Bankroll Management & Shot Taking (essay/long)

[goodguy_1]

[ QUOTE ]
The overall message I am trying to send is that taking shots in games where your hourly earn is greater is a great model for building your bankroll.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fine post..one hickup is that you dont really know you have a higher hourly earn in the bigger games until you have a decent sample and even then that may not suffice. Unless you are just looking at specific lineups on any day. Making the leap of watching a few donks play a session or 2 to assuming you can beat a limit on a daily basis may not be judicious. You may think the higher limit offers a better earn but you could be fooling yourself. Thats why I think the gradual move up is the best approach-more clarity on accurately rating your play visavis others. I think the risk of ruin the skilled player assumes in this higher game is greater than you are laying out in your post primarily because your assumption that the higher limit may offer a better earn is not yet substantiated by a sample.

How do you know this game is so beatable when you havent played it much? It's easy to assume your earn is higher perhaps against a donk lineup but to make the jump to assuming your earn is solidly higher in daya to day play of that limit is presumptious for all but the best players.

For what its worth I consider myself to be one of the better small limit pros on here...but I have yet to make the jump to anything above $10-20 or $400NL. One reason is that I'm older than you guys and I'm somewhat complacent at challenging myself. I'm trying to break out of this mode but it's very difficult because I treat poker less as a challenge than as a secure source of income--and at the limits I play the income is pretty damn secure [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Always look forward to your fine posts TStone.

[dogmeat]

TStone - you put a lot of time and effort into your thread, and I think you make some good points. However, I'm a bit leary of telling any player that they should jump from the comfort of $15/$30 all the way to $100/$200.

Since I don't have any experience at hold'em above $30/$60, maybe I am overestimating the ability of the players at $100/$200 - should I assume from your post that you play at this limit, and that the ability of the players is on a par with those at $15/$30?

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

[TStoneMBD]

goodguy, dogmeat:

noone can know their true winrates. i think that we should all realize that by now. however, an educated player can make a very accurate guess about how he fares in a game. if you look at a 100/200 game and you see opponents making mistakes then you are likely the favorite in it. if you look in a game and cant tell if youre the favorite its because you arent recognizing mistakes the other players make and you are quite unlikely to be the favorite. there are many times when im watching a game and i see many players making numerous mistakes and estimate my BB/100 in that game. if youre playing 15/30 and watch a 100/200 game and dont think you can make $200/hr in that game, its probably because you cant. i dont know why you guys are assuming my post implies that if you can beat a 15/30 game that you can beat a 100/200 game. i obviously wouldnt say that. my point is to take shots in games that you think you can beat, not to sit in a game that youre unsure of where you stand and wait until your winrate converges after 300k hands to find out if youre a winner or not.


also, this is another thread in itself but i think its what alot of people are leary about in this thread and should clarify your thoughts. if you think you have a good chance to be a $200/hr winner in a game, but there is a chance you are not a $200/hr winner or that you are actually a loser in the game, then your estimated winrate is NOT $200/hr, its clearly far less. when you estimate your winrate in a game you take into consideration the possibility that you arent the favorite when making your estimation.

if you are astute enough to be able to sit in a game and shortly come to a conclusion about whether you are the favorite or not, you should try playing in those games. the reason for this is that if you quickly determine that you are not the favorite you get up and leave, but if you determine that you are the favorite you can continue playing and your winrate may be substantially higher than it is at lower limits.

if you dont feel that you can make more money per hour in a higher game then you should stay where you are. i am definitely not advocating that players continually move up and play in games until they go broke. i am advocating that you play in games where you feel your hourly rate is the greatest if you can comfortably afford to take a downswing in variance and move back to your normal limits with an ample bankroll.

[goodguy_1]

yes selectively taking shots makes sense as long as you are playing it because of a few weak spots-problem seem to be when players make that leap of faith that after a few good sessions against donks that they can now beat a level at an assumed hourly earn.

If you are very game selective and stay game selective it makes sense. But after awhile you will want to make the higher limit your main game-thats when the [censored] will hit the fan you will find out soon enough how beatable the higher level is in day-to-day play.

[Gramps]

[ QUOTE ]
The intent of this essay was to show that shot-taking is an excellent approach to increasing your hourly rate while maintaining a very low risk of ruin. I recommend that you guys take shots on a regular basis, but my personal (yet controversial) opinion is that you only take shots in games where your hourly earn increases.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you have absolute discipline when it comes to moving back down once your "shot bankroll," has dried up, then yes. It's very easy to say you're going to do this, but actually doing it is a whole other thing. What happens if the adrenaline-rush from playing your higher level makes going back to your old game boring and tedious to put in hours in a way it wasn't before? You're taking a winning formula and messing with it, there's always a level of risk in that.

The reality is that for many players, even high-earning professional players, once they jump into the higher game that they think/know they can beat for a higher hourly, it's going to be quite difficult to head back. Even if they start out well on a heater in the new game (i.e. 100/200), they may in reality just be a slight winner, or even just break-even in the game for the long-term. Now, their expectations are out of whack, their spending habits may pick up, now when the long-run catches up dropping down, and doing thing slike cutting back on lifestyle is going to be very tough to do. A lot of players can't do this, and end up broke.

Playing poker (at a winning level) is just a form of (active) investing. It's not just about what your expected return is, but it's level of risk, your risk tolerance, and how putting your $$ in that investment affects your day to day state of being. If taking a shot at a bigger game puts you at risk of life-altering behavior (e.g., the sequence of events where your shot bankroll is lost, and you have trouble readjusting emotionally, etc. to your regular level), then that's a big reason not to take a shot.

These boards are full of stories (with many more that aren't told publicly) of people taking shots and it having big negative consequences (direct or collateral). Yes, there's a time and a place for it for many players, but there's absolutely no shame is staying at a "comfortable" level where you're earning less than you think you could at a higher level. In the long-run, I'll bet heavily on the patient, move-up-slowly player being better off finacially and better off in life than the "take a shot whenever I can" player.

I think your take a shot advice is point on for a certain type of well-disciplined player, but giving such blanket advice without a lot of qualifications is encouragement to get a lot of people in trouble (IMO). Of course, people should be smart enough to figure that out on their own without it being said, but I thought I'd throw it out there in type anyhow...

[goodguy_1]

awesome post

[punter11235]

Nice post. I agree with everything you said. It reminds me of recent discussion about "20xbuyin" rule for NL. Some good players (including CaptZeeBoo I believe) criticized it saying that you should play where you feel comfortable.
The problem is that this 20xbuyin (at least) rule is very good protection for most people becasue they may feel comfortable with only 10xbuyin but they will never go down after losing some of this. I think that these discipline problems are crucial and are huge factor when one cosiders taking shots. In fact I believe that for most taking shots may only cause harm because of this effect.
Once again great post.

[climber]

Wish I'd read this thread a long time ago...would have saved me ton of drama...this ought to be stickied somewhere!

Well maybe not saved me drama..but at least I would have been warned.

The part on steady income and peace of mind vs. emotional stress by Gramps and the part about thinking of your self as
a "X/X player" by Goodguy are huge.

HUGE...

i mean really really HUGE!!!

[ggbman]

Well, this probably comes across as nit-ish, but i think people tend to forget how important it is to be able to adapt to the new game you are playing. Having an excess chunk of change does not mean someone should immidiatley go and take a shot at a high limit.

I tend to be much more inclined to grow my BR and take my "shots" when i have 750BB+ for a limit and set maybe like a 200BB loss limit. This was you continue to learn the game and won't be overly discouraged by initial results. The problem is that most 2BB/100 winners a 15-30 are not even winners at 100/200, the games are totally different. I like a lot of your post Tstone, but imjust reminding everyone that they don't have to rush up in limits every time they have a padded role.

[bobbyi]

What I find interesting here are your thoughts on winrate. They are very similar to mine. People here like to take a very short-term view of winrate and only think about it in terms of what your expectation is for the next hour you sit at the table, but the way you are framing it takes into account the various ways that different outcomes for that hour of play can affect your winrate down the line (by forcing you to play a smaller game or allowing you to play a bigger game and by the fact that you will learn and get better from playing) and including that in the decision of where to play right now. I think this is a much better way to think about what you about what you are really earning when you sit at the table and this is roughly how I think about things. If I didn't, I never would have gotten any good because I would have quit early on since my short-term winrate at that time was breakeven at best; but instead, I played because I was able to take into account how much money playing for another hour would end up generating for me over the next few years rather than just looking at my expectation for that hour and deciding it wasn't worth playing.