Ever went broke?
 

I just had a fairly heated discussion with a friend of mine who likes poker but sees it as a shady way of making money. Not respectable and so on...

He told me I'd go broke sooner or later because that' swhat inevitably happens. I told him I am properly bankrolled and it won't happenb ut he said you never know.


So to prove him wrong, and to make sure for myself:

Has anyone actually gone broke? Have you quit poker? Have you rebuilt? Were you properly bankrolled at the time?

Tell the whole tale, in truth [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I think a lot of others here would like to know as well,

Spanks.

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Nope...

[ QUOTE ]
Tell the whole tale, in truth

[/ QUOTE ]

The whole tale can be found here

Re: Ever went broke?
 

I have gone broke a few times. The latest one consumed 500+ BB.

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Dude there are tons of under 25s on this board. Half of us started broke, and the other half have been broke at some point in our playing days.

-Michael

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Everyone starts off with 50$ in their PP account and loses it. I think the difference between people on this message board and others is that we made a couple hundred bucks before we went bust and then got hooked because we realized we could succeed!

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Beleive it or not, I've never had a losing month in nearly 1 1/2 years of playing poker online. Started at 2/4 and 3/6, then moved to 25NL (before 6 max) then back to limit. I got lucky early, then got smart.

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Never went broke but got down to 700 once.

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Gone "broke" meaning down to 5% of less of my Original BR 4 times now.

1. Playing HIGH stakes NL
2. Sports Betting and Blackjack
3. High Stakes NL again
4. Blackjack Switch Drunken Anger trauma session.

Re: Ever went broke?
 

Never. Closest was in my first month. I put $300 into Paradise, and got a $50 bonus. Got that up over $600 at 0.50/1, and started to move up too fast. At 2/4, I got down to a low of about $230, before I moved back down to 0.50/1 and rebuilt. From that point on I never had a downswing that took out more than a third of my bankroll.

What your friend does not understand is that the amount of money at risk at any given time is so small compared to what your bankroll should be, that the only way to go broke is to lose your self-control and ignore proper bankroll requirements.

One decision I made is to always move down rather than redeposit, if my online bankroll gets low. This protects all the money I've won and cashed out. As I play higher I may do some mental accounting and say, OK, I'm not going to leave this much money on site, but I still consider it part of the bankroll. So even though I cash it out, it's OK to redeposit up to that amount.

Re: Ever went broke?
 

If you follow the Kelly Criterion for rational gambling with an advantage, the probability that you will ever fall to x times your current bankroll is x. The Kelly Criterion says to maintain about 250/(win rate/100) BB if you play limit. If you drop below this, you have to move down immediately.

If you maintain a bankroll that is larger than this by a factor of c, your probability of dropping to x times your current bankroll drops tremendously, to x^(2c-1), as discussed in this paper. So, if you maintain 3 times the bankroll required by the Kelly Criterion, the probability you ever drop to 1/2 of your current bankroll is 1/2^5 ~ 3%. The probability you drop to 1/10 of your current bankroll is 1 in 100,000.