How do these players manage to go through the ranks with such bad BR management?

Hello, I was reading a couple of poker stories of pro players and how they started.

There are plenty with a story like this, duuur included but the two main ones I'm on about are "URnotindanger" and "jungleman"

This is a quote from URnotindanger:

"I started playing poker when I was 15 years old with friends from soccer. We played $10/$20 twenty-person tournaments where I won the first four. I played live $1/$2 cash games around 2-4 times a week until I was 18. I got $90 online from a friend and within the first month I moved up from $.25/$.50 to $2/$4. A year and half later, I was playing $100/$200."

Now, I'm quite a BR nit but I'm wondering if it's holding me back and maybe other players because of how important BR management is. Now looking at what he plays, this is HU and 6max. This gives him only 1.5 buy-ins with lets be honest a very high variance form of holdem. This seems quite difficult and next to impossible in FULL RING let alone 6max and HU. These guys every hand they got involved must of ran so hot and never folded and basically won every pot!

Obviously people will say this is a very aggressive approach to BR management, but there's aggressive and then there's just short term luck factors. I'm guessing he must of get extremely lucky not to bust his role as we all know that 1.5buy-ins is just basically like throwing your money down the drain many times over or is it because he knew he was so good and knew he wouldn't bust?

The same applies to JungleMan, he started with even less, $50.00 and played with one buy-in and now has managed to turn that into 5million. I just didn't think no matter HOW good you are that this was even possible even though it's proven it is! What is going on lol.

Do they just run super super good and hot and keep playing these limits till they build the roll to have that cushion then put real BR management into place?

Sauce1234 is another example and he openly admits he played with aggressive BR management but actually had a good roll to play and start at 50nl so realistically if you're a good played like he is then it's possible but he also stated he ran REALLY hot to build his roll. Yet his roll was like a decent amount of buy-ins, not just one! He started with $500.00 and busted it, then loaned another $500 and "hasn't looked back since" as they say.

I'd like some input on this. Back then the games were probably a lot softer than they are nowadays and I wonder if these pros could do the same with the same sort of BR management they HAD in place when they started or if they would bust over and over playing with 1-2 buy-ins these days because I never played years ago so I don't really know how soft these games were but everyone says they was extremely soft back then. All it takes is one stack off which must occur often enough for you to bust your roll and not be able to reload, how do you think they encountered this problem?

I can only think they played short stacked(even short stacked you aren't getting more than 4 buy-ins?) or didn't get themselves into positions where they had to get it all-in.. I mean there MUST of been a time where they got it all-in pre flop or even all-in at some stage during a hand and got sucked, surely? Clearly not though or this would indeed BUST them. How on earth is this possible..I don't understand it. It's like a really good pro (phil Ivey) sitting with one buy-in at a table of 50cents and building his roll up buy-in after buy-in...why aren;t these people losing a buy-in here and there? Are they THAT good or something? They must never ever of taken a bad beat, like ever when deep in a hand, yet it's quite common on a daily basis to lose your favourite hand over and over as we are all aware.

All these players are now playing the highest stakes available online and it makes you wonder if many other players just as good who aren't playing these stacks did have the same approach and just busted their roll and never deposited again and basically these two examples are the very few who actually ran sooo hot they just couldn't lose a hand for x amount of time?

Is it like a lottery in some sense?

Say you have 10million players on the exact same level of skill as jungleman and URnotindanger and they all started with one buy-in. Could you only indeed expect maybe like 2 or 3 actually turning that $50 into millions of dollars even though they are the same skill level or could you expect all 10 million of these players to turn it into millions?

Variance, run good, whatever you want to call it, certainly plays a part. In his book "Treat your Poker like a Business" Dusty Schmidt talks directly about how he had a 1000 dollars on line that was all that stood between hiim and basically the street. If he hadn't run pretty good at the start of his career, there likely would not have been a career at all.

On the other hand, you have to have the skill, courage, discipline etc to fully exploit the game even when you do run good. Its like any other walk of life, we all get our share of good and bad fortune. Its how we respond to it that matters.

Stu Ungar was a prodigy who won millions. He died broke in a flophouse. Doyle Brunson, faced an injury that ended a potential pro sports career, a battle with cancer, and for years the lack of respectabiliy and legal status of his chosen career. He came out of it with a family, a huge net worth and the respect and admiration of millions of players everywhere.

Yep, this is why almost all degens have gone broke a couple of times during their carrier.

These guys are players not managers. What they do should not even be called brm.

So many of the old school guys started out by taking entire br to biggest games they could find and beating them.

New players or younger players can do this b/c they believe they will win again even if they loose one time. They have the indestructible ego. It's a separation from bank roll management. Few survive. I used to do this, win 200 at 50nl. Take it to 200nl, win, take it to 500nl lose, deposit...loop it. Then I turned 30 and decided I was tired of depositing and turned to brm.

On the other hand a good friend of mine won a 5$ rebuy on what used to be called RoyalVegas Poker. He won about 5k and started playing 1000nl and never looked back, with in a couple months he was playing 5000nl and winning. He ended up clearing like 50k in 4 or 5 months. He got married, works a day job and doesn't even bleeping play anymore! Pisses me off! lol

What I'd like to see is the story of some more players who made it through with small bankrolls and bad management because I dont think it can be done.

If your 18-20 and living in your parents house, who needs to do BRM? Play whatever you have online at whatever stakes. Doesn't matter if you loose just get some more money in a few days/weeks and deposit again. Its not like they are living off their online winnings.

I think too much emphases is placed on BRM by people who don't need to, and conversely people who should be doing BRM don't.

Started at 25nl on FTP with $200. Ran good at 1st. Still only playing 100nl though.

Rare Guilty Pleasure: (once per 3 months?)
I drunk deposit $50 on top of my original roll, play 50NL, run good to $100, play 100NL, get to $200 and withdraw or go busto (only on the $50 though). When i'm drunk i really don't care and like the gamble, and can afford to reload another $50 whenever I want. Try to stick to reasonable BRM usually though when I'm playing SNG's but take shots with MTT's with slight success.

The one thing that I will do that kinda cheats on BRM is that I set a goal.

Lets say I have $400 dollars in my Account. I will set a goal to run it up to say $555. When I reach it I will reward myself in playing in a MTT thats a bit over my bankroll. Such as the $55 MTT buy in on stars. Win some money or lose back to $500 either way, Im going back to my BRM and my Sit n Gos

This got to be one of the stupidest advice ever IMO.
But I guess its a level.

A lot of the hot youngsters used terrible BRM to start. There is no way they would have risen so fast using it. Some still do, most likely. But when you are a kid, you don't worry about going busto so much perhaps. Easy come, easy go. Certainly, the money is more of an abstraction. Online poker, to the younguns, is more like a video game that they want to beat. Playing within BRM is slow, it's plodding, it requires patience and discipline -- and none of those things appeal to a lot of young players.

As for the points of the OP, I know that I have a huge problem moving up because I dislike risk. Still playing micros after 5 years. When I move up to, say, 50NL or 100NL, losing a buyin upsets me. This puts a definite cap on how well I can do overall. And the cap is on my own head. It's not really about my bankroll, it's me and my comfort zones. Dagnabbit.

For me, the money needs to be within certain limits for the game to be enjoyable. I work hard for my money in regular life and don't want to flush it down the toilet. I also have bills to pay. And my entertainment budget has to be kept within bounds. BRM lets me keep my bankroll, lets me keep playing for a lot longer. I like that.

I doubt there are all that many players with the skill level of the danger brothers or jungleman. One of the factors of skill is being risk-neutral, making the correct decisions consistently (whether or not that correct decision means they win that particular hand). Able to control tilt rigorously. Able to grind, grind, grind some more, hours on end, at multiple tables, while still keeping up a good ROI. That's all on top of knowing all the basic stuff -- stats, pot odds, player reading, position, etc., etc. It's a lot to have in one package. And probably roughly equivalent percentage wise to the number of basketball players who have the height, the endurance, the various skills and the grace to make it as a pro; a lot of people play and play with great skill and enjoy the game but few are at the top. Unlike a sport like basketball, there are not a finite number of pro spots -- but there are a finite number of people who have the whole package.

The real question is:
Can anyone win money and move up in poker if he doesn't run good for a very long time with no major downswings at first?what if the poor bastard keeps running bad no matter how good he plays?he'll have to pay a whole friggin lot to outlast variance and may end-up being fed up when he could've become quite the player...

for every guy that makes it with no BRM there are maybe 3000 people going broke with same strategy (if not more, who know really), some of them might actually have better poker skills then the ones who made it all the way up, but had worse luck when they needed it.

I have a friend whose son, at the tender age of 18, was living at home, and worked a part time job. He had zero responsibilities and could play at will. In his first year and a half playing, he Managed to lose about $8500. He is now 22 years old, and last year he "won" over $1MIL. His net was a little over 300K.

Watching him play I see someone who puts together the neccessary skills and the "I Don't Care" attitude. He was on the bubble in the WSOP ME day three and only needed make it for a couple more hours to be ITM. Sitting with a little below average chip stack. He shipped it with pocket 8's against the big stack at his table and lost. I asked him why and he said," he wanted to either be in the top 10% or out" I would have just wanted to be in the money.

This is how these "pros" get to where they are. They have different priorities than many of us. Where as I don't want to lose my buy - in, he only wants to win the tourney.

I guess the answer is if you can and are willing to outlast the inevitable downswings, You can accomplish making it big.

^ this. If enough people do it it's bound to pay off for at least a few of them.

Personally I think these kind of stories are great: the more people we have doing dumb things with their money the better it is for the poker economy.

How true!

Interesting you bring up Doyle. I read some of his book and in it, it states when he, slim and the other guy (forgot his name) started out they got their bankroll really started from a $50k win at Keno. Doyle managed his money while the others spent it on women and booze, so he became the bank and wound up with 50% of what they won.

My own story is one of build it up, the play way to high cash stakes, lose it all, rinse repeat. I have finally gotten it together and am making almost $1k per month over the last three, just playing $11, 45man SNGs and the odd MTT. No more cash games, I stink at them.

If you are a solid, winning player, follow proper BRM rules, you can make whatever amount of money you want in this game.

I think one thing missing in this thread is that while there are probably many hotshot young players that maybe threw BRM out the window at first and managed to get ahead quickly, there are also many players that took the long slow grind and have ended up at the same place.

Something tells me Randy Lew never had more than 5% of his bankroll at any single table ever in his online career. He is now closing in on over $2 million in online gains over the past 3 years and is playing in almost all the big MTTs now.

I for one continue to grind and have never really taken a shot outside of my bankroll. I've won satellites into large buyin tournaments but even then I won in using points and not even money from my pocket. I really want to take a shot just to see if I could do it...

If you want to be playing at an extremely high stake you have to take risk eventually. Almost all nosebleeders have gone through it, you can simply just move up everytime you have 100BI

just bink a bbj and dont worry about brm

Run like god much?

Haha, the monoxide BBJ BRM strategy. Hope I luckbox one of them someday

Hello friends....

Here are some of the key rules to make sure that you keep your bankroll intact:

• Avoid sitting in a cash game or a Sit & Go where the buy in will cost you more than 5 percent of your total bankroll.

But there is an exception to this for lower limit games....

• In the case of MTT (Multi Table Tournaments) make sure that you are not tempted to make a buy in which will cost you more than 2 percent of your total bankroll.

There are many more rules to manage your bankroll.....

How you manage your bankroll at table??????

Thanks for that

lol .. the first paragraph wasn't advice, it was my opinion on how they do it.

In the second, I'm saying people people who should be doing BRM are not paying attention to it. How is that bad advice?

I have people I work with who's retirement strategy is winning the lottery. They buy $10-$20 worth every week.

Just think how much money they would have if they banked $10/week for 20 years!

I'm all about bankroll management but then again there comes a time and place for everything. These guy's perception at the time was probably along the lines of "I have $50 to play with I'm not going to start grinding .01/.02, this is boring ect ect...." So why not play what you can buy max into, or short into and have a chance to double it up in one shot. Poker is like any business and with risk comes reward. Sometimes you have to put both feet in the water and hope you float instead of sink.

I think you're getting confused. They obv didn't just move up with one buy-in every time they doubled up. You say jungleman had $50 and played 50nl, he probs won a few buy-ins at 50nl, then moved up with a bigger roll than $100 to 100nl.

They probably used aggressive BRM, say 10 buy-ins and moving up, and they definitely had to run hot but they're obviously really good too.

I guess you have some personal experience of something like this, but I think it can be very dangerous advice.

I just picture myself an 18-year-old who starts taking risks with money he dont have, and ends up broke and in dept.

Sorry for not being clear. OP asked how they do it and I answered with a way it could be done. I do not advocate that way of BRM, nor do I have direct experience with it.

That's what I meant. Did they just take a shot to start with and double up a numerous times and just keep playing the same limits so they had proper BRM in place and then go from there gradually moving up the limits as they built a roll.

Obv the best players put all of their roll on 1 table, double up and move up with the min buy in for the next level and repeat until pro

What appears to be poor BRM may not be depending on one's definition of bankroll. As a simple example, if I only play on one site and have $11 there, is it okay to play an $11 tournament? At first glance, no way. But let's modify the situation so that in my pocket, I have $500 I've set aside for poker.

If I define BR as the amount I have on the site, playing the entire $11 at once is clearly poor BRM. However, if I define BR as all the money I have allocated for poker, no matter where it happens to be, then NP since I have ample buyins to play $an 11.

Well that is true to a degree however, I can't see how anyone can call it bankroll management when there is no management in it at all by having 1 buy-in.

As for saying having a set amount aside for poker than having in your one poker account is different. I mean, I could have $1000 in an ewallet and only $10.00 in various poker accounts and I wouldn't call it bad bankroll management if I played a $10.00 tournament because my bankroll for poker would be $1k.

Like I said in my OP they stated and you can actually see it yourself and we will use Jungleman as an example he only had $50.00 to play poker with on one site at the time and decided to play heads up poker 50nl..