Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

His main point being that internet hold 'em ring games require a 50% larger bankroll than live play.

No tipping and no jackpot drop unless desired should not increase but decrease bankroll requirements.

I've played probably 500,000 hands of online poker from $1-$2 to $5-$10 and have not deviated down more than 150 BB at any point.

I believe that bank roll requirement are much less for online winning players.

He usually has such good advice. I was surprised to see such an inaccurate assesment.

Comments?

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

It has nothing to do with the rake and tipping and everything to do with the difference in aggression and quality of play at the differing levels.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've played probably 500,000 hands of online poker from $1-$2 to $5-$10 and have not deviated down more than 150 BB at any point.

[/ QUOTE ]

damn. you must be the best poker player on earth. geez. i would like to stake you for 20/40. i'll have to sell my car but it will be worth it.

seriously, man. i know some damn talented LHE players and they have ALL swung down 500 bets or more at one point in time. 500k hands? are you sure?

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Tipping and jack pot drop have to increase variance. That's just a fact.

Especially at the $1-$2 to $5-10 level.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've played probably 500,000 hands of online poker from $1-$2 to $5-$10 and have not deviated down more than 150 BB at any point.

[/ QUOTE ]

damn. you must be the best poker player on earth. geez. i would like to stake you for 20/40. i'll have to sell my car but it will be worth it.

seriously, man. i know some damn talented LHE players and they have ALL swung down 500 bets or more at one point in time. 500k hands? are you sure?

[/ QUOTE ]

12% VPIP 30% WTSD 3 AF

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Tipping and jack pot drop have to increase variance. That's just a fact.


[/ QUOTE ] Bankroll amount for a given risk is a function of advantage, dispersion and bet amount. So if your advantage is sufficiently less online for any level (and that seems to be general agreement) then original statement makes perfect sense.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've played probably 500,000 hands of online poker from $1-$2 to $5-$10 and have not deviated down more than 150 BB at any point.

[/ QUOTE ]

damn. you must be the best poker player on earth. geez. i would like to stake you for 20/40. i'll have to sell my car but it will be worth it.

seriously, man. i know some damn talented LHE players and they have ALL swung down 500 bets or more at one point in time. 500k hands? are you sure?

[/ QUOTE ]

12% VPIP 30% WTSD 3 AF

[/ QUOTE ]

See that augie? He really is the best poker player on earth. Man, did he show you...

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Tipping and varience have nothing to do with each other. All tipping does is increase overhead, so tips might turn a 2 bb/100 winner with an SD of 16 into a 1.5 bb/100 winner with an SD of........sixteen.

Think about it this way...if you decided to tip $100 for every pot you won in a $1/$2 game, you would not have very large swings (it will not all the suddon become possible to win two grand in a night). You would just go broke very quickly as your winrate (after tips) would predict.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've played probably 500,000 hands of online poker from $1-$2 to $5-$10 and have not deviated down more than 150 BB at any point.

[/ QUOTE ]

damn. you must be the best poker player on earth. geez. i would like to stake you for 20/40. i'll have to sell my car but it will be worth it.

seriously, man. i know some damn talented LHE players and they have ALL swung down 500 bets or more at one point in time. 500k hands? are you sure?

[/ QUOTE ]

12% VPIP 30% WTSD 3 AF

[/ QUOTE ]

See that augie? He really is the best poker player on earth. Man, did he show you...

[/ QUOTE ]

Was that intended as a cogent comment?

Those are my stats from my experience. If your intent was to imply that those stats do not imply the variance I mentioned, I would appreciate your input. That was my intent of posting those numbers.

Bottom line, from experience, does anyone else disagree with Cooke's comments?

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've played probably 500,000 hands of online poker from $1-$2 to $5-$10 and have not deviated down more than 150 BB at any point.

[/ QUOTE ]

damn. you must be the best poker player on earth. geez. i would like to stake you for 20/40. i'll have to sell my car but it will be worth it.

seriously, man. i know some damn talented LHE players and they have ALL swung down 500 bets or more at one point in time. 500k hands? are you sure?

[/ QUOTE ]

12% VPIP 30% WTSD 3 AF

[/ QUOTE ]

See that augie? He really is the best poker player on earth. Man, did he show you...

[/ QUOTE ]

I think his point was that he's a tight player, and because of that, he has a lower SD. I think it's very possible for a 12 VPIP to not have any >150 BB swings.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Tipping and varience have nothing to do with each other. All tipping does is increase overhead, so tips might turn a 2 bb/100 winner with an SD of 16 into a 1.5 bb/100 winner with an SD of........sixteen.

Think about it this way...if you decided to tip $100 for every pot you won in a $1/$2 game, you would not have very large swings (it will not all the suddon become possible to win two grand in a night). You would just go broke very quickly as your winrate (after tips) would predict.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you were a .001 bb/100 winner would that increase your variance? Does taking it to the extreme in this way illustrate how your example shows how you are incorrect in your analysis.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

I've never had a downswing bigger then 150BB either. I don't understand why that is hard to swallow for some people. I posted my winrate in an earlier thread and most people thought i was making it up. I have not read the article in question but I haven't played b&m either so I couldn't compare the two. 200 to 300 BB's seems like a safe number to start at at the small stakes tables if you are a decent player. Probably less for good players.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]

If you were a .001 bb/100 winner would that increase your variance?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you tipped .001bb/100 you would have zero variance. You would always break even. As long as you always tip at the same rate your variance will remain the same.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've never had a downswing bigger then 150BB either.

[/ QUOTE ]

150BB is a bit low for online play. You'll have one worse than that at some point if you keep playing. At the other extreme, the 500, 600, 700BB downswings that some of the lagtards in the HUSH forum go through are a product of their own recklessness.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Hi Posty:

The only way Cooke would know this is based on his own personal experience. It may also mean that his online win rate isn't as high per hand as his cardroom win rate is since required bankroll has something to do with the relationship between your win rate and standard deviation.

Another thing to consider is that bankroll is proportional to your standard deviation squared. So if your short term swings go up only 23 percent and your win rate per hand stays the same, that's enough to increase your required bankroll 50 percent. If your swings go up less than that, but your win rate also drops a little, that could also be equivalent to the 50 percent increase.

For reasons that I won't get into here, I would suspect that his online winrate per hand would be a little lower and his standard deviation would be a little higher. So his estimate of a 50 percent increase in required bankroll seems reasonable to me.

Best wishes,
mason

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Posty:


if your short term swings go up only 23 percent and your win rate per hand stays the same, that's enough to increase your required bankroll 50 percent.





[/ QUOTE ]

I'm assuming the fact that you can play 10 times as many hands an hour negates the effect of the short term variance. This is probably something cooke did not take into account if this is why he thinks a 50 percent increase in bankroll is necessary. Maybe I'm wrong, half of this post was over my head after all.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]

150BB is a bit low for online play. You'll have one worse than that at some point if you keep playing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I will be very surprised if this happens. Alot of posts are made on variance and winrate, and the sample size needed to assess them. I think this is less of an issue at smaller stakes, and that most of these posters are mid stake players or higher. Dead money mitigates long term variance and thusly mitigates the need for bigger sample sizes to assess variance, winrate, ect...

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Hi betadecay:

No. The number of hands you play in some period of time has nothing to do with required bankroll.

best wishes,
Mason

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi betadecay:

No. The number of hands you play in some period of time has nothing to do with required bankroll.

best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

The total number of hands you intend to play certainly does, though. So if you're playing the same hours live vs. online you need to take the greater hand/hour rate into account.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi betadecay:

No. The number of hands you play in some period of time has nothing to do with required bankroll.

best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand that it has nothing to do with playing consecutive hands, but what about concurrent hands. Will this affect bankroll requirement? Won't variance drop significantly if you concurrently play 2000 hands on 5 tables, then if you play 10,000 hands on one. Wouldn't this mean you no longer need as big a buffer for the variance, so a smaller bankroll would suffice. Again, I am not sure what the definition of "required bankroll" is, and I am not a mathmetician.

The fact that you need to drop in stakes from a B&M room to online games call for a much smaller bankroll anyways.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Hi Tapirboy:

No. That's not correct. The total number of hands that you intend to play does not impact what your bankroll should be.

Best wishes,
Mason

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

No. Again that has no effect.

But going down in stakes will reduce your required bankroll.

Best wishes,
Mason

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Tapirboy:

No. That's not correct. The total number of hands that you intend to play does not impact what your bankroll should be.

Best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

It most certainly does. This seems incredibly obvious to me. Your most extreme swings will have higher magnitude in ten million hands than ten thousand.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Hi Tapirboy:

We're talking about bankroll needed to play. Assuming you're a winning player, the more hands you play the more money you should win. That negates the swings you are talking about. I suggest you give my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics a good read. All of this is covered in there.

Best wishes,
Mason

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

The main confusion in this thread is the differeces between low-stakes and mid-high stakes. At the stakes Roy Cooke is playing, I think he is entirely correct.

Compare the presence of multi-tabling TAGs and the very aggressive nature of the Party 30/60 to some pretty soft B&M games. The winrate is far lower online, and the variance far higher. In fact, a 50% bigger bankroll for online may be somewhat conservative. I have seen the figure of 800BB bankroll for the Party 30/60 mentioned several times, but this would be excessive for many B&M games.

At the lower stakes online, you probably can get by with a similar bankroll to B&M -- the play is better online, but the rake isn't such a killer.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Yep.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Tapirboy:

We're talking about bankroll needed to play. Assuming you're a winning player, the more hands you play the more money you should win. That negates the swings you are talking about. I suggest you give my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics a good read. All of this is covered in there.

Best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, your bankroll can remain relatively small as long as you never want the money for anything. You don't see the catch-22 in this? Treating poker as an end in itself is kind of silly.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

Live games tend to be much softer, basically more passive. Passive play decreases variance, because when you run bad you aren't being charged the maximum by aggresive opponents, and you're not losing the maximum when you charge your over aggresive opponets when they do draw out on you. EV/hand tends to be higher live because the competition is softer in general. This means you need a smaller bankroll requirement.

That being said, you can easily play 10 times as many hands one would be playing for any period of time in live play by instead playing online, and more then that depending on how many tables one plays. Which means that it can be very worth while, despite the obvious drawbacks.

Maybe that's why the games are so much tougher...at respective limits online.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hi Tapirboy:

We're talking about bankroll needed to play. Assuming you're a winning player, the more hands you play the more money you should win. That negates the swings you are talking about. I suggest you give my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics a good read. All of this is covered in there.

Best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, your bankroll can remain relatively small as long as you never want the money for anything. You don't see the catch-22 in this? Treating poker as an end in itself is kind of silly.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand your statement from above. The point of the bankroll is to allow yourself no chance of losing the entirety of the bankroll. This is why you need a bigger bankroll to account for bigger swings. Because if you don't you have allowed yourself a chance to go broke simply by running bad.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

If you play one game of 10-20 let's agree you need a 6,000br, or a 300bbbr.

Whether you play this one game fast or slow is irrelevant; you still only need this 6,000br.

However, independently, each game you play needs this 6,000br, so if you played 4 tables at once and kept separate bankrolls for each game, for some strange reason, you would need a 24,000br in case each one of your games hit a major downslide at the same time.

Obviously, you don't really need to keep 4 separate bankrolls, because, in theory, you would have to reduce the number of games you were playing to 3 once your total br reduced to 18,000, and to 2 at 12,000, down to 1 at 6,000, to stay in line with standard br advice.

Working up the other way, as long as you know you should reduce to 1 game once your br has reduced to 6,000, then, in practice, it is alright to "push your luck" a little and play more than one game.

There is an exact mathematical way to work it out, but it is probably reasonable to say that a 100bb downturn on each table at once would be "unlucky", so, if you are playing four tables, with a view to reducing to 1 table in a "br emergency", a 4,000 + (4x2,000) = 12,000br should be safely sufficient.

That's a 600bbbr for a 10-20 4-tabler.

imo

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

150BB is a bit low for online play. You'll have one worse than that at some point if you keep playing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I will be very surprised if this happens. Alot of posts are made on variance and winrate, and the sample size needed to assess them. I think this is less of an issue at smaller stakes, and that most of these posters are mid stake players or higher. Dead money mitigates long term variance and thusly mitigates the need for bigger sample sizes to assess variance, winrate, ect...

[/ QUOTE ]

I think people tend to have similar mindsets until they have said downswing. I do realize that a hugely higher winrate, and a significantly smaller SD has to make the chances of a downswing of that magnitude significantly less likely. Not having a bunch of sims or anything makes my post here more speculation and guessing than anything else, but I have to imagine that -150BB is not a startlingly rare downswing for almost anybody across the board. Of course, much of this becomes arguing semantics, which I'm painfully fond of.

Now, if you're referring to 'going broke' after starting with a figure of 150BBs, this is a different story entirely. I would, though, like to try to hunt down simulations done with stats more in line of somebody who is crushing a micro-limit game, as opposed to the ones I've seen of somebody beating an aggressive online game for ~1 or ~1.5bb/100, just out of curiosity more than anything.

I also can't imagine that a game being weaker would 'actually' make a player's winrate converge in a shorter period of time, unless of course a weaker game significantly lowers your SD (And, as the last time I took a math class was 4 years ago, and really know very little in this realm... I am assuming a lower SD would mean that winrate would tend to converge in smaller samples... is this true? hehe)

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

I meant that "presence of multi-tabling TAGs" affects the difficulty of the game (and hence need more bankroll), but multi-tabling itself should not have any direct effect on bankroll (although it will have an indirect effect due to decreased overall winrate).

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

I understand what you are saying.

I was trying to point out that, (imo), you do need more bankroll the more tables you play simultaneously.

To give a more exaggerated, (if somewhat unlikely), example, if you were playing 12 tables at once and had only a total 300bbbr, each table could take a hit of "only" 25bb's and your br would be wiped out.

It's an unlikely occurrence, (what bad beat is not?), and unique to multi-tabling internet poker, but certainly possible within any "unlucky" hour or two.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

I was allways under the understanding that with multi-tabling you just hit the long run faster. E.g. everything else being equal, the chance of a 300BB downswing at 1-table is exactly the same chance as simulataneous 25BB downsings at 12 tables.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]

I was trying to point out that, (imo), you do need more bankroll the more tables you play simultaneously.

[/ QUOTE ]
You are wrong. Your bankroll requirements do not increase just because you play multiple tables. It may be counterintuitive to you, but this is not just an opinion. I'm telling you this as a mathematician.

[ QUOTE ]
To give a more exaggerated, (if somewhat unlikely), example, if you were playing 12 tables at once and had only a total 300bbbr, each table could take a hit of "only" 25bb's and your br would be wiped out.

It's an unlikely occurrence, (what bad beat is not?), and unique to multi-tabling internet poker, but certainly possible within any "unlucky" hour or two.

[/ QUOTE ]
An acceptable bankroll does not mean you are certain to avoid going bankrupt. It means your risk of ruin should be very low. The probability that you lose 25 BB in a couple of hours on all 12 tables is much lower.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

His idea is right. Since live games are generally much softer than online ones, generally your bankroll will not need to be as large for them. If you have two players playing in the same 5/10 game, a person winning at 5bb/100 does not need a bankroll as large as someone winning at 1bb/100.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

2 obvious (but relevant) points I would have liked to see addressed by this article were:

1. Your winrate/100 may go down slightly at multiple tables, but your hourly will certainly go up if you are beating the limit. (I do agree that lower winrate/100 would mean you need more BR.)

2. If you have bankroll concerns, you can cut your br requirements almost in half by playing 2 or more tables of 10/20 instead of one live table of 20/40 (for example). I think Roy dropped the ball leaving this out of the article.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
I was allways under the understanding that with multi-tabling you just hit the long run faster. E.g. everything else being equal, the chance of a 300BB downswing at 1-table is exactly the same chance as simulataneous 25BB downsings at 12 tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you disregard the drop in quality of your play due to multitabling, this is completely right.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
If you play one game of 10-20 let's agree you need a 6,000br, or a 300bbbr.

Whether you play this one game fast or slow is irrelevant; you still only need this 6,000br.

However, independently, each game you play needs this 6,000br, so if you played 4 tables at once and kept separate bankrolls for each game, for some strange reason, you would need a 24,000br in case each one of your games hit a major downslide at the same time.

Obviously, you don't really need to keep 4 separate bankrolls, because, in theory, you would have to reduce the number of games you were playing to 3 once your total br reduced to 18,000, and to 2 at 12,000, down to 1 at 6,000, to stay in line with standard br advice.

Working up the other way, as long as you know you should reduce to 1 game once your br has reduced to 6,000, then, in practice, it is alright to "push your luck" a little and play more than one game.

There is an exact mathematical way to work it out, but it is probably reasonable to say that a 100bb downturn on each table at once would be "unlucky", so, if you are playing four tables, with a view to reducing to 1 table in a "br emergency", a 4,000 + (4x2,000) = 12,000br should be safely sufficient.

That's a 600bbbr for a 10-20 4-tabler.

imo

[/ QUOTE ]

No. Not even close.

Your bankroll requirement is based on your win rate and standard deviation. These are commonly measured in BB/100 hands. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you play those hands; the more hands per hour, the higher your win rate per hour and the higher your SD per hour. Conversely the fewer hands you play per hour, the smaller your WR and SD are per hour. These changes in WR and SD offset exactly enough to keep your bankroll requirement the same.

The only difference in adding more tables is that your WR may go down - this change is the biggest reason for the increase in BR requirement when multi-tabling, NOT the increased number of hands/hr.

Re: Roy Cooke article in Card Player is wrong.
 

[ QUOTE ]
However, independently, each game you play needs this 6,000br, so if you played 4 tables at once and kept separate bankrolls for each game, for some strange reason, you would need a 24,000br in case each one of your games hit a major downslide at the same time.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is waaaaay off