comfortability vs. BRM

do you ever let you comfort level override proper BRM?

example:

your bankroll is $70. 5% is 3.85 which on pokerstars allows you to play 1.20 stt or mtt. or 3.30 turbo's. you play 5.50 instead because you feel comfortable playing at that level.

Occasionally. Not to say it's 'right', though.

BRM is meant to discourage this type of thing. Regardless how comfortable or good you are at a certain level, if you play over your limits on a regular basis, you will get massive swings (or possibly lose your BR).

Since my 400nl blowup, I've stuck to the %5 percent rule, but I'm not sure that's even safe. I've read that for multitabling STTs, 50-100 buyins (ie %2-%1) is standard; I've also read that for MTTs, 100-200 is standard (ie %1-%.5).

agreed that at this level it can be dangerous to your BR. but is the 1.65 it takes to move up a level really that much?

Well realistically, all BRM comes down to is how much the money means to you.

Looking at both ends of the spectrum, if the $70 and change is just fun money to you, then you don't need any BRM rules. On the other hand, if it's all you can afford to have online for a long time, then yes, the $1.65 over the %5 really does matter. Especially if other players (who are more experienced than us) say that 50-100 buyins is the norm. In that case your $3.85 is already too big anyways.

I have the opposite problem: I am uncomfortable unless I am what most people would consider "over rolled" (I like to have 100+ buy ins personally).

well said! another factor i think that needs to be taken into consideration is the level of play at these low limits. i've played all of the levels up to 5.50 (which i've quite sure you have as well) and i've found that the only difference is the level of seriousness at which the game is taken, but not skill level so much.

i would love to have that luxury. i am working on it. it's take an extrordinary amount of patience to get there from virtually nothing. which is obviously why people stray away from proper BRM.

I stick to the 5% SNG / 2% MTT rule down to the last dollar. I used to "take shots" but not anymore.
This can be a lesson in discipline, and it keeps your bankroll safe.

Why would you say this? If you always move down a level once you'd be past 5% there's virtually no chance of going broke.
At 5% you only have 20 buy-ins, but that doesn't mean you can play 20 times at this level. Once you have only 19 buy-ins left you must move down.

Factoring in multitabling and variance and the %5 isn't safe enough for me. I was on a downswing with a ~$900 bankroll at the $16s while four-tabling and the swings would tear my bankroll a new asshole every day.

I think %5 is enough, but the smaller the % the better. If you don't change your game by being overrolled (ie don't undervalue every buyin), then playing with <%1 is just plain safer.

IMO bankroll management is what makes long term winning players. Stick to it, and you cant go wrong.

Completely agree. It's at least a huge, hugggee factor.

Right, but even if you're playing with 0.00001% of your BR, you're still gonna lose if you consistently call 3 all-ins with hands like KJ (and boy are there plenty of those, just tripled up at a cash table with AA vs. KK and KJ, bet, raise, raise, raise, raise all-in, call [this was KJ], call [me, happily rejoicing]).

In fact, I would go as far as saying that after joining CC, the thing that improved my online poker experience the most was learning proper BR management.

I understand what you're saying here, but I disagree just a bit. My entire online bank roll (indeed, my bank roll period) is what most people would call "fun money." When I decided to start playing poker, I used the money I would usually spend on other entertainment (movies, eating out, new clothes) to fund my original bank roll. I have managed to build it up quite a ways, but I still adhere to strict brm rules. I want to be a profitable poker player, not just a poker player who can afford to donk off a pile of money. The only way I can continue to show a profit (the only measure of success that matters to me) is to abide by those rules.

Couldnt agree more. It wasnt until I started reading cardschat that I realised what BR management was, and just how important it was. In my humble opinion it is the single biggest factor that has helped me win more, avoid tilt and stay sane in the process.

I ocassinally play a game that is just out of my bankroll ($5+50) but i think this helps me even if i loose it is a wake up call for me to play better and i seem to do a lot better at the games i normally play for at least a week later. Not a tactic i would recommend to everyone but works for me.

Also i played a Knockout the other day and that also seemed to get me out of my rut of lossing, I guess if your lossing your normal game try a different to get your mind of it before going back it works for me.

i try hard to conform to my BRM but sometimes i do find myself over it because i am coformfortable at some higher levels, it is a risk i guess and could hurt u quick, but i think keeping control of yourself can back it up, like u have ur $70 and u play in the $5 and lose...u took that stab at it and lost so now back to doing it right, instead of trying to play again and again to get it back...thats how i do it. another thing i do if i want to play in a higher limit game is i will go play a cash game to win enough for a buy-in and i treat it like a satellite, basically go sit in a cash game until i have a profit that covers the buy-in.

my br only allows me to play $1+.20 sng at pokerstars. Once in a while i'll play the $5+.50 sngs. I do well in those, winning a couple and placing in the money in others. its tempting to want and try to double and triple up your br, but i'll learned my lesson and tried to jump up to $10+1. that was dumb. Now i just stick to my $1+.20. I know it will take a while to build my br, but i am determined to stay disciplined.

Please move your br to a site like Ultimatebet instead (where they have $0.50 + $0.05 sngs). You must realize that a 20% rake at the one dollar level is probably unbeatable long term. You can move back when you can afford the $5 games if you like FT better (rake is 0.50 = 10%), but please, please, please get out of the 20% rake games if at all possible as soon as you can.

Also, consider e-mailing FT and telling them that you don't appreciate them raping their low limit players, and point out that you have options (like Ultimatebet), and will not accept a 20% rake at any level.

Yes, it is that much!

The relationship between risk of ruin and % of BR is extremely non-linear. For example, let's assume that the 5% rule is "safe", i.e. that it is very unlikely to lose your BR due to a bad run. If you started playing using 25% of BR, you are almost certain to go broke, not just 5 times more likely.

The flip side of this is what AG is saying. If you play "too safe", you are not getting enough profit. Say that you use 1/10% rule. The reduction of risk is not worth it. Say that, just for the sake of an example, the 5% rule leads to 1% chance to go broke per year. If going down to 1/10% decreases your risk to 0.001%, it may not be worth it.

Basically, the expected win is rougly proportional to the buy-in, but risk raises VERY QUICKLY above the "safe" levels, and decreases very quickly well below that.

So playing above your BR limits is NEVER a good idea. If 20% rake is a barrier, play at another site.

Poker World(and other skins) have SNGs as low as 10c with 10% rake (but very low volume during the day).

P.S. I am currently in the process of setting up calculations for OPTIMAL STT bankroll given a player's actual performance. So instead of using a rough rule like 5%, one would be able to calculate the exact risk given that player's performance. The performance is the distribution of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th+ places.

There is no formula possible, not even a spreadsheet can do that. So I would have to compute this in each case. If anyone is interested to obtain their optimal STT bankroll, then let me know and I will tell you what data I would need. Obviously, I would keep any such information in confidence.

BRM is only relevant for winning players.

If a player is losing, the required BR is infinity. In that case, it is not a BR management issue, but a budgeting issue.

This sounds very interesting, can you please tell me what data you need? I'll PM it to you.

Chris, I need a space separated table with the following columns:

Turbo: (either 'y' for yes or 'n' for no)
Buy-In:
# of players:
result:

For example:

Turbo Buy-In #players result
y 1 10 2
y 1 10 1
y 1 10 10
y 1 10 3
y 1 10 6
y 1 10 9
n 1 9 3
n 1 9 3
n 1 9 5
n 1 9 2
n 2 10 1
n 2 10 4
n 2 10 3
n 2 10 6
y 1 6 4
y 1 6 6
y 1 6 1
y 1 6 2
y 1 6 5

The turbo and buy-in are needed to group together games of the same type. If all your data is the same type (say $5 regular), you can omit the first 2 columns.

# of players is need for grouping and to calculate the prizes.

I will assume standard payout structures. If the payout structure is non-standard for some of the entries, indicate what it is.

Oh wow, I think this is beyond me.
My PokerOffice database is MySQL, so I'm sure there's a way to read out the data and format it the way you need it but I don't think I can pull this off.

I'll ask on the PokerOffice forums, maybe someone can help me.

I only like to use a small portion of my bankroll. I very seldom go higher than 5 percent of my total bankroll. If i do, Its because i feel very focused and feel like gambling.

Don't worry about the format. I can reformat if needed.

Also, the reason I need this table is to determnine the percentage of time you are finishing in 1st, 2nd, and so on places. If PokerOffice can display these percentages, then you would not have to extract the table.

However, it is CRITICAL that you use data from the same type of game (buy-in, turbo or not, # players).

If you can display this statistic with PokerOffice, you could then send me something like that:

Game type: $5 buy-in, turbo, 9 players
Number of tournaments played: 45 (needed for statistical significance calculation)

result percentage
1 10
2 15
3 20
4 10
5 10
6 10
7 10
8 10
9 5

The sum of all percentages must add up to 100% (since you finished in some place with certainty)

You have to provide one table like that for each different type of STT game.

Someone on the PokerOffice forums helped me and I've figured out how to read out the MySQL database.
I'll send you the text file in a PM!

Here is an interesting BR article that advocates a lot more than the traditional 30x the buy-in.

Another one here:

Bankroll Requirements - WillisNYC

Early on in my poker career I lost my initial bankroll by not realizing the proper bankroll requirements for playing limit poker.

A normal string of losses at 5/10 limit poker quickly depleted my $3600 bankroll that I had built over the months preceding that one month run.
I started reading about bankroll requirements and started following the advice I found on them fanatically. Conservatively would be the way most people would term how I follow those bankroll requirements.

Mark Blade wrote an excellent book called Professional Poker in which he devotes two chapters to money and bankroll management for professional poker players. The gist of those chapters that I summarize below is for someone playing out of a given bankroll size for a living. Thus they do not apply to someone who is not playing for a living and can thus 'reload' his bankroll from other sources of income.

Additionally, this figure assumes that the professional NEVER takes any money out of his bankroll which is unrealisitc. If you assume that a professional will take out all earnings above 300 big bets every month as profit....then every month he has a 3% chance of going broke and guess what? Within a relatively short period of time, this player absolutely will go broke! (Almost 1/2 of the time he will be broke within 3 years in this example!) If you are going to take a set amount of expense s every month, I recommend that your initial roll be the amount determined below PLUS your monthly set amount. Then, I also recommend that you leave any excess earnings above your set expenses in the bankroll at least until you have 12 months worth of expenses in your bankroll so that you can play very comfortably with no or miniscule chance of going broke and so that you can move up in level to make more money. After all aren't you reading this because you want to do this for a living? I like the idea of a job where I set my hours AND don't have to worry about going broke if I am reasonably conservative. My conservative bankroll requirements allow me to do that.

For limit poker players he recommends 300 big bets as a standard to ensure that a 1 big bet/hr earning poker player will have a less than 3% chance of going broke with a standard expectation or likelihood of going broke due to 'bad luck'. Given this standard a $5/10 limit player would need $3000 or 300 times the big bet of $10 to have a 95% certainty of not going broke. However, a key assumption in this sentence above is '1 big bet/hr earning poker player'. Many poker players only earn 1/2 bb/hr or 1/4. If you only earn 1/2 big bet/hr, then you need to double your bankroll to $6,000 to have the same expectation (97%) of not going broke. If you only earn 1/4 then you need 4x more than the 1bb/hr earning player or $12,000.

Another thing to consider is your style of play. A VERY conservative player might be able to get by with $2000 in $5/10 if he is a 1bb/hr winning player. On the other hand a very aggressive, loose player will have much bigger bankroll swings and need $10,000 in his bankroll to have the same chance (3%) of not going broke.

Next is no limit poker which few people have dealt with in great detail about bankroll management. Mark Blade recommends 800 big blinds for no limit players and I have to heartily disagree with him here. 800 big blinds in 1/2 NL would be $1600 which is FAR too little to ensure that you have a 3% chance of going broke.

A VERY good, expert no limit player that is earning 10bb/hr (big blinds in NL not big bets since there are none.) can expect swings easily in excess of 800 big blinds. I think in terms of max buy ins which is 100bb for most online NL games. For no limit I would recommend at least 20 buy ins if you are a conservative player making 8-10bb/hr. This means that $4000 would be a sufficient bankroll to ensure that an expert NL player that is making 8-10bb/hr will have less than a 3% chance of going broke.

A typical loose aggressive player playing short handed NL can expect much bigger swings and I can attest from personal experience that daily swings as high as $3000 are possible! (I was also five tabling, but it gives you an idea why I recommend 20 buy ins.) I would recommend $8000 for a typical LAG playing 1/2 NL that makes 8-10bb/hr playing 1/2 NL. Just as in limit, if you are making 1/2 as much in terms of bb/hr playing NL, then you need to double your bankroll requirements.

Regarding MTTs, Blade parrots Sklansky and recommends 55 buy ins to have a 95% chance of never going broke. That is if you are 150% ROI winning MTT player! Having well over 1500 MTTs in my personal database, I can attest that it is not unusual for someone who makes 100% ROI and final tables 13% of the time in 200 player size MTTs (that would be me) to have runs of 30 tournaments without a CASH, let alone a final table/real money appearance. 55 buy ins sounds like a reasonable number to me if you have the kind of results that I mention above.

Of course if your results are half as good then you will need to double your bankroll size to 110 buy ins. The 50 buy ins that I have seen recommended for SNGs is a fairly reasonable number IF you are able to show at least an in the money (ITM) percentage of 40%. You have to achieve a 36.5% ITM if you have an average (2nd Place) finish expectation just to break even in order to cover the rake in a 10 man SNG.
Less than that and I would suggest at least doubling your bankroll requirements or finding a different bankroll building game since you may not be a winning player unless you have a disproportionate number of first place finishes! A conservative approach to ensure a very low chance of going broke (3% or less) would suggest not moving up in SNG levels until achieving 100 buy ins at the level you moving to!
Best of luck out there on the tables!

Never in a million years will I understand this reasoning. If one follows these rules AND MOVES DOWN once the losing begins, then the likelihood of going broke is significantly smaller than 3%.

Quick example: You have $1400 and play $1/$2 Limit, so you start out with 350 big bets in your bankroll. Now he makes the completely unrealistic assumption that you will keep playing this limit, no matter what happens, e.g. even if your bankroll falls below $400 (100 big bets).

If you move down to $0.50/$1 as soon as your bankroll drops to below $1200 (below 300 big bets), you'll suddenly have 600 big bets left which reduces the odds of going broke a whole lot.

In the unlikely case of you dropping even further (to below 300 big bets once again), you'd have to reduce the buy-in again. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about this and why everybody gets it wrong.

Chris, you are correct to be confused. There is a lot of hand-waiving in that article.

The relevant question to ask is: What is the probability that I lose say half my bankroll while playing at a certain level GIVEN that I will move up once I say double my bankroll.

When you lose half, you move down and keep the risk the same. Same thing if you double-up(or more, depending on levels) --- you move up and keep the risk the same at all times.

I will post a detailed article on this topic once I am done with my calculations.

i'm gonna start wearing a thick rubberband around my wrist, and everytime i am tempted to play over my bankroll i'm gonna give it a good snap. that'll teach me.