[Zetack]

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I tried to stick with pretty reputable books.

I have Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Hold'em. i also picked up Supersystem, Harrington's new book, Lee Jones Small Stakes, Helmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros, Caro's Poker Tells, Sklansky's original Hold'em, Killer Poker, which I haven't looked at yet, and some others.

I plan to build a base from Theory and Small Stakes Hold'em to allow me to play small games well. I wanted to have the non-small stakes stuff to give me a sense of how small stakes differs. I guess, down the road, I plan to look into tourney play perhaps and see if I have any ability at that.

Is the 300 BB bankroll the standard benchmark? Have you stuck by this in your personal play? Seems kind of low and pretty reasonable financially. I guess the volatility is significantly less than with cardcounting.

The poker bankroll will be a small fraction of the necessary blackjack roll, which is nice. Less heartburn.

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Throw Helmuth's book away. Seriously don't even open it. If you're lucky some other aspiring player will find it and take it seriously.

300 BB's (big bets not big blinds) is conventional wisdom. But its more geared towards guiding recreational players as to when they can move up. If you're going to play seriously at a particular level, you want to be way more overfunded than that. The reason for that is that if you're following the 300 BB guideline you absolutely have to move down when you you go on a 150 BB downswing. And everybody has 150 BB downsings. Everybody.

The recreational player trying to build his roll to move up the limits can move down when he hits a big downswing. The serious player wanting to make serious scratch at mid-high limits takes a serious opportunity cost hit when he has to move down, so needs a roll that can weather 2-300 BB downswings without having to drop to lower limits.

Edit: At least some of the pros on this forum say they have bankrolls somewhere in the 900 BB vicinity.

--Zetack