QUOTE ]
I would win a lot more by buying in for $50 at a NL 100 or NL 200 table than I do buying in for $50 at a NL $50 table.

There is a common prejudice against buying in for anything other than the maximum, but that it is unfashionable does not mean it is wrong or unprofitable. Many bad players buy in short, but buying in short does not force you to play badly. Many good players buy in for less than the maximum.

Buying in for at most 50 BB instead of 100 BB is a good idea for many players including those switching to NL cash games from limit or from tournaments (like the OP).

[ QUOTE ]
I would win a lot more by buying in for $50 at a NL 100 or NL 200 table than I do buying in for $50 at a NL $50 table.

[/ QUOTE ]
Explain please.

[ QUOTE ]
unfashionable does not mean it is wrong or unprofitable

[/ QUOTE ]
You missed the point. SS is +EV, just less +EV than full stacks.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I would win a lot more by buying in for $50 at a NL 100 or NL 200 table than I do buying in for $50 at a NL $50 table.

[/ QUOTE ]
Explain please.

[/ QUOTE ]
My win rate in BB/100 does not drop noticeably when I buy in short.

[ QUOTE ]
My win rate in BB/100 does not drop noticeably when I buy in short.

[/ QUOTE ]
And I'm sure you have the sample size to prove it? 1 or 2 bb/100 over 30,000 hands is very big.

Sorry, I didn't really explain my position well. The idea behind it is that buying in for 50BB should be exactly as profitable as buying in full for 100BB at half the stakes, minus maybe .5bb/100 for higher blinds. Thus, in bb/100, your winrate should be half as high at the 100s than the 50s because at the 100s the BB is twice as big, for the same buyin.

If your winrate is the same at both levels, you are running hot as [censored].

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
unfashionable does not mean it is wrong or unprofitable

[/ QUOTE ]
You missed the point. SS is +EV, just less +EV than full stacks.

[/ QUOTE ]
I see you changed your post to add this after my first response. I didn't miss this idea at all, as I have discussed it numerous times in past discussions. I agree with Tommy Angelo and Ulysses/El Diablo (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=1190390&page=) that it is often a good idea to buy in short. If the game conditions favor having a deep stack, you can easily add money to a short stack. If you have a deep stack and realize it would be more profitable to have a short stack, you can't take money off the table.

Many people are uncomfortable with this idea. Too bad; it's right.

Thanks for the link, I will check it out.. Care to explain how a situation can favor a short stack? Just bet less, unless you are talking about image, which is crap.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]

And I'm sure you have the sample size to prove it? 1 or 2 bb/100 over 30,000 hands is very big.

[/ QUOTE ]
You don't think I have enough hands? What's next, will you say that I probably buy in short because I am underbankrolled, or some other speculative nonsense? That's usually how these discussions have gone in the past. To forestall that, I am massively overbankrolled for the highest NL game I play regularly, NL 400. Despite this, when I play NL 100, I usually buy in short, and I have for the past 20k NL 100 hands. I usually didn't buy in short for the first 20k hands. My win rate hasn't changed noticeably between those.

However, even if my win rate drops by 2 BB when I buy in short, it would still mean that buying in for $50 at a NL $100 table is much more profitable than buying in for $50 at a NL $50 table. Winning 8 BB/100 ($16/100) at NL 100 is better than winning 12 BB/100 ($12/100) at NL 50. (Actually, according to PokerTracker, my win rate is higher at NL 100 than NL 50, but I didn't use my observed win rates.) So, your suggestion (which is not supported by my evidence) argues for buying in short at a higher stakes game.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
Care to explain how a situation can favor a short stack?

[/ QUOTE ]
Here are examples:

If I find that the fish have shallow stacks, and a few good, tough players have deep stacks, then I often want to be able to attack the fish without having the rest of my stack exposed to the good players.

It is easier to punish people who play speculative hands when you have a short stack. Buying in short deprives them of the implied odds they need to justify calling your raises, which frequently allows you to steal the limps, and prevents you from losing too much against a slow-played AA. Think about how it feels when you limp with 44 UTG (which is fine), and the one player with a short stack, 25 BB, raises to 5 BB behind you. You can't defend your limp. In addition, when you have a very short stack, players are often pot-committing themselves with any raise, which means if few people act after you, you can reraise with anything ahead of their range. That's much weaker than normal. It makes it much easier to punish people who raise with speculative hands.

The rules of poker give short stacks an intrinsic advantage. When you are all-in, you can't be charged any more, but the deep stacks with chips left can knock each other out. In a recent game, a very short stack pushed with A9, someone called, and I reraised with QQ, knocking out the caller. The short stack was about a 2:1 underdog, but because of the dead money, he was getting 2:1 on his money, so he shouldn't mind. By reraising, I transferred some equity to myself, and some equity to the short stack.

It can be worth giving up the advantages of having a short stack for the ability to outplay people in big pots. I often do that. To me, it's not worth giving up the advantages just to be fashionable.

[ QUOTE ]
Just bet less, unless you are talking about image, which is crap.

[/ QUOTE ]
This sentence makes no sense to me.

[yeau2]

How do you feel about giving a weighted average to the percent of times I should be re racking to the full amount and the times I stick with a short stack. In other words, the % of times I decide I need a full stack vs the times I don't should be added above the "standard" bankroll I judge from my shortstack times 20 bankroll.

[GrunchCan]

I have always agreed with pzhon that buying short can be the most +EV play, depending on who you are and where you're playing.

But I disagree that buying for 50BB is ever right, if 50BB isn't the minimum buyin. If buying short is the most +EV move for you at a particular time, then there are two overriding reasons why that is so. First, it limits the amplitude of your errors. Second, it reduces the chance that you can make a mistake postflop, since you are going all-in preflop so frequently.

Buying in for 50BB rather than the absolute minumum comprimises both of these considerations. Since you bought in for more, you can lose more when you're wrong, and you'll get all-in preflop infrequently which exposes you to postflop play.

So basically, if it's more +EV for you to play short, then the best ammount to buyin for is the absolute minimum.

In fact, I might go so far as to say that if it's theoretically most +EV to play short, but the minimum buyin is 50BB, then in reality it's most +EV to play deep at a (edit) smaller game. The reason for this is becasue the amplitude of your errors is unchanged in reall dollars, but becasue your stack is so much bigger in relation to the pot, you will not often have to make crying flop calls becasue you were potstuck. Being deeper allows you to dodge losing situations more often.

[Fallen Hero]

buying-in short is -EV for your poker "career". Most of us play ssnl to improve and move up, not to maximize EV at the current level.

[scrapperdog]

I agree with grunch, if you are gonna buy in short what is the reason for going with 50 bets? You dont accomplish becoming the short stack, and you dont have the stack to maximize your value on those hands where you are super strong and get unlimited action. This seems to be the worst of both worlds. Your better off buying for 25 or 100 bets.

[zipppy]

[ QUOTE ]
buying-in short is -EV for your poker "career". Most of us play ssnl to improve and move up, not to maximize EV at the current level.

[/ QUOTE ]

maybe it's just me, but I think learning to maximize EV at my current level is improving. Also, if there are situations in which buying in short at your current level is optimal, then I'm willing to guess there will be situations when buying in short at higher levels is optimal as well.

Pzhon isn't advocating always buying in short; he's simply pointing out that buying in for the full amount isn't always the right move.**


>>>ZIPPPY


**unless I'm interpretting what he was saying incorrectly, which is quite possible.

[beavens]

this has turned from a basic "look to the FAQ" question into a pretty nice discussion on the cost/benefit on buying in short.

since i can't really add anything constructive, i think that the mods should consider this thread for the digest.

[zipppy]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with grunch, if you are gonna buy in short what is the reason for going with 50 bets? You dont accomplish becoming the short stack, and you dont have the stack to maximize your value on those hands where you are super strong and get unlimited action. This seems to be the worst of both worlds. Your better off buying for 25 or 100 bets.

[/ QUOTE ]

Buying in for 50BB instead of 100BB certainly strips away implied odds for large stacks looking to play speculative hands. If it takes away enough implied odds to be effective, then playing with 50BB has the same benefits as playing with 25BB but with all the benefits that come with a larger stack.

I think it's incorrect to think that it's always best to start with 100BB, or always correct to start with 25BB, or always correct to start with either 100BB or 25BB. It's table dependant, and in some cases 50BB is probably optimal, but it depends on specific opponents.

[rachelwxm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

And I'm sure you have the sample size to prove it? 1 or 2 bb/100 over 30,000 hands is very big.

[/ QUOTE ]
You don't think I have enough hands? What's next, will you say that I probably buy in short because I am underbankrolled, or some other speculative nonsense? That's usually how these discussions have gone in the past. To forestall that, I am massively overbankrolled for the highest NL game I play regularly, NL 400. Despite this, when I play NL 100, I usually buy in short, and I have for the past 20k NL 100 hands. I usually didn't buy in short for the first 20k hands. My win rate hasn't changed noticeably between those.

However, even if my win rate drops by 2 BB when I buy in short, it would still mean that buying in for $50 at a NL $100 table is much more profitable than buying in for $50 at a NL $50 table. Winning 8 BB/100 ($16/100) at NL 100 is better than winning 12 BB/100 ($12/100) at NL 50. (Actually, according to PokerTracker, my win rate is higher at NL 100 than NL 50, but I didn't use my observed win rates.) So, your suggestion (which is not supported by my evidence) argues for buying in short at a higher stakes game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think buying 25 at 50NL has a higher hourly rate than buyin full at 25NL especially if there is alot of raising pf. I have some success at 400-1000NL games.

I think the general knowledge in this forum is
Buyin short = moron/fish/(stupid guy who push 22 pf)

This is far from truth. I think it requires different skills to be successful.

I hate playing against short buyings btw.

[dbitel]

I agree that there are times where buying in short can be the more +EV, but it should by no means be your default move. I find that at SSNL, most of my money comes from my AA vs KK or QQ and me hitting sets vs an overpair. And in these situations, if my oppponent has 100BB, I usually get all 100. So I want to be fully stacked to take full advantage of these situations, so i think that more often than not, buying in for the full amount is the most +EV

[Isura]

Something I was thinking about today was buying in short for Massive multi-tabling. Reads are what makes money with deep stacks. And I wonder if playing a huge number of tables with 40-50bb could make up the edge of player few tables at 100bb. 4-tables at 100bb or 10 tables at 40bb? I imagine at small stakes the 10x40bb would be more profitable.

[teamdonkey]

Phzon, i absolutely disagree in several spots:

-20k hands is about 480k short of what you'd need to tell if there's any real difference in your winrate when buying in short. Actually closer to a million: half buying full, half buying in short. Do the calculations for yourself... i'm not joking. I don't think anyone would argue your buyin amount would make more than 3 or 4 BB/100 difference, and since you can't narrow your winrate down to a range that proves this difference without at least a half a million hands, you'll never be able to make that statement with any sort of credibility.

-Tommy Angelo / ElDiablo are talking about buying in short until you get a feel for the table, then buying in for more. Not buying in short and staying there.

-in small stakes NL, not buying in for the max because the other big stacks are good is close to rediculous. There's only 2 situations where it's a disadvantage:
1. your post flop play is poor. If this is the case, you should be actively working to improve it (which you need larger stacks for) or playing a game where it isn't as important (MTTs, STTs).
2. the big stacks at the table are much better than you. If this is the case, you have no business being at that table. The rake is too hard to beat by itself without having to deal with losing chips over time to better players also. I'd argue strongly that if you're not at least very close to the best player at your table, in almost all cases you're losing money.

Buying in small makes your decisions easier. It certainly allows for plays and situations not available to you when you're deep. But it's the complexity of poker that makes it difficult (and profitable), and the difficult decisions you face when playing deep should be where the majority of your edge against bad players comes from. In the long term there really shouldn't be any arguement as to which is more +EV to a winning player.

[ajmargarine]

Interesting thread. I agree with Grunch that 50bb's is not a good buy-in level for the short player. And I stand by my previous assertion that an ~80% buy-in is OK if you have bankroll considerations.

I still don't agree with the shortstack mentality however. I don't believe that is more +EV than buying in full. Yeah, I find it a nuisance when I limp with 44 and the SS PFR's and I have to fold, but so what. I find it easy to play against SS's. You just have to make a few adjustments, something any decent player should be able to do.

At NL200 and below, villians make so many mistakes. The greatest EV comes when you can capitalize to the maximum on their mistakes. If they have a 140bb stack, your greatest EV against them will occur when you have 140 bb's as well and they make a mistake.

I read the Tommy Angelo thing and I see his point. He is not talking about playing the perpetual shortstack. It's the Ed Miller SS thing that I think of when people start talking about buying in short, that IMO isn't good for the avg. 2+2'er.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
I have always agreed with pzhon that buying short can be the most +EV play, depending on who you are and where you're playing.

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks. I'd keep saying it even if (or especially if) no one believed me, but it's nice to see some agreement.

[ QUOTE ]

But I disagree that buying for 50BB is ever right, if 50BB isn't the minimum buyin.

[/ QUOTE ]
In that case, you disagree with El Diablo's tactic of buying in for $1000-$1500 in a live $10/$20 game at first, and buying in for $2500 in the UB $25/$50 game. I don't play in these games, so I don't fully understand the context of his decisions, but he has discussed some reasons. IIRC, one point he made was that it is valuable to get more information before buying in deep. Another was that many people don't play their A game when there is a stack disparity. They feel they only need to play carefully against someone who can take their whole stack. In a tough game where an expert has a low win rate, getting your opponent to tilt in this fashion can be valuable relative to a normal advantage. So can the ability to steal the limps a bit more frequently.

[ QUOTE ]
If buying short is the most +EV move for you at a particular time, then there are two overriding reasons why that is so. First, it limits the amplitude of your errors. Second, it reduces the chance that you can make a mistake postflop, since you are going all-in preflop so frequently.

[/ QUOTE ]
There are quite a few other considerations. As zippy pointed out, "Buying in for 50BB instead of 100BB certainly strips away implied odds for large stacks looking to play speculative hands." Look at what happens with the 5%-10% rule: If you raise to 5 BB after someone limps with a speculative hand, they have to call 4 BB, or 4% of their stack if the effective stack size is 100 BB. That's an easy call with a low pocket pair, and a marginal call (or marginal fold) with a suited connector out of position. If you have 50 BB, the call is 8% of the effective stack sizes, which makes it a clear fold with a suited connector, and only a marginal call with a pocket pair.

[ QUOTE ]
you'll get all-in preflop infrequently which exposes you to postflop play.

[/ QUOTE ]
My goal isn't to avoid postflop play. Having a different stack size from what people anticipate when they choose which hands to play can give a short stack an advantage in post-flop play. A short stack can play pair poker (and semibluff aggressively with draws), just as people did successfully in Party's old 50 BB structure.

[ QUOTE ]

In fact, I might go so far as to say that if it's theoretically most +EV to play short, but the minimum buyin is 50BB, then in reality it's most +EV to play deep at a (edit) smaller game. The reason for this is becasue the amplitude of your errors is unchanged in reall dollars,

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think your errors or your opponents' are the same size in real dollars.

I win many pots by open-raising preflop to 4 BB, getting one caller. I bet 6 BB on the flop, and take down an 8.5-9.5 BB pot. Many opponents call preflop, then fold on the flop so frequently that they have a huge leak somewhere, possibly calling with garbage like QTo or A9o and then folding unless they have top pair. The size of that leak is in proportion with the blinds, not the stacks. I'm getting almost the same value from that leak whether I have 50 BB or 100 BB.

[Isura]

Interesting post pzhon. I am going to try out 4-tabling 1/2 this afternoon with a 40bb stack. I'll post results in a bit, should be a sufficient samplee. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[teamdonkey]

Back when Party max buy-in was 50BB, wasn't the generally considered "optimal" win rate for SSNL much lower than it is now? I don't play at Party, but i remember people speculating that maybe 8-10BB/100 was possible now, and other saying there's no way anyone could sustain that, even with bigger buyins.

Shouldn't that answer this question pretty definatively?

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]

-20k hands is about 480k short of what you'd need to tell if there's any real difference in your winrate when buying in short.

[/ QUOTE ]
There seems to be a folklore about how many hands you need to be able to draw conclusions about your win rate. Below whatever number someone wants to give in an argument, they will say your sample size is negligible. (By contrast, thedustustr offered NO evidence for his assertion that buying in short should cut my win rate proportionately. I have offered numerical and logical arguments against it.) As a mathematician, I prefer the much more accurate idea that rather than using an arbitrary threshold (chosen beforehand, or adjusted later to try to disqualify my evidence), we can recognize that the observed win rate smoothly becomes increasingly accurate with more evidence. A very high number of hands is needed to pin down a win rate within 1 BB/100. A much lower number of hands is needed to provide substantial evidence that my win rate is not cut in half when I buy in short.

20k hands each is enough that I would notice if buying in short were to cut my win rate in half the vast majority of the time. The 95% confidence interval from the last 20k hands does not include winning only 6.5 BB/100. (33 PTBB/Sqrt(200) = 2.33 PTBB/100.) While I don't have strong evidence that I would not win 13 PTBB/100 by buying in for 100 BB, I don't believe it.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think anyone would argue your buyin amount would make more than 3 or 4 BB/100 difference,

[/ QUOTE ]
That's precisely what people are arguing when they say you must cut your stakes in half and buy in for 100 BB instead of buying in for $50 at a NL $100 table.

I'll respond to the rest later.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
Back when Party max buy-in was 50BB, wasn't the generally considered "optimal" win rate for SSNL much lower than it is now?

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know. I doubt it was only half as much in BB/100.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't play at Party, but i remember people speculating that maybe 8-10BB/100 was possible now, and other saying there's no way anyone could sustain that, even with bigger buyins.

Shouldn't that answer this question pretty definatively?

[/ QUOTE ]
There may be some good data there in old threads. As I recall, though, the change to a 100 BB structure happened around the time the highest stakes increased from NL 200 to NL 1000. I don't think the win rates should be compared between the old NL 200 and the new NL 200, as the new NL 200 is much softer. In the Mid-High NL forum before the recent forum split, 5 BB/100 was considered good in NL 600+. I'd like to see comparisons between NL 50 and NL 100 before and after the change.

I don't this will be definitive, though. Buying in for 50 BB when everyone buys in for 50 BB may be very different from buying in for 50 BB when most people buy in for more.

[teamdonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
That's precisely what people are arguing when they say you must cut your stakes in half and buy in for 100 BB instead of buying in for $50 at a NL $100 table.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with you, thats a stupid arguement. And i'll retract my figure of 500k hands needed.... using my standard deviation, just shy of 250k hand samples would narrow your win rate to a 3BB/100 range (95% confidence), and you could statistically claim at that point, if your observed win rate was exactly the same for both sets of data, that the difference (if any) in buying in short vs big was not more than 3BB/100. With 20k hands all you can say is it's not costing you 10.75BB/100 (again using my SD, and assuming observed win rate for both is exactly the same).

[rachelwxm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That's precisely what people are arguing when they say you must cut your stakes in half and buy in for 100 BB instead of buying in for $50 at a NL $100 table.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with you, thats a stupid arguement. And i'll retract my figure of 500k hands needed.... using my standard deviation, just shy of 250k hand samples would narrow your win rate to a 3BB/100 range (95% confidence), and you could statistically claim at that point, if your observed win rate was exactly the same for both sets of data, that the difference (if any) in buying in short vs big was not more than 3BB/100. With 20k hands all you can say is it's not costing you 10.75BB/100 (again using my SD, and assuming observed win rate for both is exactly the same).

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the assumption of 2 sample t-test in this situation is violated because buyin short and full are highly correlated.

[CarlSpackler]

I've been learning and playing only SSNL for the last month (before this I was primarily playing STT's/MTT's). FWIW, whenever I see someone join my table without buying in full, especially if they only buy in for around half or less, I immediately categorize them as weak-tight/scared money/fish until they show me otherwise. Perhaps this is another advantage of buying in short at a higher level -- that many opponents will erroneously think you're weak-tight/scared money/fish when you buy in short, and thus won't play correctly against you (at least in the short term).

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
using my standard deviation, just shy of 250k hand samples would narrow your win rate to a 3BB/100 range (95% confidence),

[/ QUOTE ]
Your standard deviation appears to be much higher than mine. A side benefit of buying in short is that my SD is lower.

I don't think your win rate is so much lower that you need to get the 95% confidence interval to be so small to reject the hypothesis that buying in for 50 BB is only half as profitable as buying in for 100 BB.

[ QUOTE ]
With 20k hands all you can say is it's not costing you 10.75BB/100 (again using my SD, and assuming observed win rate for both is exactly the same).


[/ QUOTE ]
That's not true. Even if that were roughly 2 joint standard deviations (it's a lot higher than mine), you don't need 2 standard deviations of evidence before you can say anything. A Bayesian approach might say that you should reweight the hypothesis of equality upward by a factor of 3.1 relative to the hypothesis that there is a 1.5 standard deviation difference. (3.1 = exp(1.5^2/2)) So if you started with the assumption that the two were equally likely, you would update that to saying that equality is a 3.1:1 favorite over the difference in win rates that would be 1.5 standard deviations away from the observation. That's not bulletproof, but it would be a lot better than NO evidence, which is what thedustbustr offered.