Bank Roll managment(very very long)

Gholimoli

Any successful gambler (yes people, poker is a form of gambling but if you are any decent you already know that) has to have two attributes.
One is just as important as the other one even though most don’t realise this for various reasons.
Some are don’t know much about gabling and how it works and some just fool them self’s in to thinking they are exception to the rule but the fact remains that you can not make a profit in gambling with out either.

Im going to discuss what these two attributes are in general gambling and then im going to relate it to poker.
What im hoping for is to clear people’s thinking and remove any misconception from their understanding of the topic.
What im going to talk about is by no means ground breaking and is really rather simple which most prob know but I am surprise at how most manage to ignore it for one reason or another and as a result lose money.
Ok so lets get in to these two attributes that any successful gambler must have:

1.Having a positive edge
Having a positive edge in whatever field of gambling you are in is essential in becoming profitable.
By positive edge I mean having a clear and positive expectation from the wagers that you are investing in.
Every one who is reading this prob knows what having a +EV situation is so im not going to give another definition for it.
Having this edge can be in many different forms depending on the sort of game (im going to refer to all forms of gabling as games from here on) you are playing.
Some games have closed mechanics and by this I mean the nature of the game is one that will not allow players to change it’s inner workings.
Everything about them is pre-set and most importantly is the fact that they offer static odds.
If you take a game of roulette for example the odds of getting number 7 in one spin is 37:1 however they offer you 35:1 if you do.
There is nothing you can do to change the odds or mechanics of the game.
If you did it would probably be a new game.
Your edge in these kind of games comes from knowing whether or not you have an edge.
Or put simply being able to understand whether or not the wager on offer is +EV or –EV and to accept or decline the wager based on that.
For example with the above settings it’s clear that wagering on roulette is –EV. Declining this bet is the edge you have over some one who does not know this and will take the bet.
Suppose for example there was a roulette machine somewhere in the world that offered 38:1 if your number came in as oppose to 35:1.
Obviously in that case you should be taking this wager because it is +EV.
Your edge here comes from being mathematically inclined and knowing the odds on offer and when to take and when to refuse wagers.

Now there is another type of game in which the mechanics are not that closed.
You prob know by now that what I mean is that the you can manipulate the game enough to have varying degree of EV offered to you.
Poker is such a game.
Im not going to get deep in to it as it should be pretty clear what I mean but just to give a quick example:
You are playing a NL Holdem cash game.
You are playing against one opponent and you have position.
On the flop you have a flush draw.
You think your hand is no good now unless you hit your draw but you also think that your opponent is not that strong.
Your opponent checks.
You have 3 options now and depending on which one you take your EV will vary.
For example you may be able to increase your EV by raising here against the right opponent as a semi-bluff.
Now this kind of edge comes from understanding the fundamentals of that particular game.
The better you understand it and can apply it, the higher your edge is compare to your opponents.
What is worth noting about having a positive edge in a game is that it can be acquired.
You just need to understand the mechanics of that game and know the math behind it.
Basically what im trying to say is that having a positive edge is the science part of gambling and any one can learn it. (Well almost any one).
It just may take some longer than others but it’s like every other science.


2.Money Management
This is the other attribute that any successful gambler must have in order to profit from gambling and while it’s just as important it’s often neglected for one reason or another.
I think the main reason why it’s neglected and ignored so much is people’s lack of understanding of gambling.
I think while most people’s view of money management in gambling is that “it’s a plus” they don’t quite understand that it is a necessity.
Another reason why I think people may undermine the importance of money management is because they think it has no direct impact or relationship with your edge or EV.
While money management may not have a direct impact on your EV you need to understand that it has a direct impact on you benefiting from your EV or earning your EV.
If I wanted to really talk about the above I would need to get deep in to probability and variance etc which would really make this longer that it is and more boring.
I will try an elaborate what I mean as short and efficient as possible.
When you are thinking of earning from gabling you must to know that you are concerned about the long run.
Each individual wager does not really mean much at all and what is important is when you repeat that wager over and over again.
When you define the amount of your EV in a particular wager what you are really saying is that you will average that amount per wager if you were to repeat it many times.
The more you repeat it the closer your results will get to your EV.
The nature of gabling is such that while you can make a profit from it (as long as you have a +EV) the profit is made by on average winning more than you lose.
For example while its quite possible to make $1 million from poker the way it works is that you win $2 million and lose $1 million and earn a net profit of $1 mil.
What im trying to get at is that the winning is really not possible with out the losing and such is the nature of gambling.
As long as you have a positive edge then you will win more than you will lose and that’s how you make money.
Money management essentially will allow you to sustain the losing so that you can keep and investing in that wager.
As I said before while having a +EV wager has the potential of making you money you need to have money to invest in that wager or take that wager.
The more you take that wager the closer you get to your EV but again you need to make sure that you have enough money to be able to repeatedly take the wager.
As you can see this has nothing to do with the first attribute, which was that, you have a positive edge or put another way having a positive edge alone is not sufficient to make you money in gambling.
I will give a very simply example here and then will relate all of this to poker.

It’s a coin flip contest.
If you flip the coin and its heads you will win.
If its tail’s your friend will win.
When you win your friend will give you $10
When you lose you will give your friend $5

Now as its quite obvious this is a good wager to take, why?
Because you have a positive edge in this bet because you are being offered 2:1 on 1:1 shot.
What this means is that in the “long run” you will make an average of $5 per flip.
Should you take this bet?
Well the obvious answer would be yes of course you should but let me change the situation slightly and we will come back to that question.


Suppose the wager is still on but you make some modification to the bet.
Suppose you have in total a sum of $15 and your friend has a sum of $10000.
Now do you think it’s still a good bet?
What is the difference between the two examples?

In both situations you are enjoying a +EV=$5.
The difference is that in the first example we said nothing about how much money you have to invest in this wager and we assumed it was infinite and we based our calculation on that.

In the second situation we assumed we have a limited amount of funds available to us to invest in this wager.
As you can guess in the second situation you have a bit of dilemma which is that if you lose the first 3 times of that flip you are bust.
That would be a disaster because if you have no more money then you have no more money to invest and even though the wager is still a +EV you will have to decline because you don’t have money.
Now I could get in to more detail in terms of how likely it is that you will go bust on your first 3 attempts but I wont because im just trying to get the idea across and I think it should be clear by now.

Now if we were offered the same 2:1 on a 1:1 shot but we decided that instead of wagering in units of $5 we would wager in units of $3.
Everything else still the same as in we have a total of $15 to play with.
Now as you can see it will take a total of 5 losing flips in row from the start for us to go bust.
Can this happen? Oh yes
Is it likely to happen? Oh yes

Is it more likely to happen than in the first example? Hell no

Now how about if we further refined our bet by taking wagers in units of $1 instead of $3.
You can see that it will take us a whopping 15 losing goes in a row from the start for us to go bust.
Now while even that can happen in reality the odds are very slim.
Now in relation to poker being skilful and being good at it is what give you out edge.
Having proper bank roll management is what will make sure that you make full use of that edge.
As you can see then unlike some people think having a proper bank roll management is not for people who are less skilled or don’t have a positive edge in the game.
Infact this is the most difficult part of making money from gambling in general and poker specifically.
Because money management is more of a discipline than a science and while there is science involved in setting up guide lines for money management for the specific game you are playing, it’s the discipline required to stick to those guide lines that is hard work.
Infact the lack of money management is the very reason why a lot of good poker players end up broke and it has nothing to do with their ability as a poker player.
They still may have a significant edge over the competition however they lack the discipline to capitalise on that edge.
Folks make no mistake about it, with out proper BR management you will go broke it’s just how much time it will take before you do.
I hope what I said make sense and some one can find some use for it.
As I said it’s not by any means new material or groundbreaking stuff however I think it may be use full information.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

Shadowless

Good Post.

But what the hell is this "Gabling" you speak of? :D

Iago

Shadowless wrote:

Good Post.

But what the hell is this "Gabling" you speak of? :D

He's talking about the risks you take when you're balanced on a dodgy ladder sorting out the side of the roof and your house, also known as the Gable. He's right too, those ladders can be lethal in weather like this and in late autumn with the wet leaves and everything

nice post all the same

CaptainNemo

Nice post but some concrete figures on "safe" bankroll % for different types of game would have been very interesting.

Primewise

good points gholi.

I read an article by some pro about bankroll management. He gave another very good example of when it is correct to turn down a +VE proposition because you do not have a sufficient bankroll:

You successful winning poker player, have made you’re way up from very small stakes over the course of 3 years and you’re current winnings stand at €1,000,000. A wealthy gambler offers you a bet. He puts €1.5 million on the table and asks you to put you’re entire bankroll (1 million) on the table. You will only have a tenner left in your pocket afterwards.

He offers to flip a coin. Heads you win €1.5 million, tails you lose €1 million.

Clearly it’s a good offer but you should never take the bet.

There is not much difference between having €1 million and having €2.5 million. Each has the potential to turn into a larger sum in the hands of a skilled professional who can invest it or win more with it.

However there is a huge difference between having €0 and having €1 million. €0 has no potential.

Primewise

CaptainNemo wrote:

Nice post but some concrete figures on "safe" bankroll % for different types of game would have been very interesting.

It depends on what games you play. For a Sit n Go player: 10 to 20 times the buy-in for 1 table.

I'm not sure about cash games. I'd say 20 times the buy-in to be safe.

Have not much idea about Multi- table tournaments either. usually the prize pool is split amoung 1/10th of the players. there is much variance for MTT players... e.g. sometimes you come first and win BIG. sometimes you will go months without going deep into the prize money.

Any comments gholi?

Mr.Plough

Heres what Brunson says regarding cash game br's in ss

"In no limit, You'll usually want a bigger bankroll for a game of the same general size. In a no limit game with 2 blinds of $5 and $10, I'd say you need at least $2500"

Kobraki

Gholimoli wrote:

If you take a game of roulette for example the odds of getting number 7 in one spin is 37:1.

Pretty sure its 36:1
Great post, must admit my BR management skills is pretty much the reason im not a millionaire from poker yet!

CaptainNemo

I've gone broke online twice now through not moving down stakes when I hit a bad run. It's psychologically hard to do. First of all, when you're losing you tend to want to make it back to where you were before, quickly, which tempts you to take greater risks to get there. Second, playing the smaller stakes with the same discipline as the larger stakes is difficult because the bet sizes seem insignificant.

Larger buy-in MTTs are an expensive temptation.

MrPillowTalk

Primewise wrote:

good points gholi.

I read an article by some pro about bankroll management. He gave another very good example of when it is correct to turn down a +VE proposition because you do not have a sufficient bankroll:

You successful winning poker player, have made you’re way up from very small stakes over the course of 3 years and you’re current winnings stand at €1,000,000. A wealthy gambler offers you a bet. He puts €1.5 million on the table and asks you to put you’re entire bankroll (1 million) on the table. You will only have a tenner left in your pocket afterwards.

He offers to flip a coin. Heads you win €1.5 million, tails you lose €1 million.

Clearly it’s a good offer but you should never take the bet.

There is not much difference between having €1 million and having €2.5 million. Each has the potential to turn into a larger sum in the hands of a skilled professional who can invest it or win more with it.

However there is a huge difference between having €0 and having €1 million. €0 has no potential.

That pro was wrong, you should take it every time.

1) If your good enough to win 1mill in the first place, you wont have any problems getting backed if you lose, so theres no need to go back to tiny games.

or alternatively

2) accept the bet and then lay it off with someone else i.e. sell the bet for 1,250,000 to a wealthier individual than yourself.

I think you will find there is a substantial difference between having 1mill and having 2.5mill.

Primewise

MrPillowTalk wrote:

That pro was wrong, you should take it every time.

1) If your good enough to win 1mill in the first place, you wont have any problems getting backed if you lose, so theres no need to go back to tiny games.

You missed the entire point of Gholi's Article, which is to never risk all of your bankroll, even for a +VE bet. This is the reason so many people go broke.

If you lose, you have not a penny. How can you then go back to playing poker? Even if you borrow money, you still have to begin at low stakes, and invest an enormous amount of time turning you're petty borrowings into what you originally had.

MrPillowTalk wrote:

I think you will find there is a substantial difference between having 1mill and having 2.5mill.

My point was that in terms of what you can DO with 1 million, it's not much different to what you can do with 2.5 million. Both allow you to make more money. You can do LOTS with both! On the other hand you can do nothing with nothing...

ozpoker

Thanks Gholi, great post on a subject that isn't very well understood by the majority of players. I'd like to add 2 points:

1) The size of your edge has a huge effect on your BR requirements to keep from going bust. Halving your edge increases you BR requirement by a factor of 4 for the same chance of risk of ruin. It's very difficult to know what your edge is precisely without *lots* of data points, and it's better to be conservative until you know what it approximates.

2) Withdrawing money from your bankroll increases your risk of ruin to near certainty. Chen and Ankenman discuss this in The Mathematics of Poker.

-Oz-

CaptainNemo

MrPillowTalk wrote:

That pro was wrong, you should take it every time.

Primewise wrote:

You missed the entire point of Gholi's Article, which is to never risk all of your bankroll, even for a +VE bet. This is the reason so many people go broke.

Surely there's no absolutely right or wrong here, just a matter of preference. Many people would prefer to pass up a +EV bet to avoid the substantial risk of going broke. That's a conservative preference. However, many don't have the same fear of going broke and would rather never pass up any +EV bet even if that entails a large risk of going broke.

There's an argument for either case. Brunson argues the latter case, saying that he wouldn't be able to pass up a massiveily favourable bet even if he was risking all his millions, simply because he has confidence that if he needed to he could make all those millions back again. However the bet he was talking about was in the region of getting 10-1 on an even money shot.

If going broke isn't an idea that bothers you a whole lot then I see no reason to pass up the bet. It would bother me so I probably wouldn't take it.

CaptainNemo

ozpoker wrote:

2) Withdrawing money from your bankroll increases your risk of ruin to near certainty. Chen and Ankenman discuss this in The Mathematics of Poker.

Doesn't this make making a living from poker a little problematic?

ozpoker

CaptainNemo wrote:

Doesn't this make making a living from poker a little problematic?

Yes, and explains why nearly every pro has been broke at one time or another.

-Oz-

MrPillowTalk

Primewise wrote:

You missed the entire point of Gholi's Article, which is to never risk all of your bankroll, even for a +VE bet. This is the reason so many people go broke.

If you lose, you have not a penny. How can you then go back to playing poker? Even if you borrow money, you still have to begin at low stakes, and invest an enormous amount of time turning you're petty borrowings into what you originally had.


My point was that in terms of what you can DO with 1 million, it's not much different to what you can do with 2.5 million. Both allow you to make more money. You can do LOTS with both! On the other hand you can do nothing with nothing...

Did you not see my option 2, i.e. making a zero risk gain of a quarter mill? and if you lost you wouldnt have to go back to playing small stakes as plenty of people would back you to play high if you had been capable of making a mill in the first place.

Turning down your hypothetical bet is only acceptable if you are mentally disabled or have a severe dislike of money.

I understood Ehsans post completely, my point in even posting on the thread is that your post had little or no relevance to what was being discussed, and that you were labouring a point that is fundamentally flawed.

CaptainNemo

I'd like to know what kind of % of your bankroll is reasonable as a buy-in to MTTs. If 5-10% is reasonable for SnGs I presume it should be less for MTTs but I don't have any figures for this. Based on my results there is huge variance in MTTs and you can have dry spells lasting a long time so if you're regularly buying into big tournaments for 10% of your roll I don't think it would take long to go broke. On the other hand when you do score one of these things you can often double or triple your entire roll.

Shadowless

CaptainNemo wrote:

I'd like to know what kind of % of your bankroll is reasonable as a buy-in to MTTs. If 5-10% is reasonable for SnGs I presume it should be less for MTTs but I don't have any figures for this. Based on my results there is huge variance in MTTs and you can have dry spells lasting a long time so if you're regularly buying into big tournaments for 10% of your roll I don't think it would take long to go broke. On the other hand when you do score one of these things you can often double or triple your entire roll.

Doesn't it recommend on 2+2 100 buyins for STT's?

Anyway whatever the number is STT's pay out 30%-33% of the field.
MTT's pay out roughly 10%

So you'd need 3 times as many buy-ins?
Ridiculous Logic?

I am in no way shape or form suggesting this is correct

gerry87

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

You have 1 million, someone offers you 1.5 million on a coinflip you should bet ((1.5*.5)-(.5))/1.5= 1/6 of your bankroll, 160k.

As the wiki says it has 0 risk of ruin. So if you have enough stats to work out your probability of winning/losing you could work out your own bankroll requirements.

Shadowless

gerry87 wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

You have 1 million, someone offers you 1.5 million on a coinflip you should bet ((1.5*.5)-(.5))/1.5= 1/6 of your bankroll, 160k.

As the wiki says it has 0 risk of ruin. So if you have enough stats to work out your probability of winning/losing you could work out your own bankroll requirements.

pffft, zero risk of ruin!
Where's the fun in that?

RedJoker

MrPillowTalk wrote:

That pro was wrong, you should take it every time.

1) If your good enough to win 1mill in the first place, you wont have any problems getting backed if you lose, so theres no need to go back to tiny games.

or alternatively

2) accept the bet and then lay it off with someone else i.e. sell the bet for 1,250,000 to a wealthier individual than yourself.

I think you will find there is a substantial difference between having 1mill and having 2.5mill.

Doing number 1 gives you a practically infinite roll. I think the point of the example is that the opportunity cost of losing the 1 million is greater than the gain of having a 2.5 million bankroll but this is probably only if you don't have the ability to beat the higher games you are now rolled for. If you won't need to move down or pay significant percentages of winnings then you can take the bet without losing any opportunity cost.

Number 2 is just arbitrage and isn't gambling.

RedJoker

CaptainNemo wrote:

I'd like to know what kind of % of your bankroll is reasonable as a buy-in to MTTs. If 5-10% is reasonable for SnGs I presume it should be less for MTTs but I don't have any figures for this. Based on my results there is huge variance in MTTs and you can have dry spells lasting a long time so if you're regularly buying into big tournaments for 10% of your roll I don't think it would take long to go broke. On the other hand when you do score one of these things you can often double or triple your entire roll.

I wouldn't be comfortable putting any more than 1% of my roll into a MTT.

Bandana boy

MrPillowTalk wrote:

Did you not see my option 2, i.e. making a zero risk gain of a quarter mill? and if you lost you wouldnt have to go back to playing small stakes as plenty of people would back you to play high if you had been capable of making a mill in the first place.

Turning down your hypothetical bet is only acceptable if you are mentally disabled or have a severe dislike of money.

I understood Ehsans post completely, my point in even posting on the thread is that your post had little or no relevance to what was being discussed, and that you were labouring a point that is fundamentally flawed.

So if you have 1$million quid and Bill Gates offers you a coin flip giving you $1.5m if you win you will take it
Ok
so if you win and bill gates offers you $3.75M against your $2.5M you will take it
Ok
etc etc till your broke

It is a bit of a belaboured point from our friend but it is correct

MrPillowTalk

Bandana boy wrote:

So if you have 1$million quid and Bill Gates offers you a coin flip giving you $1.5m if you win you will take it
Ok
so if you win and bill gates offers you $3.75M against your $2.5M you will take it
Ok
etc etc till your broke

It is a bit of a belaboured point from our friend but it is correct

Not really as you can lock up a guaranteed win each time.

The reason I think its flawed is that for one it will never happen and as such is useless in illustrating Ehsans points, also there is an argument for passing up +EV scenarios to avoid risk of ruin, but passing up +50% ROI situations is farcical.

insafehands

Kobraki wrote:

Pretty sure its 36:1
Great post, must admit my BR management skills is pretty much the reason im not a millionaire from poker yet!

No, he was right. And in some cases, wrong, but not the way you mean.

There are the numbers 1-36 on a roulette wheel, then there's 0 and in some cases 00 too.

So you've got a 1:37 or 1:38 chance of hitting any one specific number.

Lazare

Very nice post Gholi.

As for the other argument, Gholi's coinflip example was just a simple metaphor, illustrating why it's bad to take shots outside your BR.
Arguing over such a silly hypothetical situation is just gonna make people miss that point.

Gholimoli

Just a few more points one this subject that relates to poker:

1.Knowing the exact bankroll requirements for a particular level is near impossible.
There is a mathematical reason why this is and I believe it has to do with a particular probability distribution in poker that cannot be fully defined( I really don’t have a good grasp of it my self, I mean I know what it means but I cant explain it ,perhaps some other kind sole who is more mathematically inclined could jump in and explain this).

2.Because of the above ,any bankroll recommendation is just suggestions and that’s all.
The simple fact is the more you have the less chance you have of going broke.

3.As suggested by some one here, I don’t think the size of your edge has an impact on your BR requirements. For example in the coin flip example I gave ,your EV on average per flip was $5.now if you change that to say $50 or even $5000 you still have 50% chance of losing that bet and you still have the same chance of losing 3 bets in a row when your EV is $5000 as when your EV was $5 so essentially you still have the same chance of going broker regardless of your edge.in poker even though your skill level (edge) can vary, there is still a built in risk involved in losing a series of bets that has nothing to do with your skill and as a result I think the BR requirements are independent of your skill level. I think the BR requirements should be based not on your edge but on the chances of you losing a bet more importantly the chances of you having a series of losing bets in one streak.

4.What I forgot to say in the original post and I think is very important is that while it’s possible for some one to make money from gambling by investing in +EV wagers while neglecting money management rules ,in effect you are gambling against the odds even though you may have a positive edge in that wager.
to elaborate ,when you invest in wagers that you have a positive edge in ,if you don’t consider proper money management you are hoping that you will not start that wager by going on a losing streak.
in the coin flip example even though you have +EV=$5 if you take the bet what you are really doing is hoping that you will not lose on your first 3 attempts in a row.
While its possible for you not to lose the first 3 attempts in a row the chances of that happening is nearly 12.5%. Essentially what this means is that while you may get away with taking under rolled +EV wagers, if you kept and doing it you will go broke and that is inevitable .in relation to poker this means if you play poker under rolled while you may survive for a while and actually make profit because of your positive edge (your skill), if you kept and playing under rolled you will eventually go broke no matter how big your edge is.

5.Taking a +EV wager under rolled is not a matter of preference and to suggest it is means that you really didn’t understand any of the topics I was talking about(this was suggested by some one in one of the posts).
I think where people are having difficulty in understanding is that your edge can not really be quantified based on a single bet or two bets or 3 bets (well it can but not in the same way). When we are talking about an edge in terms of gambling (in particular poker) we are talking about an average of a very very large sample size. what this means is that your EV is only quantified this way based on the idea that this wager is going to be repeated over and over and over again up to an infinite amount .now based on the same idea if you were to repeat a +EV wager under rolled over and over again you will go broke and the only way to avoid this is to make sure you are properly rolled for that specific wager.

edit to say:as Pillow and Lazare have pointed out i think the $1 mil example is really silly and does not really have much with the topic in discussion.

hotspur

Gholimoli wrote:

I think the BR requirements should be based not on your edge but on the chances of you losing a bet more importantly the chances of you having a series of losing bets in one streak.

You do realise that your edge and the chances of you losing a bet are two ways of expressing the same thing? It may be helpful for absolute newcomers to point out the risk of ruin phenomenon, but I think some noobs reading your posts might be left with a confusion over "edge" versus "realising that edge". Even though what you're saying is very simple, you've said it in a way which confuses concepts.

Gholimoli wrote:

I don’t think the size of your edge has an impact on your BR requirements.

This is clearly wrong, give me a game where you have to guess a number between 1 and a million for even money and I'm not gonna need 25 betting units for the game. Similarly force Phil Ivey to play 1/2 NL online and he's not gonna need 25 buy ins. You cannot abstract your edge from your required bankroll. Your chances of going broke are a function of your edge + variance. Saying that your bankroll should depend on your chances of losing and not your edge makes absolutely no sense because they are refering to the same thing.

What you mean to say is merely that you have to take into account the maths of variance. Unlike you I think pretty much every player who has been playing longer than a month and isn't borderline retarded does know this. Whether they bother to adhere to that knowledge is another matter, and *is* a matter of preference. The only question then is the details of edge / variance / bankroll requirments. That's a genuine topic for discussion, not creating fictiously ignorent straw men to blow down.

Gholimoli

hotspur wrote:

You do realise that your edge and the chances of you losing a bet are two ways of expressing the same thing? It may be helpful for absolute newcomers to point out the risk of ruin phenomenon, but I think some noobs reading your posts might be left with a confusion over "edge" versus "realising that edge". Even though what you're saying is very simple, you've said it in a way which confuses concepts.


This is clearly wrong, give me a game where you have to guess a number between 1 and a million for even money and I'm not gonna need 25 betting units for the game. Similarly force Phil Ivey to play 1/2 NL online and he's not gonna need 25 buy ins. You cannot abstract your edge from your required bankroll. Your chances of going broke are a function of your edge + variance. Saying that your bankroll should depend on your chances of losing and not your edge makes absolutely no sense because they are refering to the same thing.

What you mean to say is merely that you have to take into account the maths of variance. Unlike you I think pretty much every player who has been playing longer than a month and isn't borderline retarded does know this. Whether they bother to adhere to that knowledge is another matter, and *is* a matter of preference. The only question then is the details of edge / variance / bankroll requirments. That's a genuine topic for discussion, not creating fictiously ignorent straw men to blow down.

from now on i will start my posts with a discliamer that says english is not my first language so be aware of spelling mistakes,bad wording,bad gramer,etc.
i thought most people here by now are familiar with my way of posting and know that they prob have to read my posts more than once to make sense of it .
i also want to apolgies if i introduced this stuff as some sort of bible on BR managment in gambling ,i should have said that this is my thoughts on it and my take on the subject.

also as for this stuff being simple i completly agree and i think i said it in my first post that this is not groundbreaking stuff and in fact quite simple.

i would have to disagree about most people knowing this stuff and chosing to adher to it is matter of preference,because to believe that means to believe that people willingly and knowingly prefer playing to lose.
while most people may have an idea ,they must be lacking understanding of it some where or not be quite convinced of it.

i do agree however about what you said about your BR being function of your edge and variance but what i was trying to get across was despite your edge there is a constant value assosiated with losing bets that is the nature of that particular game .

at the end i want to say that im not a math expert by any means and never cliamed to be.
i im simply refelecting my thoughts and count on intellegent intelectuals such as your self to correct me if im wrong.

"That's a genuine topic for discussion, not creating fictiously ignorent straw men to blow down"
and finally the above statement really went above my head and i dont understand what it means but i think it may be some sort of an intellectual man's way of having a dig at me.

BobSloane

I think aside from the mathematical side of bankroll management there is a psychological thing where the stakes you are playing have to have an impact on your bankroll one way or the other. You can't play at your best with scared money and you can't play at your best where the buy-in is so small that you are almost indifferent when it comes to making decisions. I don't think someone with a BR of $20,000 could remain fully focused playing $100NL. It should hurt to lose. Maybe i'm wrong and its different strokes for different folks. Somewhere from 15-50 buy-ins seems about right - 15 at the minimum when taking a shot at the next level

phantom_lord

there's br nits out there who wont move up even tho they have 50-100buyins for the level they're currently playing!

I don’t think the size of your edge has an impact on your BR requirements.

your edge is a pretty important part of defining your br requirement. There's a forumla from "Gambling Theory and Other Topics" for working out what br you need, which is based on your wr, your standard diviation, and what you think is an acceptable % chance of ruin. it also works the other way too, put in your br, wr, sd, and it calculates your risk of ruin.

cooker3

I read a similarish post in twoplustwo sticky by Balugla and it occured to me that I have 80 buy ins for my current level online
Lol, I am such a bankroll nit

phantom_lord

move up levels! ldo

bottom feeder

Very nice post Gholi.....

TacT

nice post gholi, new thread on is on the way now.

ianmc38

phantom_lord wrote:

there's br nits out there who wont move up even tho they have 50-100buyins for the level they're currently playing!

I'm one of those!

In relation to hotspurs post, if you gave Phil Ivey ten buyins for 1/2 there is every chance he would go broke.

RedJoker

cooker3 wrote:

I read a similarish post in twoplustwo sticky by Balugla and it occured to me that I have 80 buy ins for my current level online
Lol, I am such a bankroll nit

I have 65 but in my defense I've been trying to get it to Party before moving up because I didn't feel like playing a load of randoms and then moving. Plus I'm taking some of it out for PAHUD, SpadeEye and a new monitor.

peeko

good post Gholi. you were away from poker for a long time, was it because of lack of money management?

ozpoker

Gholimoli wrote:

3.As suggested by some one here, I don’t think the size of your edge has an impact on your BR requirements.

"Some one" here.

What I said (emphasis added):

ozpoker wrote:

Halving your edge increases you BR requirement by a factor of 4 for the same chance of risk of ruin.

As defended by Hotspur and BobSloane above, I think the statement stands.

If your RoR is 50% for a particular edge and a $15 BR, halving your edge would mean that a $60 BR would still have the same 50% RoR. The point is that, since your "real" edge is so difficult to know in the complex game of poker, being worse than you think you are has a huge impact on the BR needed for a particular RoR.

I've been playing seriously and continuously for 14 years, shorter than some, longer than most. In my time, I've seen lots of players burn through their BRs, regardless of how they were acquired. IME, it's the players that have conservative BR requirments that have stayed around. If that makes me a "BR nit", I'll wear that label with pride.

-Oz-

Gholimoli

peeko wrote:

good post Gholi. you were away from poker for a long time, was it because of lack of money management?

yeas this is exactly why ive decided to quit poker.
i came to a realisation that i can only lose money playing poker becuase im not a deciplined player.
i had litterly no money managment and while my edge was generally positive i noticed that i was only trying to defy the rules of maths and avoding what could not have been possibly avoided.
i still really like the game cuz it's intellectually challenging for me and that is a reason why i have not yet managed to completely cuff off from it but hopefully in time that will come as well.

my motive for this post was just to let people know that no matter how good you are (or you think you are) ,money managment is essential for making a profit in this game.
know this and stop trying to let your eago fool you and eventually bust you.

HalfBaked

Gholimoli wrote:

yeas this is exactly why ive decided to quit poker.
i came to a realisation that i can only lose money playing poker becuase im not a deciplined player.
i had litterly no money managment and while my edge was generally positive i noticed that i was only trying to defy the rules of maths and avoding what could not have been possibly avoided.

i still really like the game but i'm intellectually challenged.

my motive for this post was just to let people know that no matter how good you are (or you think you are) ,money managment is essential for making a profit in this game.
know this and stop trying to let your eago fool you and eventually bust you.

I admire your honesty Gholi.

ianmc38

This was the first test Gholi ever got an A+ in...

El Stuntman

lol @ Halfbaked's 'humour'

Gholi, why be so serious all the time? Don't over-intellectualise your poker playing, it's only a game (I realise I may get killed for saying this). Just come out to play live every now and then for small money and enjoy it, you do not have to play as though it's a career....just my 2 cents. best of luck, hope to see you at the tables soon

5starpool

I agree with El Stuntdude.

Theresalwaysone

Nice Post, but does a conservative TAG need as big a bankroll as SuperLAG?

I don't think he does. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't generally see how a player who is conservative will see as much swings as a LAG and therefore he wouldn't need as big a bankroll?

No?