Not so hypothetical bankroll question (taking a shot)

So, I have about 450BB for 5/10, which is my normal game. 5/10 is tight this particular night (minor site where I have good rakeback), so I'm looking at the 10/20. I find a really juicy game, I mean 4 guys with VPIP > 50. A couple in the 70 range. Table average, with me included, is over 50VPIP.

I'm playing, up maybe 15BB and 3 of the 4 loose players decide they want to play 15/30 and quit and move. I bring up the 15/30 table and watch for a minute and to my amazement, it's just as juicy. Along with the 3 that moved, there's another loose player about the same (45VPIP).

So...I want to sit down, but it's way past my bankroll (I'm at 150BB for 15/30). In this situation do you sit at the table? If so, how much of your bankroll do you risk?

[Kaeser]

I don't see anything wrong with taking a shot here. The games juicy and you already know 3 of the players. Sounds like a great opportunity to go for a big score. I would take about 50 BB's to the game that way even if you lose you still have 300 BB's at you normal 5/10 limit.

The only reason I can see not to take this shot is if your playing for a living, or your bankroll was seriously short for the game.

[damaniac]

It looks to be pretty clearly plus EV, so the only issue is if there will be some other cost if you lose. If you need the money then obviously it's bad, but this also includes an opportunity cost if you'd lose enough where you'd have to move down from your normal limit for awhile. Given that this doesn't seem to be the case, go for it as long as you can continue to play optimally and don't become more passive because more money is at stake.

Well, I went for it. I took $600 (20BB at 15/30) and called that my stop loss. My main concern was I didn't want to trash my ability to keep playing at the 5/10 level if the cards went south. While I play for fun, I have vowed that if my bankroll dries up, I'm done for life, so I'm very careful about level progression.

Worked out well in this case, I ended up +$1600 for the night (or about +53BB at 15/30).

[Pog0]

with 450BB for 5/10, there's nothing wrong with taking 25BB into a 15/30 game if it's really good. Your variance will be 3x as high as usual, but if you bust your buy-in, it's just like a 75BB downswing which I'm sure you've experienced before.

Not really relevant to your question, but I wonder what motivated these bad players from switching from 10/20 to 15/30.

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Not really relevant to your question, but I wonder what motivated these bad players from switching from 10/20 to 15/30.

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This was 6-max and there were a couple loose players already at the 15/30 game. The 10/20 guys wanted to get in on the action (despite the fact the 10/20 guys were at least as loose as the 15/30 players).

For a while it was me (a 24/15) with 5 other players all at VPIP 50+, with mix of passive and aggressives. One of them busted out and a mouse came in (23/3/.6), but that hardly mattered.

I think really, these guys just wanted action. They all brought $3,000-7,000 to the table. A dream table I'm not likely to see the likes of again any time soon.

I think a shot here is fine. I assume this is short-handed, however, with a table average VPIP>45 I think playing on short money has definite EV.

A question, is, do you move with them to 30/60 (75 BB)?

[threeonefour]

put me in the "not taking a shot here would be criminal" camp. barry greenstein talks about this in his book ace on the river (on of the few pieces of advice that wasn't completely sophomoric)

basically he says that a great player shouldn't always be playing within his/her bankroll. sometimes there are oppurtunities that are just too valuable to pass up.


a classic example. B_buddy is a well known NL pro. he is loose and aggressive and generally makes a fair amount of money. everyone once in awhile (at least this used to be the case) he would go on insane tilt. the kind of tilt where he is pushing in near random hands preflop, get called, losing, reloading, and doing it all over again.

so lets say you are a 400$ NL player and you are sweating a 10/20 NL table and you notice that B_buddy just went on crazy tilt. he has already dropped three buyins with J9o 84s and 33 allin preflop. you should probably do everything you can to jump into that game imo. don't risk so much money that if you lose you can no longer play 400$ NL but sitting down with 1000$ or 2000$ and play a few orbit and see if you can get a premium hand. if you succeed you can probably making a whole month's worth of profit in a couple hours. if you fail you probably will be set back a week or so. and at the end of the day you are way +EV. GAMBOOL

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put me in the "not taking a shot here would be criminal" camp.

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It was really a question of risk vs. reward. I ended up thinking as folks here thought that I needed to go for it. I chose a fairly small amount to risk ($600) under the theory that if I stunk it up early I wouldn't feel tempted to gamboool the rest away trying to recover.

[Dan Mezick]

No one on this thread has mentioned the subjective aspects-- that is, temperament-- ie, how playing higher on a smaller roll effects emotions and how emotions affect decision making.

Some players can handle this situation, others cannot. Each has his own temperament-based boundaries that he must identify and recognize from experience.

Even then, knowing what to do and doing it are not quite the same now, are they?

No they are not.