[Ed Miller]

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I know that most people recommend 15-20x the buyin for nl, but is this based on the max buyin or the actual amount that you buy in at (which would be the minimum if you are using the short stack strategy from GSIH)?

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Ok, I see this question a LOT. Here's the deal:

Bankroll requirements are determined by winrate and variance. The higher your variance the bigger the bankroll you'll need. That's obvious.

But the LOWER your winrate, the bigger the bankroll you'll need, and they are roughly inversely proportional. I don't remember the exact math (I'm sure someone will chime in with it), but I generally think of it as if you halve your winrate, you roughly double your bankroll requirement.

In limit, "good" players will tend to have similarish winrates. In a $3-$6 game, maybe 1.5-3BB/100 or something like that is typical. Since winrate and variance (which usually doesn't change drastically from winning player to winning player either, despite what some readers of SSH might say) can often be nailed down to a "one size fits most" range, we can begin to talk about "standard bankrolls" for limit.

Obviously, these are gross estimates, and any particular player might have a bankroll requirement much different. Indeed, a bankroll requirement is meaningless for a losing player. But it makes some sense to talk about a "standard bankroll" for a winning limit player.

No limit is another ball of wax. The winrate of an expert could be five times that of a modest winner. Variance also depends greatly on your style, buy-in size, and caliber of opponents you play... and it differs more than it would for limit players. So the notion of a "one size fits most" bankroll for no limit is basically nonsense. Every player is, indeed, quite different.

Having said that, the GSIH style is prescribed enough that one could probably nail down a reasonable bankroll requirement within 50% or so. I haven't done it... doing so would require a fairly accurate winrate and variance measurement in typical games.

But don't think it makes any sense to compare El Diablo's bankroll requirement to the GSIH strategy's requirements. They are hugely different, and I wouldn't even want to begin to estimate how different they are.