Where to restart?

[Melchiades]

Nobody has any problems with you risking your bankroll. If it was just a hobby that you liked spending some of your salary on. But you talk about quitting your job and somewhat relying on poker as an income. If you are going to do that proper bankroll managment is a must.

[roundest]

[ QUOTE ]
Apparently this is a lot of fun for some of you, and I hate to take away. But I do have a 6-figure day job, a side client, and a skill I can fall back on for contract work anytime I want. IE - poker aint the only stream coming in. Some of the posters seem to get that, most ignore it entirely. I think this puts me in a slightly different position, as far as risk tolerance, than say a 19 year old with no other income or skills. Risk tolerance is a pretty personal thing that only the individual in question is really equipped to assess.

Do I lack discipline and is that a concern to me? Yes. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. IMO anyway. Like I said I'm not too worried about going broke. You guys can have fun with it all you want.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't take this as a flame.

It's great that you have the job to fall back on and that no matter what happens with poker, you will have a means of making a decent living. The thing is, you don't want the job. You want to be a professional poker player. That's going to require discipline in terms of bankroll management regardless of what you have to fall back on.

Yes, risk tolerance is a personal thing and it varies widely from person to person. The problem for many people who aspire to being professional poker players is that they have a risk tolerance that isn't conducive to making a living playing poker. I don't know how long someone can make it on a 20-30 buyin BR and I don't want to find out. You may be comfortable with a BR this size and that's fine as long as you understand that at some point, you will go broke.

You need to separate yourself from the fact that you have something to fall back on and concentrate only on what it is going to take to succeed as a poker player. If you go into this with the attitude that you don't really need to fight to keep your BR and scratch and claw to build it, there's a good chance that you'll keep ending up back at square one.

I guess that was my thinking with the 20 buy-ins. If it's just a gambling hobby, zero buy-ins. If it's a hybrid between a gambling hobby and a side source of income - maybe compromise at 20 buy-ins. But that may be warped thinking, we'll see.

I guess the question I was realy wondering, which I didn't phrase very well and kind of got lost in the shuffle, is this: if my goal is to get as good as I can as fast as I can, am I better served by swinging a heavier bat now against tougher competition, or refining my game and getting lots more reps at the lower levels? Assuming, at the moment, that I can financially tolerate the beatings against the tougher competition. I guess that was my dilema, assuming money is not the main issue, which will get me there faster?

I understand that if I ever really want to play for a living, BR management is vitally important. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's harder to get good at poker than to learn good BR mgmt. IE - that can come a little later. Maybe I'm off there, I dunno.

Basically, depends on your day job and how much you are willing to invest in "learning" (IE. playing hiher stakes). You should be playing with a BR of 40 Buy-ins I guess. That way you can really deal with that variance and see your true drift.. So I mean if you want to put $9000 and play $215s, you might as well... But I would try putting in like $1000 and playing $20s... But only play 20s, get SNG trancker. Keep stats... Pay Attention! That is important... Right now, like you said, you aren't playing poker. You are gambling..

I guess one last thing to mention is that I think in large part we're arguing over semantics here. If I have 20 buy-ins in my PS account, but I can always hit up my side job paycheck for another 20, then that's like 40, right? Until poker is my sole source of income, I will have that pool to dip into when I suffer the inevitable 30 buyin downswing. So can I think of that as part of my BR? If so, I guess this works as long as my side job still pays a decent proportion of my income. If I move up to the higher buyins then I will get a little more scared and start building up the BR way above 20. I promise.

[junkmail3]

suzzer,

You're saying you really dont' have bankroll limitations because you make so much at your day job.

So, play what you want to play. If you don't know basics and dropping $100 doesn't bother you, just play the $100s. Or whatever level they are ($119>?) at stars.

WTF cares?

Or just say that your bankroll is $20,000! You can reload whenever you want, so who cares.

Just gambol and set a limit for how much you feel comfortable losing. Play the d$119s and if you lose that much, either stop playing or break your limit and play more.

Poker is fun, but if I only played the play money tables, I would kill myself. Half of the fun of gamboling is the risk. (not a risk of ruin, but a risk of a portion of money that actually means something ... if not very much)

It's not so much about gamboooling as it is about playing the tougher competition. I know I'm holding my own on the $119s. I've put some moves on those guys and sniffed out moves by them. It's fun, it's a charge and I feel like I'm learning a lot more about how to play against tricky, tough players. But am I a winning player there? No. So that's that.

[sofere]

I'm not gonna comment on BR or anything like that because that's been covered to death. Besides if you have a 20 BB BR and are willing to reload w/ another 20 BBs after you bust out, then you really have a 40 BB BR.

As far as the best way to learn, I feel its best to go through the stages. Someone earlier said you're basically paying tuition by losing money. The question is whether your education is worth the money.

Like anything else, in order to learn the advanced concepts, you must learn the basics. If you take a normal person who has never learned any math above arithmatic, are they going to learn faster by taking a class in advanced differential equations five times, or by taking a class in algebra, then basic calculus, then introductory differential equations.

My advice, if you want to learn faster, beat the $27s (i don't think its so bad if you skip the $11s if you have the BR for it) for at a minimum 300 games, then beat the next level for a minimum of 400 games, then the next for 500 games.

If you play in the levels with "tricky" players who will continuation bets with air...you won't learn from them unless you get the basics and then understand why they would make those types of bets. Or even more so if it was even a good play.

[zipppy]

[ QUOTE ]
It's not so much about gamboooling as it is about playing the tougher competition. I know I'm holding my own on the $119s. I've put some moves on those guys and sniffed out moves by them. It's fun, it's a charge and I feel like I'm learning a lot more about how to play against tricky, tough players. But am I a winning player there? No. So that's that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you want to be a winning player at higher levels? If not, then playing them to occassionally "put some moves" on the regulars is fine.

If you want to be a winner at these levels, I'm pretty sure being tricky isn't the key to success.

[Eder]

[ QUOTE ]
It's not so much about gamboooling as it is about playing the tougher competition. [/quote

Rule#1...dont ever play without an edge...(Play against fish...seeking out tougher competition is just wrong)

btw am I the only guy that kept 100 buy ins minimum?