Bankroll Management (Long)

I'm a bit busy in tourneys but as soon as im done i will read, looks like good material tbh

I think most winning regulars are nits with their bankrolls. 20 buy-ins is sorta considered the minimum, but most solid players I know have far more than that for the limit they play at.

just got done reading while i was waiting for my hu match, yea brm is great for beginners but I'm personally not very strict on mine, I usually like to play with 50% of my profit a lot so lets say i win like 200$ i willl play something little out of my roll because i made profit and try to risk minimum of it possible.

Disagree entirely, it's basically the opposite imo. As a beginner only playing small limits, BRM isn't that important, but only because what's online isn't your true bankroll. If you deposit $5 online, you probably have several more times you could deposit $5 and feel comfortable. Not so when your bankroll gets up to a few thousand dollars.

Also note that taking shots (sort of what you're talking about) and consistently playing a level for long-term winnings are completely different as well. Shots are usually marginally -ev but can result in a big win. In general, the majority of your play should be within BRM and playing for long-term results.

Ok I think I worded it wrong, what I meant is I follow brm and let's say if I win like 300$ and there is a 75$ omaha h/l tourney that I want to play, I will take a shot and play it. A) because even if I lose the tourney I'm happy with my profit for the day. B) If I do good in the tourney I will have a bigger profit for the day so I'm happy either way. Like you said I take occasional shots at bigger tourneys and I also like to play satelites to the bigger tourneys to save my $.
And I also agree on the long-term results thing, because mainly I'm a mid-stakes player, this is the level I constantly play, I know I'm not a high stakes level player but like mentioned before I take shots to tourneys through sattys.

Nice article Jagsti

I have never really been good at BRM and constantly play outside my roll. With my recent huge downswing, u'd think I might change and I thought I did for awhile, but I just don't have the patience to grind up to 50 BIs at the next level b4 I move up. Im currently 10-12 tabling 25NL with a 500 dollar BR (and i started with 325). I have been playing 25NL for so long that I couldn't stand playing at 10NL and basically just played 4k hands there to get a grip on FR which I haven't played in awhile.

I always think to myself that I should be practicing good BRM, but I never do. I told myself now that I wont move up to 50NL til I have $1500, but I know in the back of my mind I'll be itching to move up as soon as I hit the $1000 mark. I wish I could be as disciplined as some of you

BW - fwiw I was playing 50nl with $1k BR, I just wasn't playing 20 tables. I was more like 8-10 tabling. Now I'm upto 100nl,, and like you experienced some vicious variance, then for me, and my mind set I like the comfort zone of 40-50 buy ins. Like I say it's a personal thing, I'm just trying to get ppl to think about managing there BR better.

I'm in this camp. After going on a like 20 buy-in downswing at 2$ NL, I highly approve of having a giant roll for your limit. Especially if you're playing 6-max, or a style of poker that leads to more variance.

I'm currently playing 10$ NL with ~60 buyins.

OK, well SD can be calculated manually, but I'd rather scratch my eyes out with a fork. So thankfully, PT2 and HEM does this for us. If your using the above formula, the as long as you use the same units for SD and winrate, then it doesn't matter you can just substitute them in.

So for example if you use your winrate of $/hr for a given level, then as long as you use the SD in $/hr as well, then your result will be expressed in dollars.

does pt3 do this too? i couldn't find where the sd was.

CP - I don't think SD has been added yet to PT3, but by all acounts it will be soon.

sick stuff, can't believe I missed this. Gonna read up on it tonight, brb.

In HEM, what units is "std dev bb" in? I would expect something like bb/100 hands or bb/something. It's not standard deviation of bb/entire sample is it? Because if it is something's pretty wrong, one more buy-in up or down would put me out 34% (think that's what it is, +-1 std dev encompasses 68% I believe). And this is after 50k hands. Note that as sample size goes up, standard deviation should also go up, but at a square root relationship, so that standard deviation should double every time # of hands is multiplied by 4.

So yeah, do you know what units "std dev bb" is in?

As afairly new player, this article helped me more than most others regarding BRM, as it was put in simpler terms. Thanks!!

Zach, as far as I'm aware in HEM, SD can be added in the reports section as either bb/100 or BB/100 hands.

Great Post. I agree with the 50 buy-ins although once in awhile i will play a bigger buy-in just to test the waters.

Here are my options:

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OK, maybe I just imagined this, but I thought it was /100 hands. I have read somewhere that SD can be approximated as 10x your winrate. So when I have done this with mine it seems to be apprx 10x my winrate. I must of come to the conclusion then that if my winrate is /100 then the SD is in the same units, which would seem appropriate for comparing like for like units.

I swear, one of the main reasons why I play better in tournaments than in cash games, is because in cash game my mind see chips as "dollars", and in tourneys my mind sees them as "betting units".

I play way too straight forward & tight in cash games, and if I get sucked out on, I freak.

In tourneys, big moves or suckouts don't bother me at all - I just sign up for the next SNG.

For some reason, I'm just mortified to drop another $100 level in my bankroll because I am so proud of having worked it up over the past 4 months from where it was. (I sit at $1400 from a $50 buy in in October after the 3rd - $50 buy-in try).

If I drop below, $1,300, it really bothers me. I like the steady progress upwards & hate swings. If I drop below $1,300, I find myself dropping to really small games I know I can win, to get up over that $1,300, then go back to my standard games (SNG & MTT). And I only play cash games if I am happy with my bankroll. +ROI is so important to me. I think its all in my head.

Any advice?

Not sure where you got your formula (maybe a 'limit' poker reference? although 300BB/600bb is usually the standard given mathmatically), but I can guarantee that your risk of ruin having only 11 buy-ins is WAY higher than 2%...

Also, note that multi-tabling should allow you to "see the long run" faster, thus reducing variance overall.

I'll add the links here and here.

This is false. 12-tabling for one hour is equivalent to 1-tabling for 12 hours. Also note that as you play more the variance actually goes up. It's just that the mean winnings goes up faster thus RoR goes down.

Of course 12:1 = 1:12 (excepting for the reduced win rate multi-tabling), so ok, perhaps I miss-phrased it:

but, you DO "see the long run faster" playing more tables, and thus an individual given bad beat will be more immediately offset by the overall volume (what I meant by "reducing variance").

Yes mentally. I think we both agree, just trying to say that in terms of bankroll needed and RoR, multi-tabling does not decrease RoR or BR needed. Nor does it increase it, as many seem to believe.

I have a good story about bankroll management well I am glad to say I went from $0 to $200 dollars from bankroll management. Well my guidelines were to play head up only in tables who has only one person. I knew that if i were to play against one person it would give me a greater chance of building my bankroll. I first went into a table with a guy that had $10. He thought he could push me around by going all in. Boy was he surprized when I double up from him two times. I trapped him with trip K's one hand vs two pair. The second time it was full house vs nothing. After that table i had 13 dollars in total. Then that was when the fun began. although I didn't have strict guidelines like Chris Jesus Ferguson I played tight. My rules were if i won 1 dollar or more on a table i take the money and move to another table i kept doing this until i got to 37 dollars. Then i sufered my first major loss i lost 21 dollars on one hand my full house was beaten by a bigger full house. I had a new rule that I had which made me reckless but i was successfull at the same time. I kept using the mind set of me not caring of going bankrupt. I never thought twice about something. Me not caring about losing my money help me to where i am now.

AG This formula has been widely used amongst poker info sites, however, your correct that this is to be used for LHE. My mistake is transposing NL figs for it, I apologise for that. Surprised it wasn't picked up earlier .

As I said earlier these figures that are bandied around are for guidance only, and to be comfortable with a BRM strategy, you really have to work it our for yourself. For e.g. I'm sort of a conservative person, I like to have a big safety net. I don't handle variance that well and my roll means a lot to me. I therefore have a 40-50 buy in BR. I progress up the limits at a slower rate because of this (and b/c my winrate is not as great as some other players). ChrisTC, afaik, has a more aggressive BRM as has been anecdoted in his 'Lets build a BR' thread. He was playing with 5-10 buy ins strategy, hence he has way more variance, moves up limit a lot quicker (and down ), but it what's he used to and happy with.

So for LHE the above formula stands:

eg you playing $1/$2 lhe and your winrate is 2PTBB/100, you accept a RoR of 5%, and you have a SD of 20BB/100.

Bankroll = -(SD^2/2*winrate)*ln(RoR)

BR = -(20^2/(2*2)*ln(0.05)

BR = -100 * -2.996

BR = 299.6 BB's

Again just a guideline, as it depends on RoR and SD.

There are other formulas that use Kelly Fractions to calculate appropriate buy ins again based on aversion to risk, that can be used for NL and SnG's etc, but it needs a decent understanding of Kelly Criterion, which confuses the hell out of me. I suggest you use Google to explore these options.

Another caveat. It can be counter productive to have an overly conservative BR. Yes that's seems a paradox, but thinking about it, it does make sense. Lets say your winning at 100nl cash game for a winrate of 4PTBB/100 over 50k hand sample. And you have say a 75-100 buy in BRM. One could assume that at that winrate, then you could easily be making a profit at 200nl, but your restricted by making the move b/c of your BRM. Again just something else to think of.

Anyways sorry for the confusion and thx to AG for pointing it out.

'Not caring' about loosing money?? Of COURSE I care if I loose money! What I DO do tho, is never deposit MORE than I can AFFORD to loose! I think you can TELL yourself 'I don't care if I loose my money', but BELEIVING it are 2 different things!

Kelly Criterion essentially states that you should bet the % of you bankroll equal to the % of your edge on a given gamble.

So for instance, if you have a 50% edge (say are getting 2:1 on your money on a fair coin flip), and you have $100 you should bet $50 on the first flip-- if you win you now have $200 and should bet $100 on the second bet. If you lose you now have $50 and should bet $25 on the second bet. Etc., etc. "Theoretically" you can never go broke, as you bet is always a % of you bankroll (you would only bet 100% of your roll on a 100% sure proposition).

Professional blackjack card counters use Kelly to manage their bankrolls in terms of their bet spread (often they will use something like "half Kelly" or even "quarter Kelly" for more conservative brm). It's pretty simple to calculate mathematically exactly what their edge is against the house given the current count, but the same calculation of your "edge" in poker isn't that easy of course .

Note the Kelly Criterion is the fastest way to build wealth/BR in relation to Risk of Ruin. For a super awesome read on Kelly Criterion (and other sweet math, like statistical arbitrage, related to gambling/investing), one that I can't recommend enough, get Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone.


^^an excellent point, and one I'm sure i suffer from. I like 100x buy-in myself .

thanks a lot talk about some great detail.

that really helps me with my bankroll problems
thanks

Thanks AG

my question about bankroll management is i play casino games (slots) and i seem to be lucky enough but i win and lose there whats the max % of your bankroll u should use in a casino version of online poker?

I palyed in a number of tables and a few tourneys and I can tell that my experience is very similar as those described above. Take today for instance. Got rivered three times, lost two with full houses, one with the other player needing tboth the turn and river to catch up. Brutal! Hard to think any management stratagey would help today.