Have you succeeded or failed in building a bankroll?

[sunek]

Have you succeeded or failed in building a bankroll?

Hi
I have played hold’em for about a month now. With regards to money I am pretty much break even – I have cashed out my initial deposit after receiving my bonus, so now I play for the bonus alone but my poker account is very low now.

I figured it was about time to build up a bankroll. A guide I found here at 2+2 advises you to start an account at InterPoker or an other site that gives 100% bonus up till 90 $. Then you have to play break even (or better), cash the money out and repeat the whole story at some other places until your bankroll reaches the limit you wish.

However this strategy has some obvious holes in it. Many postings at 2+2 suggest that you need about 300 BB on your bankroll to be able to withstand a down period that many gamblers meet (even the pros).

I seem to play my money away almost as fast as I gain my bonus – so I don’t really gain anything. I have I hard time determining whether this is due to bad play, bad luck or both. I play pretty much according to the strategies lined out in Lee Jordan and Millers books, so break even should be possible since I try to sit down at loose tables (although the 1/2 tables at InterPoker are pretty tight compared to many other places).

I would like to know if you have succeeded or failed in building up a bankroll. Do you have any tips, tricks or other good advices?

Best Regards

sunek

[ArturiusX]

One website:

www.bonuswhores.com

That is how you build a bankroll at microlimits, period.

[ArturiusX]

Also, the bankroll is more of a mental thing. You don't want your poker game compromised cause your worried about busting out. Pro's with good mental toughness could play with much less.

But don't try. 300BB, some good poker knowledge (read those books), posting some hands here, and cap it off with some bonus whoring will build your bankroll. Its a rough road to making EV calls regularly (overcards, 2nd pair hands, and multiple draws can be very difficult to play and will need a fair amount of time before it becomes natural and confident), but it does come through patience.

Its not uncommon to hit 150BB swings, 200BB if your insanely unlucky. If your worried about your play, post some hands here, re-read your poker books. Don't expect to sit down and make a standard wage playing each time. Poker is gambling.

[pointcount]

i have always been an advocate of not doing the $1/$2 bonuses straight up. You are reducing the value of the bonus (relatively speaking) plus $1/$2 is decidedly harder to crack than .50/1.

My suggestion would be to go to .25/.50 pokerstars, forget bonuses for now, this is a VERY soft game. Play here until you have $200. Then deposit at paradise using the GRANNY code and the link found on this site which is 50% up to $100. This should (theoretically) give you $300 where you go from there is up to you, but in all honesty I think there are better options than jumping straight to $1/$2 without an adequate bankroll or experience.

Good luck.

[olavfo]

My bankroll building so far:

Played my first hand of Hold'em about 2 months ago. Deposited $500 into Party for the 30% initial deposit bonus and played 1050 0.50/1 hands to clear it. I broke almost exactly even (won $5) so now I had $655.

Of course I had been lucky not to lose money (I didn't know anything), but now I had discovered this forum and the classic poker literature, so for the next 4 weeks or so I studied theory and didn't play a single hand online.

After ToP, HP, HPFAP and 3 readings of SSH (while practicing daily with Turbo Texas Hold'em) I started playing 0.50/1 again 4 weeks ago and I'm up 600 BB since then. In addition I've cleared another $300 in bonuses, so all in all I have tripled my starting bankroll and then some.

Right now I'm bonuswhoring the Party skins and later I'll do Paradise, Pacific and a few others. When I'm done with that I estimate I'll have 15k 0.50/1 hands under my belt and when I reach 20k hands I'll take a long and good look at my stats and decide whether to move up.

I'll say I have succeeded building a small bankroll, but I must add that I select tables very carefully and I play only one table at a time. With multitabling I'm sure I would have made much, much less. I won't try it until I'm confident about my abilities.

olavfo

[sfer]

I started playing in Oct 2003 and busted out of Paradise playing 2/4 way over my head. Whoops. Then I deposited $500 into Party and almost did the same, but read Lee Jones, ToP, HEPFAP, Carson, and found this site, and from that $500 I'm playing 15/30 on Party and 20/40 live. I spent a lot of time thinking about poker, possibly an unhealthily large amount of time, but I can assure you that if I did it many, many, many people can do it.

The number one piece of advice I can give you if you're serious about becoming a winning player (and ultimately that is the only way you grow a bankroll) is to read/post/think about hands here and in Small Stakes. Period.

[MrWookie47]

For a player making 4 BB/100, and a typical standard deviation of 15-17 BB/100, you're looking at a risk of losing your entire bankroll of 7-10%, and those are fantastic numbers. Actually, it's even a little worse, since I calculated that for averaging losing your entire bankroll over 450 hands, but didn't take into account if you lose it faster than that, which can happen pretty easily. Going for the Granny bonus, even if you don't have the $200 initial investment, is a much better idea, especially since you can play softer games. Or else you could play smaller limits at other sites without such juicy deposit bonuses.

[olavfo]

You've done what I'm dreaming about. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

How much time did it take you to get to 15/30 and feel confident there?

I agree totally with what you say about thinking about the game. After I started reading and thinking about other peoples' hand postings here at the forum it's like I have gotten a 10 times bigger mental database to use when I play online.

olavfo

[waynethetrain]

If it weren't for the occasional PP reload bonuses that can be cleared at a decent hourly rate, my playing experience would be a total waste financially despite the fact that I am building a bankroll. Even a high win rate at .50 - 1.00 is not worth the trouble on a per hour basis without the bonus and I am not winning at $1 - $2 after about 2.75K hands so far. I believe that until you can play 3-6 very profitably and perhaps play two tables with equal skill to one, the economics of playing poker are extremely poor without the bonuses.

[jrz1972]

I 3-table .5/1 and have a winrate of ~5 bb/100 over 25,000 hands. I conservatively figure that works out to something like $8 per hour.

Yeah, that sucks if you had to live on that income, but it's pretty damn good for a hobby that I would be doing anyway.