poor starving students

[housenuts]

thanks for the replies. is there a good site on bankroll management?

i've read ITH by Matthew Hilger. I think his bankroll management numbers are a little high. but what do i know?

he's got a $500 bankroll for .50/1.00. And to move up to 1/2 it's $800. I currently have about a $150 bankroll and play 2 or 3 tables at .50/1. Sometimes I play at 1/2. I'm looking for other opinions on bankroll management.

Also any stories from anyone who plays primarily SNGs or tourneys? I tend to prefer this type of play.

thanks

[Claytus]

First post here

Anyway I started with $50 about 2 months ago playing .50/1 and have built my bankroll up to $350. I play about 15 hours a week so I think its definetly possible to accomplish.

[mrjetguy]

[ QUOTE ]

i've read ITH by Matthew Hilger. I think his bankroll management numbers are a little high. but what do i know?

he's got a $500 bankroll for .50/1.00. And to move up to 1/2 it's $800. I currently have about a $150 bankroll and play 2 or 3 tables at .50/1. Sometimes I play at 1/2. I'm looking for other opinions on bankroll management.


[/ QUOTE ]
Since you seem to have some serious aspirations I would reccomend being careful with your BR if you won't be able to refill. The most common reccomendation is atleast 300 BB when you are playing limit. MANY, many players start out well and increase limits rapidly, not realizing that it may be shortterm luck... they end up broke and bitter at online poker. So I reccomend that you stick to the 300 BB guideline. Since you mentioned SNGS I just add that you should probably have about 30 buyins in your BR for whatever level you play (once again, if you can't refill).

[kamelion44]

Hey LA, I have noticed the same thing...I have some enormous numbers right now at .5-1 blind NL ring games. I have a low sample size, but I was wondering if you could give me some of your numbers. Right now I'm making really good money on $2-4 multi-tabling and $55 SnGs, and I had really just dabbled a bit in the NL ring game action, but if the NL ring games are consistently softer...

[kamelion44]

I think it's very viable. I'm in the process of it myself, and have built from .50-1 limit with a bankroll of $200 to $2-4 and $55 SnGs with a $2500 bankroll, and one of my best friends, Lostinthought here on 2+2, has done it with great success. His project was to start with $150, play limit ring games and SnGs, and work his way up to $10,000. He did it in two months. He of course had the skills to do it already (i.e. he didn't have to build up his abilities, at the same time he was building up his bank) and was very dedicated and disciplined (don't go blowing 50 BBs on a shot at multi...). Honestly, the .50-1 limit games are so soft (I averaged a ridiculous 7 BB/100 hands during my stay there) that you can tackle that limit slightly underbankrolled. However, since starting my version of the project, I've found that there are some obstacles. I think the two biggest pitfalls of this sort of project, mentioned by some of the other posters, is:

1) Self control. Don't take shots, don't jump up to higher limits. It will be tough, because you'll KNOW that you're good enough, better than the players up there, and you could be making much larger sums of money (this is assuming you really are better, and not delusional) but don't give in to the temptation. By the numbers, you're vastly increasing your risk of ruin, and this is especially bad if a loss will send you to the sidelines. I struggled with this for a while, always jumping up, taking shots at multis, etc. I was a winning player, but twice, I took shots after building up through lower limits, played perfect poker...and I still got clocked. I got sucked out on a few times, missed a few draws, and then it was back to square one. If you jump up, you won't be able to take advantage of slight +EV situations, because you're so close to broke, and a few suckouts will destroy you. Don't get impatient, the games will be still be soft at the higher limits when you have the bankroll to actually assault them properly.

2) LIFE! After my rollercoaster, impatient tendencies were finally mastered, I still had some problems sustaining a bankroll because I had to withdraw money, due to external pressures. I won $900 on UB at the NL ring games, but then bam, owed money to my roommates for past bills and rent. Then I won a multi-table limit tourney on PP, but bam that had to go towards credit card debt. Made a big score at Eagle Pass casino, but then I blew it all dating, drinking, and eating. And on and on it goes. It really helps to have a consistent, solid foundation in your life before embarking on this type of thing. Not only will playing under intense money pressure make you more prone to the problem I talked to above, but it will also maybe just make you push a little harder at the limits you're playing, and make you play sub-optimally. I would be playing and just be desperate to get up to $2-4 so I could finally make some money to pay off my credit card debt, or whatever, and find myself seeing just one more flop per rotation, or pushing a marginal hand a little too hard, etc. For me, my student loans finally came in, and I was able to get rid of all my debts and the money I owed to the University, my rent/food was taken care of, and everything I made on poker could finally stay in poker. So, make sure that your situation is stable enough that you won't have to pull out your bankroll, and purge yourself of monetary-related distractions, and you'll have a much better chance of success in your initial endeavor.

Other than these two things, provided that you really are good and have the drive/interest to keep up with it, then I don't see anything stopping you from getting to where you want to go.

[dogmeat]

I started with $200 on Stars, moved to Party, and have tried over a dozen other sites. I started in the .50/$1 HE games and have only progressed to the $2/$4, but have made decent money there. With 1300 hours played in one year I know the money is easy - I'm a turtle, lots of players your age have moved to the $5/$10 games and higher by starting just like me. About 100 hours a month makes me around $2000. Easy money. I'm moving from two tables to three at a time this month with the hope that I can make $3000.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

[fimbulwinter]

I'm a college student and have made 3 deposits to party poker, each for 50 bucks.

deposit 1: i played limit (hated it), made some small $, cashed it out.

deposit 2: tried NL without reading up. lost it fast.

deposit 3: lurked here for a long time, pumped it to 120, moved it to prima for a deposit bonus and have been playing the 6max 50NL there ever since. have taken out about 1.4K for a projector, bought a $400 monitor and still have 1400 left which (since my life no longer has time for much poker) i use for bonus whoring.

my advice? bonus whore to get started, then play poker for profit. no matter how well prepped you are, you'll be -EV when you start out. let the poker site subsidize your growing period, then go to work on the fish.

fim

ps- total hours ever playing online poker ~170. don't let it become an obsession.

[NickDollar]

I started playing cards online with $50 after killing my high school home game for about 5 months straight. This first buyin was last April. I lost it all that night, due to the lowest available limits at my site being .25-.50 NL (I am still sadly a NL player, I need to expand.) I promised my dad, since I was still 17 and the account was in his name, that I could win and he should give me one more try. If I lost that next $50, I was out for good.

That $50 slowly built up to about $1500 by June, and in June after I read Super System and overhauled my gameplay entirely (not just because of SS, I was just getting serious about poker) I became to steamroll. I have now made about a $30,000 bankroll in three months of online poker, building my way to playing 4 tables of $2-$5 NL.

And I'm not even 18. There is surely hope for you.

[PublickStews]

My story is one of the less impressive ones in this thread, but I've only been playing for real money for a very short period of time. I deposited 50 at Stars and 50 at Party in April, dabbled around for about a month, then stopped playing until July. My bankroll is at 450 or so in what is basically 3 months of play. I've made almost all the money at .50/1 Limit Hold Em and .50/1 Limit Omaha Hi-lo. Less than $50 of my bankroll has been won in tournaments of any sort. I've been very conservative with my bankroll and am just now moving up to 1/2 Omaha hi-lo as my main bankroll builder. But I'm getting back in to NLHE ring games as well.

Over the past few months I've probably played less than 10 hours a week, primarily because I'm a graduate student and I was reading roughly 1 book per day to prepare for my qualifying exams to enter into Ph.D. candidacy.

[Lawrence Ng]

I was no starving student by any means when I graduated from university and started playing poker,

But I worked for a few months at my job, saved up about $3000 which was about half a bankroll for a 10/20 game. I also played a bit of 4-8.

7.5 years later I am up over 70k, mostly playing just 10 - 15 hours a week live. Over the last 2 years with a healthy bankroll i was able to jump to high limit games.

Online is very different story for me. I cannot beat online hold'em games for the love of god. I am in the red for at least $5k. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]