Syfted's Bankroll Strategy for Recreational Players

What we're basically doing is making sure we have enough money to play poker every week. Let's assume we only play one session every week. How do you determine when to stop that session?

Good players will respond that it doesn't matter when to quit the session, because all the poker we play basically functions as one long session. So long as you can play your best game, they're correct, there is no reason to stop playing. But after you spew off $2000, maybe by playing poorly, maybe via bad beats, whatever- you aren't going to be playing your best. In fact, those losses might distort your own judgment enough to make you a -EV player.

So what do we do? We set a stop-loss. When we hit our stop-loss we stop playing poker for the day. We get up and walk away. Live, this is EASY to do, because you just bring less cash with you- say, only two or three buy ins. Online... you just keep buying in and buying in and playing games. If you tilt hard on the internet you can wipe out your entire bankroll, simply because you can continually rebuy without having to pull money out of your wallet.

Let's say we set our stop-loss at two buy ins, or $2000. After we spend $2k on a session, we're done for the day. If we decide we're going to play poker twice per week, with a stop loss of $2k per session, our WEEKLY stop-loss is $4k.

The whole purpose of my equation is to help us determine where that $4k should come from. How much comes out of the money we saved up to play with, and how much comes out of the money we made this week at our job?