So it's back to Bankroll Management

luckylucky

I've never quite managed to keep a lid on my bankroll management. I'm not quite as crazy as I used to be with it but still I'm not tight enough with it and after a recent downswing I definitely need to tighten up as much as to stop myself from tearing my hair out as well as avoiding going El Busto.

I have my doubts whether I'll be able to on a consistent basis . I think it could be hard to adjust to being totally disciplined with it.
Has anyone managed to go from being lax with their BR Management to being consistently firm with it?

Mr.Plough

i'm still awful with it. i reckon its one of the hardest things to do properly if your not naturally bankroll nitty.

El Stuntman

no :mad:

BobSloane

Whats the problem exactly? I've got a regime that works for me - fairly simple but maybe not for all. Are you in the moving up levels business or do you withdraw alot from your roll? Do you play tournament / cash or both?

Do you keep class live / online as separate things. I only play the odd live tournament so I just reach into d'arse pocket for that

luckylucky

BobSloane wrote:

Are you in the moving up levels business or do you withdraw alot from your roll?

Lol I'm in the moving all over the place business :rolleyes: . That's the problem.

BobSloane wrote:

Do you play tournament / cash or both?

I play both tournament and cash. I'm not so bothered about my br management for tournaments. It's cash that's the main issue.

Tbh Nl Hold'Em Cash game is what I would regard as my bread and butter game but I also get more bored with it. I also fare ok in Omaha when I play $2-$4 or below but my Bankroll Management when it comes to Omaha is horrendous - far worse than in Hold Em. I'm really thinking of abandoning the game totally as I get on a joyride buzz and end up playing $5-$10 and even $10-$20 sometimes, the swings in the game are brutal and it plays havoc with my heart rate:eek:

I withdraw a fair bit from my roll. I'm semi-pro at the game. I work from home doing a mixture of poker and some writing. But have been lax in writing of late so have been withdrawing a lot recently from my roll. Going to have to get busier on the writing front again as I could do with the bobs. So combined with the downswing my roll has got dented of late.

BobSloane wrote:

Do you keep class live / online as separate things.

I don't play much live and none at all at the moment since I live in rural Portugal and I doubt if there's a serious Poker game within 100 Kms of me. So again by and large live play can be discounted from my BR management strategy.

Rnger

bankroll management takes the fun out of poker

grey_abbey

Setting stop-losses helped me with my tendancy to abliterate my BR. If i go to omaha for a bit o craic, il say to myself, if i lose 3 buy-ins im gone. ye gotta set boundries and stick to them or else it just gets outta control.Think every1's struggled with BR management at sometime...

ianmc38

luckylucky wrote:

Has anyone managed to go from being lax with their BR Management to being consistently firm with it?

Just about. Took a long time and alot of discipline, but ive dispelled most of the monsters now....

BobSloane

I found the key is that you need to be playing for an amount that is meaningful to your bankroll but will not cripple your bankroll either. Meaningful and cripple mean different things to different people.

Moving between levels I found the way that worked best for me was moving up at 18 buyins and back down at 15.
So say I'm playing $0.5/$1 and my roll is $2500. I'll tip away at this til I get to $3600. Then I'll start playing $1/$2. If I drop 3 buyins back to $3000 I MUST play $0.5/$1 again until I am back to $3600 and I can take another shot. I cannot play $2/$4 until I have $7200 , and again MUST drop back if I drop to $6000.

So if I'm playing $1/$2 off a roll of $5000. I'd have to go on a 25 buy-in downswing before I'd be back at $1500 playing $0.25/$0.5 (with 30 buy-ins and breathing space)

Try to remember that the swings/varience/tilt etc result in the loss of buy-ins more so than $$. I'm not sure what a really bad downswing would be. Six is the worst I've had and a couple of threes but I'd say 25 would be pretty severe.

So basically I've always got 15-36 buy-ins for what I'm playing. Meaningful to win but not crippling to lose or at least thats how I feel about it.
You could maybe play with 12-30 buyins but you've got to have that point - the escape hatch where you move down and the loss of buy-ins isn't killing your roll.

I don't play tournaments anymore that cost more than 1% of my br.
I very rarely play omaha and if I do its the 50cent game.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

ianmc38

A few weeks after I finished my job, my bankroll online was about 2k. I got up to roughly 5k, then had a really rough night, losing about 1.6k at 1/2. On complete and utter tilt I moved up to 5/10. After an hour or so I stacked a guy and erased most of the nights losses. I left immediately.

It was only after that night I actually realised the severity of what i'd done and the risk I'd just taken. If i'd got stacked at 5/10, I'd probably still be working in an office somewhere in Ireland. I promised myself not to do it again after that and have mainly stuck to it.

From where I was a year ago, my emotional control is 1000 times better than it used to be. Anyone who's played live with me knows that I had the worst tilt control on Earth. The slightest thing would put me on tilt and go from playing good solid poker to horrible laggy spewtard stuff. I was the same online and would just start calling 3 bets with any 2 cards and 4 bettting nits with rubbish, throwing away money constantly.

Now I'm at the point where I still tilt occasionally, but I can usually press the off switch and quit, where as before I would just keep digging over and over again.

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty good bankroll now and never play stakes that could cripple me nor do I ever move up to levels above my roll like I used to.

The thought of going broke is a scary one; scary enough for me to battle the inner demons that are trying to rear their heads all the time when i take a beat or someone says something annoying in the chat box or whatever.

So yeah I guess since the safety net of wages went, it totally changes the way you have to deal with your emotions whn playing as it's far too easy to crash and burn and lose everything in one night (speaking from experience of destroying some 5 figure rolls in 1 day before!)

Macspower

My Story,

Bankroll management is the only thing that has me still playing online poker... As some of you know I have some of the worst downswings imaginable with -10 being pretty standard for me now... SO I adjust my BR management to compensate. I currenty have 50 bi's ins for the level I'm playing at... A bit OTT but with my luck :eek: god knows I need them...

I moving levels again today but -3 bi's and I'm back down immediately.....

Just reading Ian's Post above and the safety net of money from somewhere else makes all the difference.. When I had the money to spare and had my own business for man years I always had cash flow and I'm sure people loved to see me coming to a cash table as the money didn't mean a lot to me at the time.... I have to say I enjoyed poker a lot more back then........lol at the hero calls with 22 to find that I was good after getting 3 barreled by AK for about 1k and the guys shocked face and the abuse when he sees what I called him with..... definately fun......profitable ... no

remove the safety net = bankroll management

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

luckylucky

I'll think I'll try to emulate your line BOB, in relation to cash games at least. It's sensible without being too restrictive. Now putting it into practice will be the hard bit

RedJoker

I move up at 20 buy-ins and take a 5 buy-in shot, if I lose those 5 buy-ins I'll drop back down.

I had a very nasty downswing recently and dropped down faster than I usually would. Dropped down to 50nl at 1700 and 25nl at 1200. I moved back up to 50nl today with around 1600 and I won't be moving back up to 100nl without at least 2000, maybe more if it takes a while to rebuild my confidence.

If I'd had the discipline to move down faster I might not have lost over half my roll. But if I hadn't exercised strict bankroll management I probably wouldn't have a roll anymore.

patmac

I have great bankroll management its called the wife.

gocall01

patmac wrote:

I have great bankroll management its called the wife.

qfe.:o

Lafortezza

It's just willpower.

Headspace

Came across blog 20K Mission after going broke for the umpteen time and said I'm going to do that. Very slow start but now I have 5k and can make good profit playing within my limits. I try to increase my BR by 1K a week and generally withdraw the remaining profit. Went on tilt the last day and ended up playing 2/4 plo, still need to work on that. But if I make my goal (20K by Christmas) I promise u I WILL NOT ever go broke again. Set a goal and go for it!

patmac

gocall01 wrote:

qfe.:o

What's qfe?

semibluff

Headspace wrote:

Came across blog 20K Mission after going broke for the umpteen time and said I'm going to do that. Very slow start but now I have 5k and can make good profit playing within my limits. I try to increase my BR by 1K a week and generally withdraw the remaining profit. Went on tilt the last day and ended up playing 2/4 plo, still need to work on that. But if I make my goal (20K by Christmas) I promise u I WILL NOT ever go broke again. Set a goal and go for it!

chris??

DeadParrot

my br management is terrible
Its fine going up but I seem to lack the disipline to drop levels as I always see it as an oppurtunity lost

cooker3

I am the biggest bankroll nit in the world. At 25nl I had like 85 buyins at 1 stage while now at 50nl I have about 65 although I will probably move up to 100nl when I come home.
I am much more interested in playing well and just beating levels. I of course want to move up and play as high as I can but it has never been a huge thing, I want to beat all the levels on the way.

mrflash

The three most common ways that most people lose their bankrolls from my experience, both personal and my friends are,

(1) Playing at too high stakes, you should have at least fifteen buyins imo
(2) A night of Tilt, i have heard this story so many times. You have to set limits
on how much you can lose in one night and stick with it.
(3) Playing too many different types of games, e.g. playing cash games, sng's
and tourneys all in one night. If you like variety, pick a night to play one and
another night to play the other.

zuutroy

I'm not too bad so far, ran up my initial $50 deposit by playing tournaments to about $500. I now play $25nl to keep building the roll and play $11 (max) tourneys. The cash play helps to keep the overall variance down. When (if?!) I'm rolled for $50nl I'll let myself play in $22 tourneys and so on.

NickyOD

I've lost count of the number of players who overtook me in terms of the stakes they played and boasted on and on about winnings for such and such a month and then subsequently went broke and couldn't play for while, having to work their ass off or borrow to get back in the game.

I have been there too, having to borrow, which was mostly down to my own stupid spending habits and lack of a proper playing routine rather than poor BR management.

Look at the stakes fuzz, valor and HJ play and you should realise how important protecting your roll is. Having a BIG tank and taking small risks is the key. And as surprisingly obvious as that advice sounds most players are never able to train themselves to heed it.

robinlacey

ianmc38 wrote:

A few weeks after I finished my job, my bankroll online was about 2k. I got up to roughly 5k, then had a really rough night, losing about 1.6k at 1/2. On complete and utter tilt I moved up to 5/10. After an hour or so I stacked a guy and erased most of the nights losses. I left immediately. .....

fair balls ian,i remember talking to you about bankroll before and being surprised at how well rolled you are,its even more impressive given how hard you must have had to work to acquire that sort of discipline almost from scratch.

Hectorjelly

mrflash wrote:

The three most common ways that most people lose their bankrolls from my experience, both personal and my friends are,

(1) Playing at too high stakes, you should have at least fifteen buyins imo
(2) A night of Tilt, i have heard this story so many times. You have to set limits
on how much you can lose in one night and stick with it.
(3) Playing too many different types of games, e.g. playing cash games, sng's
and tourneys all in one night. If you like variety, pick a night to play one and
another night to play the other.

(4) having no clue how to play poker!

Glowingmind

Just curious about those of you who are playing a lot, but don't have it as your sole/primary source of income - do you guys have a bank account set up specifically for poker?

I'm just a bit concerned that despite being a lot stricter about what games i allow myself to play, i'm still not seeing the wood for the trees because my money's coming in and out of my current account along with my wages.

ozpoker

Glowingmind wrote:

Just curious about those of you who are playing a lot, but don't have it as your sole/primary source of income - do you guys have a bank account set up specifically for poker?

I'm just a bit concerned that despite being a lot stricter about what games i allow myself to play, i'm still not seeing the wood for the trees because my money's coming in and out of my current account along with my wages.

I do, and I think it's a good idea for many reasons. It allows you to more concretely know what's your BR and what's not. It also allows you to protect your main account from potentially shady payment processors (not that I've ever experienced this).

Additionally, I have a wallet with 2 cash sections to keep my BR and spending cash seperate.

-Oz-

El Stuntman

Hectorjelly wrote:

(4) having no clue how to play poker!

(5) betting on sports/table games/-EV propositions