Bankroll Mentality

Hey all, I've just recently made my first deposit at Bodog. I am playing at the lowest stakes they have which is .02/.05 so I can get a feel for things, and I read in another thread that it is never a good idea to start something in the middle, which I think is pretty sound advice. Anyway 5.00 is the max allowed to sit and while playing I have been looking at things as though I am working to preserve that 5.00 and whatever else I have in my account is for other tables, so if I have 50.00 in my account I have 10 chances to make something of that 5.00. If I lose that 5.00 than I generally leave the table and reflect and relax. This has caused me to fold on hands that have potential but I am hesitant to call or make the raise as I am already down 2.00 of the 5.00. After reflecting on my games today it occurred to me that maybe I am looking at this all wrong, instead of trying to simply survive and preserve my 5.00 I should be playing as though there is 50.00 there. I suppose this would make me a bit looser (not sure if that is a word) but it would give me a bit more room to play the game, and I suppose make me a bit less predictable also. There have been times that I feel certain that someone made the raise simply because they knew I wouldn't call, yet I was trying to preserve and build off just the 5.00 so like they thought I folded.

I hope all that makes sense. I am not sure which is a better way of looking at it, and I suppose it might depend from person to person, but any thoughts you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Oh and how do you modify the stats in the upper right corner of your posts, such as the where you play at, where you live, and your game.

Cheers for your thought, and sorry for the long post.

Um, a few quick things:

1) Always have the maximum allowed buy-in, unless you think playing with a smaller stack will give you some sort of advantage or limit your leaks. So if you play a hand, and you lose $1, rebuy to the maximum ($5).

2) $50 isn't really a sufficient bankroll for the $5 tables. I'd at least like to see $100. Poker has a lot of variance, and you can easily lose 10 buy-ins while playing correctly.

3) Yes, if you have a small bankroll, you will play more guarded & conservatively. For some, that's not a bad thing (I myself included), but if its inhibiting your play, then you should probably increase the size of your bankroll.

You can modify the stats in the upper right in your user CP (under "edit profile").

Really? I would think $50 would be good for even 1/2...

Cheers for the info, unfortunately Bodog doesn't offer lower tables, so I suppose that leaves me at depositing a bit more cash.

I was looking at HEM today and there were a load of other programs on there like Leak Buster, Table Ninja, Table Scanner, SitNGo Wizard, and Hold'em Vision pro. I am not really sure what they all do, but are any of them worth getting. And are all these tools legal at the tables.

Oh BTW Dying Fetus, that line you have at the bottom there cracked me up.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about as far as bankroll if anything when putting together a bankroll you should in theory have at least 300bbs to supplement you.

micro stakes
.02/.04 - $12
.05/.10 - $30
.25/.50 - $150

so you should be sitting at the .5/.10 table for limit, and for NL you can do short stack strategy.

The amount you take to the table that is different for limit just depends on the limit itself, 25-35bbs should do the trick. You really don't need to buy in for the max.

also don't try so much to conserve your money at the table like look at this way. You took 10 bucks to the .5/.10 table and you caught a run of crap cards and blew some hands and lost 7 dollars...3 dollars should be your stopping point. At that point either rebuy and grind away or just call it a day. Overall at the lower limits...there will be times where you will lose more money than you intended and there will be days where you will do pretty dang good.

Wow, don't listen to this guy.

As C9 said, you should be keeping your stack at the table as close to the max buyin as possible.

OP, you need to search threads on Bank roll management, there are quite a few of them here on CC.

In a nut shell you at the bare minimum you should have 20 buyins for the limit you are playing. So again as C9 said for 5nl you should have $100. For 10nl $200, 25nl $500 ect.

When you are starting at the bottom, it's really hard to use BRM because you don't have a level to drop down too if you go on a downswing. So the more buyins you have for whatever limit you are playing, the better. A lot of online pros say you should have 100 buyins, but that is for a lot higher limits than you are playing now.

You should be looking for a bankroll strategy that works for your roll and the level of risk you're reasonably comfortable accepting. My opinions on small bankrolls differ from some other folks' so they work for me but aren't for everyone.

First off, your roll is all the money you've set aside for poker, not just the amount you actually have on sites. In my case, I usually have about half my roll spread across various sites, and the rest in my e-wallet. If you have money in your pocket or bank you're willing to use for poker, that should be counted as part of your roll too. So for example, if you budgeted $250 for poker and have only put the $50 on Bodog so far, your total roll is $250, not $50.

Third, don't simply choose your level of play based on how many buyins you have. Your ability to handle losing $X emotionally matters too. So as an artificial extreme example, if you're wealthy but would get upset losing more than $10, don't play where you can lose more than $10. Work your way up and desensitize yourself.

And fourth, good luck.

Your variance is a function of the size of the blinds and the size of your stack. Playing a short stack will cause you to experience a little bit less variance, but your roll still needs to be roughly the same size in big blinds.

Playing short is designed to punish players who raise & re-raise too lightly preflop. This really doesn't occur at 5NL, where most players limp a ton and rarely 3-bet light. Most of your advantage at a cash game comes from owning players who have no idea how to play 100bb's deep. So if you're not 100bb's deep yourself, you can't exploit them.

Thank you guys for in-depth analysis. I am new also to online poker and need more info like this.

I agree with the max buy in strategy.
You should check out Chris Ferguson's bankroll video on the full tilt academy website

wow looks like I have a load of reading to do, thank you all for your help!