How do you manage your bankroll?

[el_grande]

While I may agree that a 300BB bankroll is not necessary, I disagree with what you say about money managment there.

If you are playing $2/$4 with $100 with the intention of replenishing the money, $100 is not your BR. Some other number is. I believe it is advantageous to commit a BR to poker. Even if you are not doing it for a living, it keeps your other money protected.

I believe you can start playing $.5/$1 with $100 or even $50, but my questions at the start of the thread have to do with moving up or down when you have established a bankroll rather than just starting out.

[GuyOnTilt]

I not really understand how you can trust Party Poker with $30K?

I don't understand why I shouldn't trust Party and skins with $30k. Are they in danger of having to declare bankruptcy in the near future?

Why not put 1/2 of it on a bank account? With only 3% interest it will give you $900/year, and its easy to put it back if you should need it.

I earn 10% interest on my Empire account balance up to $10k, deposited directly into my account every month.

GoT

[Blarg]

I'm curious why they wouldn't give you interest on the other 20k. It's still money, you're still obviously a good customer, etc. Heck, it's just more liquidity for them to play around with.

[turnipmonster]

for what it's worth, I keep my online BR completely and totally separate from my live BR, and as a result there is a big gap between the games I play live and the games I play on the net. I like to have 500BB for whatever limit I'm playing, for mostly psychological reasons (i.e. I don't worry about it if I'm running bad). I rarely play PL/NL online but I would want at least 25 buyins.

--turnipmonster

[Jezebel]

Something to keep in mind is that the 300BB rule is under the assumption that you will never take money out of your role and that you add all of your winnings back into your role. If you pocket all of your winnings, (ie skim everything above 300BB into your pocket), your risk of ruin is exactly 100%. It may take a very long time to go broke but it is guarunteed to happen at some point in your career if this is the approach you take to managing your bankroll.

If you are unsure that what I am saying is true. Plug in the numbers into a RoR formula using your Standard Deviation and plug in zero for your winrate. When you skim off all of your winnings that is what your bankroll winrate becomes. Mathematically you will eventually go broke.

So if you want to be able to take money out of your roll and still have a viable chance at survival you need to pay yourself a fraction of your true winrate by the hour. For example if your estimated true winrate is $30 an hour, you could pay yourself $15 an hour and $15 goes back into the roll. Now when you plug the numbers into a RoR formula you would use the $15 as your winrate to determine how much of a roll you need to avoid going broke. This number will be much larger than 300BB. The bigger the percentage of money that goes back into the roll, the smaller overall bankroll you need.

Also note that using this method you can pay yourself by the hour regardless of your results. If you have a losing month you still pull out your fractional earn rate per hour knowing that you have not put yourself at greater risk of going broke.

In the end if you are going to live off of your bankroll you will need much closer to the bankroll requirements that GuyOnTilt is advocating than most believe.

[AJ_Rider]

I just wanted to acknowledge GuyOnTilt's point that's rarely brought up as far as bankroll considerations: not wanting to drop down. It took me a while to realize this, but now I always keep more than sufficient funds in my bankroll, as poker is my primary source of income. Before I started going by what turns out to be about a 750 BB rule, I would sometimes have months where I had to drop down in limits. For someone who doesn't rely on poker as their primary source of income, this isn't much of a problem. However, for me to meet my "monthly nut" I had to put in a substantial number of extra hours at the lower limit so that I didn't have to cripple my bankroll at the end of the month. The next month I decided to put in a ton of hours once I got back up to the limit I like to play at in order to build my bankroll into the extremely comfortable range. This has reduced a lot of stress on my time management as I am often looking about 3 months ahead now instead of just one month ahead, if that makes any sense. Basically, if I have a bad run, I don't necessarilly have to make it back up right away, but can rebuild over a longer period of time.

But yeah, at 2/4 your primary concern shouldn't really be bankroll in comparison to current limit, it should be building your bankroll so you can get the hell out of low limits and make some more valuable use of your time, even if it is just your hobby.

[Nilloc1204]

I've been lurking for a long time and decided it's time to post. Let me use one of my early posts to say that I think Andy B is the voice of reason around here. I often find myself saying "EXACTLY" when reading his posts.

Thanks, Andy B, for speaking your mind. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates your contributions.

[ QUOTE ]
I think the notion of maintaining a 300 BB bankroll to play $2/4 is absurd. Clearly, you're not playing for a living, so going broke isn't the disaster that it would be if you were. A reasonable buy-in for $2/4 is $100. How hard is it going to be for you to come up with another $100 if you throw off your bankroll?

If I had needed 150 BB to play in a game, I would never have been able to play anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
In theory, there should not be a problem with dropping half of your bankroll. That's why it's so big to begin with, to allow for brutal swings. The 300x factor haas been determined to be enough to handle the worst of possible swings.

[/ QUOTE ]


That is not the case at all.

Mason has posted on this very subject before, and if I recall, it was something along the lines that a 300BB bankroll might give a 95% chance of never going broke, but as a lifetime player, he expects to come up against that 5% quite a number of times. In other words, 300BB is not nearly enough to ensure never going broke even if you are an expert and you intend to play for life; a much larger bankroll would be required for that.

You might also look up some of Bruce Z's excellent posts on the topic by searching the archives. Just trying to alert you ahead of time to what could be a very nasty surprise at some future date if you were to fully base your plans on the above misapprehension.

[BeerMoney]

[ QUOTE ]
I not really understand how you can trust Party Poker with $30K?

I don't understand why I shouldn't trust Party and skins with $30k. Are they in danger of having to declare bankruptcy in the near future?

Why not put 1/2 of it on a bank account? With only 3% interest it will give you $900/year, and its easy to put it back if you should need it.

I earn 10% interest on my Empire account balance up to $10k, deposited directly into my account every month.

GoT

[/ QUOTE ]

GOT,

I think getting Empire to give you 10% is great. However, Stellarwind made a post about keeping money in your PartyPoker account.. He said something to the effect of: "You don't have to keep money in your partypoker account for it to be part of your bankroll.." In other words, keep your money somewhere else,,, it can still be allotted to playin poker, it just doesn't have to be specifically in your PP account. He reasoned that PP was not an FDIC type of bank, and is somewhat sketchy. He communicated it better than I am right now, but I think his words were wise.

[GuyOnTilt]

You don't have to keep money in your partypoker account for it to be part of your bankroll.." In other words, keep your money somewhere else

I play on two sites, so it's split between them. And I don't want to have less than $10k in any one just for logistical purposes. I've been "in" over $8k on one site during a day before, and I was still up. If I'd been down on a day like that, who knows how much I would've needed on that particular account. One reload per each 4 tables is $6k right there and that's a pretty common occurrance seeing as though I reload is I get down to $400-$500 at a table. And since I'm keeping upwards of $10k in each account, what's another $5k? I'll have to put it there anyway if I have a couple down days. I just don't think having several thousand in Party really isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be. And even if I did, I'd still be keeping $20k in there regardless just out of necessity.

GoT