First Post In Tourneys Forum: Question on Bankroll

[GuyOnTilt]

I'm a Low Limit ring player who has just recently ventured into the SnG arena. I'm wondering what the standard bankroll is for playing SnG's in terms of buy-in's? I've been keeping my limit roll seperate from my tourney roll since I've started my SnG experiment. Currently, I'm playing with $3500 for my 3/6 ring games and $1500 for my 50+5 SnG's. Is 27 buyin's enough? Or am I spreading myself a little thin?

Just thought I'd ask. Thanks!

[MaqEvil]

You can beat the $50s, 27 buyins probably provides an acceptable risk of ruin (provided I dont sit on your left all the time ;p).

[Bozeman]

If you get 15% 1st,2nd,3rd for a ROI of 40%, your variance is 32.73 buyins^2/game (I used the convention that buyin doesn't include the fee to make the #'s simpler), for an SD of 5.72 buyins/sqrt(game). I know there are good formulas for risk of ruin, but I don't have them memorized, so this is my rough estimate: after 54 tourneys, you should be up 21.6 buyins, and your SD is 42, so you have a 11% chance of being down 29.2(=27+10%VIG). I think there may be some systematic error because the 1 game distribution is so lopsided.

Craig

[Schneids]

If nothing else, you could transfer 500-1000 of your 3/6 bankroll to your tournament roll. 3500 seems like a lot for 3/6. I survive just fine with 2000 in 5/10.

[GuyOnTilt]

I've thought of transferring some of my limit roll over to my tourney roll, but I'm just getting started playing and learning tournament play, so I'm going to hold off on that for a bit. Yes, 3500 is a little on the high side for 3/6 and I could afford to withdraw about 1500 of that and still have an acceptable bankroll to play with. It does surprise me that you're playing 5/10 with only 2000...that's only 200 BB's. Depending on your hourly rate, I'd think that your risk of ruin is somewhat high...I'd recommend dropping down to 3/6 until you hit 3000 or adding another grand to your roll.

[GuyOnTilt]

Yeah, next time I see you at a SnG I'm taking position on you. Revenge will me mine! I'm surprised you seem so confident in my ability after only seeing me play NL for half an hour or so. But I'll take it as a compliment none the less.

[MaqEvil]

The NL 50s really aren't that tough, when I see someone who knows how to bet the pot, they generally wind up doing fairly well.

Don't yell at the fish, even if their ignoring the 6:1 pot odds might have cost you $100 ;p

[Copernicus]

You should be doing better than 15/15/15 and 40% ROI as used above to calculate a SD. 15/25/20 would lower your SD deviation considerably, and make 27 buy-ins more than sufficient.

If you are getting results like 15/15/15 my guess would be that you are loosening the reins on your calling/raising a little too early and washing out with average/below average stacks that could be played into the money with a tighter strategy. It is easy to feel pressure to build a stack more aggressively when you have a good but not premium hand, but the players at those levels are weak enough that you can wait them out if you are patient enough.

[Bozeman]

Oops, I knew my numbers seemed way high, and I made an calculator error. SD for one game is only 2.41, so after 54 games, you will be -29.7 only 0.2% of the time, for an excellent RoR. Sorry,
Craig

[GuyOnTilt]

Thank you. This helps me out a lot actually.