Topping yourself off in Ring Games

Hello all,

I heard somewhere that when you're playing cash games within Bankroll, it's a good idea to always be as closed to topped off as you can, so that if you find yourself shoving with premium holdings, you can get the full value for them.

My question is when exactly you should top yourself off. We can all expect to lose a few big blinds/hands before we land a winner, so should you top off when you've lost ten big blinds, 1/4 of your stack, 1/3 of it?

Many thanks for your time, and best of luck out there!

Daniel

I play primarily on Full Tilt and make use of the auto rebuy feature and always keep at a full stack. Most regulars do the same thing as well and I think most sites have some kind of setting for it.

I'm no expert at cash games by any standard, but I do manage to win at small/micro stakes.

I top off mine every time after I go through the blinds or if I lose even a big blind or two. That is as long as there are a few deep stacks at the table. My logic behind this is I never know when the hand is coming that I'm gonna stack someone off with and I always want to win as much as possible with that hand. It sucks to be at a $10 max table with only 7 or 8 bucks and hit your set vs. someones aces. It's the difference between having $20 or only $14-$16. I will keep doing this as long as I am under the max buy in or until I get sick of the table.

The only reason I leave the table is if I am losing my ass off or if the deep stacks move and are replaced by the short stack douche bags that seem to be ever more present. As a matter of fact I have a hard time finding a good table with more than half people buying in for the max at micro stakes. I think FT and the other major sites should have tables where you can only buy in with the max for the table, but they prolly won't because of all the rake the mixed stacks produce.

So in other words keep your stack deep and reload at least once a round can be the best advice I could give. I'm sure many will agree.

My auto rebuy only works when I lose my whole stack. Is this different for you? Or maybe I have my settings wrong. If so could someone explain to me how to get the auto rebuy to top me off after any loss to my stack? That would be great info and would make my cash games easier to manage.

That's exactly why I asked. So I should basically set it to aout re-buy any time I drop below the maximum, keeping myself maxed out permanently?

auto rebuy whenever u dont have teh max

That's what I do. I would hate to lose even 6 cents for not being topped off. To me it seems any loss would be taking from my profit and like I said, I'm not a great player so every penny counts.

Also try to avoid being at a table with more than half short stacks. Hard to do but if I am the only deep player there I will always leave. That's one good thing about internet poker, there are always more tables.

Many thanks for all the valuable advice. Again particularly from the big ringers who come in and answer posts by an up and comer.

I'm putting it to use right away and setting myself to auto top-up. I can see how valuable this could become. And I hear you regarding the shortstacks. I also look for a table that has hopefully only 1 or 2 at the most.

Thanks again, and best of luck to you out there!

LOL, good luck with that.

If you want to get the max value for your bets when you do hit it big, I would say buy back to your deep stack amount at least when the button comes to you.

Me personally, I don't. I usually bring my stakes at the beginning, which is usually table min / max, somewhere in between, or just about average the other chip stacks. Yes I do lose value when I do hit the premiums, but I'm not a fan of being 'Freshened up'. Yes I know buying in at the minimum shows weakness, but when you have a micro BR, you gotta conserve your pennies.

Give me a SnG or MTT any day of the week over ring games. I make money at those a whole lot better than what the ring will toss me.

On Full Tilt in their software, just go to Options, Set Buy-in Preference, and click the check box "Auto Top-Up." Set your re-buy to what you want by clicking the radio button "Custom Setting" and choosing the number of Big Blinds (for NL/PL). You'll see -- it's self explanatory after you find the right spot in the menu.

i personally don't like to use the auto top up feature. maybe it's because i'm an amateur and have a very small bankroll, but when i buy in, i know how much i can lose. if i were to auto top up every time i lost a little bit, i could fairly easily lose track of how much i have lost, and who knows who it could affect my total bankroll. like i said, this may not apply if you have a decent sized BR, but right now i don't.

Thank you very much. I can't belive I didn't notice that option.

^^
this!!

Online, I set it to auto-rebuy. Live games I add on when I get below 90% or so. I do wish online sites had a feature where it would indicate how much you have invested on a table, but in the meantime I simply write down the total in my account before I start a session.

If you are a winning player having as many chips as possible is an advantage to you, because when you go all-in you are capable of winning more.

Every time you go all-in with an advantage and don't have the guy covered you are losing out on $.

Let's put it this way. Say you play $50NL. You fold off your blinds (a total of $.75).

On the button you call a $1.75 raise with your 8/8 and get all-in on the A/K/8 flop vs the other guy's A/K. You're 83% to win.
If you rebought that $.75, you have 83% equity in it so it's like getting an extra $.62.
If you hadn't topped off in two rounds you'd be missing out on $1.24 every time that situation came up.
Likewise, if you were down $5 that's $4.15 in equity (well, rake would make it $3.95 I guess).

Granted, stacking is rare, stacking off against a bigger full stack is rarer, and you're equity is often less than 83%. So maybe you're only missing out on a penny or two in EV realistically. But pennies add up.

Another thing to consider...

Lets' say you're at at $50NL table full of $40 or less stacks and you have $38 due to some bad beats.

You may think, "I only have $38 of my $50 buy-in but so what? It's only $2 less than the chip leader."
Then you win $13 by stacking a short stacker. Now you have a $51 stack and you think you're in good shape. Well, you are, but it could be better.

You see a maniac comes to the table (or maybe he was already there) and his A/J shove and outdraws the A/K caller, doubling his roll to $50. A couple hands later the luckbox maniac does it again to stack someone else. Now he has $85.

If you tangle with the maniac the biggest chunk you can take from his bankroll is your stack of $51.

Had you rebought to $50 before winning that $13 hand, you'd have a $63 stack so you could win $12 more off that maniac.

Again, these situations don't happen all the time but it's all about preparing for these possibilities. Every time they happen and you don't have as many chips as possible and you go all-in against someone who you don't have covered you are missing out on money.

So, ideally you will rebuy ASAP, replenishing right after the BB and right after the SB.

The only reason not to rebuy would be if you do not have an advantage at the poker table. If you feel spewy or out of your league, then don't reload.

Gosh, I don't play that fearlessly. Just not there mentally. OK, at the micro tables, I will fearlessly go all-in with that $4 max, but that's only because I am playing below standard BR limits. And even there, I want to consciously top off when I have gone busto, because I want to keep track of how many buy-ins I make. I only allow myself 4 before I require myself to leave the table. It's not just the money either -- 4 busto-beats can make me tilty. Topping off constantly can make me lose track-- I used to do that (at slightly higher levels) until I discovered, one sad day, that I had made a sizable dent in my BR because the cards were not going my way and the top-offs had added up. No big hard beats, just a lot of smaller fails, so I didn't even realize how much I was losing. Until I did.

If you are going to top off a lot while playing NL, play well within BRM parameters.

I don't play at NL ring tables much anyway, because I don't enjoy the variances. I like the stability of fixed limit. So stacking is not a concern for me. Slow and steady is what I like. Slowly and steadily up is the plan. I'll take my 2-4BB/hr/table in a less exciting way, thanks. Not doubling and tripling; not rebuying three or four times when the big hand gets beat (it will, often, you know). I don't need the adrenaline rush of the all-in, and the horror of the full-stack beat. I get those enough in tourneys, thanks-- and there my downside is limited to the cost of the tourney.

You all go ahead and play like hotshot wildman poker players. I'll just grind it out, thanks.

It's the same way, well playing shortstacked.
But who am i to say, thought i tend to lose with the max buy-in, from playing to many hands.... the A rag hands...

I have been running with the auto top-up option on for the past couple of sessions, and I've got to say it more than pays for itself. I'm never going back. Yes, it's a little bit scary at first to see your bankroll dripping away when you're losing your bets and the blinds, but all it takes is a big hand or two to put you over the max and back in the profit zone.

And to echo SP, the times when you hit a huge hand and decide you're shoving, having a full stack makes all the difference in the world. I can't help but chuckle now at the short and/or half stacks that shove and only win 0.30 with they turn up aces. As for the comments about it being too easy to just leak away with Arags, my answer is again, all it takes is a little discipline to just play your A game, regardless of the relative size of your stack.

Now, I agree it's a bit cumbersome to keep track of every penny you lose for the purposes of bankroll management, but all it takes is a little bit of discipline to just add it in manually into a spreadsheet so that you can keep track of your losses before the money starts rolling in. I'm personally really glad that I patiently waited until I was at a point where I could play these cash games without having to be "afraid" of losing a full stack. If you're playing within bankroll, the auto-top up option shouldn't be a problem, and if it is, then my opinion is you shouldn't be playing cash games; I forget who said it (probably Texas Dolly), but it's true that you have to be willing to put your whole stack down at any time; other wise you're just not playing profitable poker.

Besides, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out when the table just isn't profitable for you and you should stand up. I think it helps to figure out a system for yourself of when you just need to stand up and go do something else; it's different for different people. I know some people choose to stand up if they've had a monster cracked, or if they lose 4 whole buy-ins. My own personal system for SnGs for example is if I lose 5 in a row, I take a break for a couple of days. I've realized that for me at least, after 5 straight losses, tilt starts creeping in in the form of the "I've got to win the money back" mentality. For cash games, I've decided that if I've had to fill up for two whole additional buy-ins (3 total), then I'll probably start to feel the same way, so I just have to cut my losses and walk. I may switch tables sooner however, if I feel the table just isn't profitable for me, or has too many short stackers "going south," or just simply has some real sharks that I can't seem to beat. Conversely, if I think I can really milk the table and have simply gotten a string of bad beats, I might stick around more. Essentially, if I'm tiltin', I'm quittin'

I really have realized though that for cash games you can't stress table selection enough. I've gotten pretty good at scouting out multiple tables before I sit down, and picking one that has mostly full/close to full stacks for full value, plenty of action, and a low number of short stackers (I can usually handle 1 or 2). And no, it's not THAT hard to find a decent table, even at the microstakes. At least it hasn't been for me. I've managed to find a couple where I've handily doubled my stack.

So top-up your stacks fellas, make sure your bankroll is where you're not afraid to put it all on the line, play smart, scout for juicy tables, and enjoy the profits!

Thanks again to everyone who responded, especially you big ringers with 1K+ posts who come over and share your wisdom with us. Best of luck to you out there!

T.

I like to buy in for 68BB and top up to there whenever I drop below 60%.

Granted I lose some value but it makes all the regs think you are a fish. Priceless.