[Harv72b]

Assuming that you are a winning player, 300 big bets for the level you are playing is generally considered to be large enough to protect against risk of ruin during downswings. That's not always true--downswings of more than 300 BBs are very possible no matter how good you are, but they are rare. Of course, if you are not a winning player, then no amount of money is a big enough bankroll.

Most people will tell you that it takes tens of thousands of hands to determine whether or not you are truly a winning player at your current limit. Statistically speaking, this is pretty close to the truth. My personal opinion is that new players go through three distinct phases: invincibility (when they first start, post a few big winning sessions, and suddenly think they're the next Phil Ivey), uncertainty (when they encounter the inevitable losing sessions, and suddenly start to wonder whether or not they are really a winning player), and finally, cognizance (when they realize that win rates don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, and that whether or not you're a winning player, and how big a winning player you are, depends far more on your opponents than it does on you).

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