Starting Bankroll and Losing It

Ok so most people know that starting out in poker you need a bankroll. General rule is to start with at least 20 buy ins. So at a live 1/3 game with a max buy in of 300 you would want to start out with a roll of 6000. Now the real question. Say you save that roll and start playing and lose it all that year.

DO YOU START OVER AND KEEP PLAYING OR DO YOU CALL IT QUITS FOREVER?


Me personally I been playing since I was 16 years old. I'm now 30. I always played for fun and always played better than my friends. I took it serious for a while and was making a living off of it, but then I had a son so I chose to go on to a more reliable source of income. I've always considered myself a above average player. I noticed that the game has gotten a lot tougher and was just wondering what everyone's thoughts where on my question above.

Also I do know that some big name pros have went broke more than once, but do any really grind it out all day or did they get ahead like they are because of a few HUGE tournament wins?

Ok guys I'm getting carried away with this topic. Thanks for reading and please respond. Thank you 😜

Probably better off keeping your real job with a guaranteed reliable income, health benefits etc and just play poker on the side for extra money. Playing poker full time can be very stressful when it is your sole source of income.

The answer is not as black or white as the question may expect.

A GOOD professional manages his Bankroll properly and if there is great reductions to his bankroll, he simply decreases the stakes he is playing instead of playing till the end the very last buy-in he had. So a good player should never go broke in the first place - not because he cant lose but because he is too disciplined in his bankroll management to not allow him to lose his very last cent.

Hey, the best piece of advice I ever heard is to focus in only one kind of game and with pratice and study you have to master it, begin with low stakes until your variance gets solid and reliable, with time you can increase the stakes also improving your game, the game that you should focus on is the one that you are the best, but the recommended, as I saw in another post and agree completely, is to play single tables SnG, MTT has too much variance and because of that it can really hurt your income if you are not prepared for the downswings, sadly they happen.

Good luck bro!

Good question,
I am an older poker player who like you played for fun. I recently became disabled from a work injury, so I am playing poker full time. I started over because the game is nothing like it used to be, even some micro stakes players are better than 1/2 live games used to be. Back to BR management. You must be able to move down in stakes and re-evaluate. You now have a family, that can change you into playing with scared money and that is never good. I do not have the answer except to say: Don't rely on your old skills, you must get better to play full time.

I too only play for fun since I have other responsibilities, so playing for bigger money would be to much of a risk.
You say you play live, so I don't think you can move down in limits since the smallest tables I see live are 1/2. So, if you want to move down in stakes, which I would suggest,IMHO, it would have to be online.
If live is all you play, then just have to set yourself a limit that you are willing or able to lose per session and stick with that. Remember, you stated you are playing for fun now, so have fun and manage your bankroll as best as possible. Don't sacrifice the rent, food, etc money...

Good luck.

well MTT grinders all live like that. dont they? you play 50 tourneys lose 49, win 1 for 1-2 place and th differnce is your proffit.
Pros (MTT pros) are the same the lose 15 WSOP main events and than hit High roller at Prague for 300K... or something like that
If you dont want to start over play BR properly, no need for nosebleeds at nl10 =)

I dont rely on poker. Its a passion though. I know how to play, and learning all the time. My problem is Bankroll managemnt. I cannot seem to control this. I can build a roll pretty fast, but then I want to play bigger stakes before I should HELP!!

When bankroll management is used properly you will never find yourself broke because as your roll starts to get smaller so do the buy ins. Also a bit more conservative 50+ buy ins for cash and 100+ buy ins for tournaments allows you to have bad sessions and still be able to play the next day.

Depends on your goals. I've blown up a few 'rolls myself. Yeah, you occasionally hear about that guy who went to 'Vegas, played some Poker, never went home and never looked back. It happens, and someone wins the lottery.

Most pros have gotten broke multiple times, and there have been occasions where I was scraping the bottom of my 'roll. You need to ask yourself why it happened, and give yourself an honest answer. Was it because you aren't as good as you'd like to believe? Was it due to bad habits? Was it variance?

*) Over estimation: We'd all like to believe we're the next Durrrr/Hanson/Negraneau/(Insert name of fav pro here) but you need to honestly assess your skills. Are you really as good as you think, or are you being outplayed by better players?

*) Bad habits: When you hear yourself tell yourself that you're going to pop on down to the casino to pick up a few hundred, that's Badthink. You're headed for a disaster.

Bad habits: mine were the Crap tables and the stock market. I got royally phucked in the "Dot Com Bust". I hear all the time about rigged RNG's (especially in regard to Poker Stars) but Wall St. is the crookedest casino in the entire world, bar none.

That meant staying away from the Crap pits, and investing in what I know best: cards, not stocks and options. As for quitting forever, that was never an option. It may be different with you, I don't know.

*) Do you get stubborn and refuse to step down? It's no disgrace to play smaller than you're used to to recoup after losing a few stacks because your opponents kept hitting one and two out miracles.

Cash game play and tournament play are two very different things. Some pros make it big with tournament winnings and throw it all away at cash games, and vice versa. Stick with what you do best most of the time. Mike Caro is one of the best cash game players, but is relatively unknown because he doesn't play that many high profile tournaments. Phil Helmuth has enough bracelets to cover both arms with plenty left over, but his cash game doesn't impress me in the slightest.

Find a game thats good try to x4-x20 your buy in.Will not be easy have to fold kk and even AA online can be very tricky.

So many people responding that you wouldn't have gone broke, if you had followed bankroll management, didn't read or understand the original post. They are ignoring the fact that when you are playing in the smallest game in the room, there is no moving down in stakes. A $1/$3 live game is almost certainly the smallest game there is. Obviously, 20+ buy-ins would be best, but when you drop below 20 buy-ins, there's no choice to move down. You just have to play with the bankroll you have left. If you are playing in a $5/$10 game and drop below 20 buy-ins, you have the choice to move down and rebuild at the lower stakes. This is the same thing I see people saying online. If you are playing in the lowest stakes games a room offers, your bankroll management is a different beast than anyone else. Your risk of ruin is going to remain higher.

To answer the original question. I wouldn't give up. If you play with a risk of ruin calculator, you'll find that 20 buy-in downswings happen, even to winning players. And, since you have no way to move down, such a downswing will ruin you. Just take some more money, as much as you can afford to comfortably invest, and start building it back up again. You don't need to wait until you have $6,000 because even that won't be a promise you won't lose it again. Set the 20 buy-in number as your minimum goal for moving up to the next stake. If the next game is $5/$10, when you have $20,000 set aside for poker, you can try that game. And, you drop down if you dip below that. I have made a more aggressive schedule than this, for my own experimentation, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Anyway, the 20 buy-in is for when you move up to the second lowest game in the room, and every game after that until you will desire even more buy-ins because the games are tough. The 20 buy-in rule is meaningless in the lowest game because you have no way to adjust your stakes downwards.

Just use your extra money to play poker. It's not smart to use the money for paying the bills and having food.

To depend only on the income of poker, without having a solid bank, it is not recommended, if it is not an entertainment that can leave you an extra profit, you would not be affected by the loss, but getting fully involved in poker in these conditions would be a madness. Distribute your time, select days, schedules and play, keep tabs while you do not work, until arm banking, meanwhile take care of your work. luck

I'll never tell someone to give up. What I will tell you is to work harder at it. Not at playing poker but at STUDYING poker. The best way to learn apart from buying some books (I can recommend "Harrington on Holdem" for a start) is to post your losing hands online for evaluation. Heck, post the winning hands too if you feel you're not quite sure about it. And not just here either. There are a number of sites where you'll find quite a few players who do this for a living and are more than willing to tell you where you messed up.

Other than that, watch training videos, study opening ranges, learn why a certain play is EV- in one position but EV+ in another position and so on and so forth. In other words, learn how to actually play winning poker instead of just throwing money at the problem. There's so much information to master and the game keeps evolving which means that the learning never stops. Oh, and I hope you like math because there's a lot of math involved.

Play poker as a way of fun and earn a little diner or more not depend on how to live, or that will give you an economic solvency

bro in your case with a son already you should be thinking in poker just for fun is better a stable job when you have responsabilities, poker can have downswing of months.. and also remember don't blame all on back luck if you're loosing to much maybe you should study your game in Live poker is always good to have a coach to tell you what you're doing wrong ... also always save money don't let the game ruin you! maybe in a later age with less responsabilities you could be more focus on poker for now focus on your SON! hope you're ok...!

I think that poker can not be the main means of earning. Especially because it's online. Poker should stay as a pleasant pastime.
There must always be a permanent job that will definitely bring you profit and not leave without a piece of bread =)

First of all, it is important whether it is an online game or live.
*I believe that in your game, your skill is more important than what you do online because you have 14 years of experience. The online game is so unpredictable and unsafe in building a bankroll, especially in such a size, to give up work. After all, none of us knows which algorithms were used by developers to create a game.
*Also, I can add that even some famous and well-known poker players have admitted that they lost 2 million on the way to $ 1 million. If you can still win a big enough bankroll, I recommend you to break through the live tournaments. Of course, do not forget about the excitement, you should not play all the savings for the more often phantom chance to get rich, of course I think you understand it yourself and you should think carefully about the strategy to be sure of it and then not to curb it.
*I wish you only victories !!!

Going bust should not mean quit forever. If you are losing your bankroll every time, that means that maybe you need to master more information.

If you have a bad swing but know you are playing the hands the right way than try and not let it go up your head, rest and keep going.

If you have a son and went for a more reliable work/income, I think that is great and if you still want the extra money from poker or eventually have it as your main source of income you will have to put extra time to keep playing, improving and hopefully score big

Good luck!

Save up some more money from your job and then try again.

In the mean time, study as much as you can while you're away from the table.

That´s me at the moment..
Losing everything...
Its hard to survive to play only
a few hands... Im losing against loose players
and tight.. i cant survive to play any 10 hands
on the table..I dunno wht its going now with me..
its very sad
Hope get better!!!
BE POSITIVE

Income must be 40x the max buy-in of the cash game you are in or 100x the buyin of a tournament you are hitting.

This is due to tournaments having about exactly 2.5x less reliability in short term variance of profit even if played optimally.

For me, this wasn't an option. I failed my uni degree, it wasn't for me. I was that kid at school that was too much of a rebel to fit in with the nerds and too much of a 'nerd' to fit in with the cool kids (ironically).

I was a nobody, I was rejected and in my loneliness I came to understand things few humans do. I found strength in me and emotional pain as well as toughness I never knew existed. I have nothing, I even dropped out of high school and tried to redo it 3 time sin different ways via the UK equivalent of community college and it all went wrong (still somehow got to enter a degree and quit after year one as loans were building up and I knew my score was literally 3% BELOW a pass at the end of year one).

I am/was hopeless washing dishes for a living, helping my parents with odd jobs just to get by but I told them sternly I quit university and that I am going to play poker for a living and I failed with the £20 my dad gave me to play with, I then lost around £100 from my savings and realised I had to practise a lot more before I understood poker fully. Thankfully, I was blessed with parents that allowed me to live with them rent free (they demanded rent the first two months but realised I was not profiting) and then I slowly am proving to them that I am progressing. My dad has zero faith in what I'm doing but my mother sees how finally I am actually good at something. When I sit at three or four poker tables at once and grind the cash games now, I get profit by the raw discipline I have developed. By making people incapable of reading me properly due to playing AGAINST the enemy's natural playstyle whenever I have a good hand rather than simply playing it 'how one should play it' but never allowing their looseness or their anger seep into my own mind and playstyle.

You are able to be a profitable brilliant poker player but it isn't an easy path in life, if it was then the other 8 people at my cash games would be profiting as much as I do after a session of the same time and maybe they even do (I don't know, I don't care what they do in long run ignoring short term variance, I only worry of my own progress and profit).

I am 22, on my way to really making something of my life and up until about 3 weeks ago I thought I'd never be good at anything and was content with surrendering to the idea poker wasn't my thing.

There comes a time when you need to tell yourself that this is it. This is your only way out of the hell-hole of minimum wage jobs that someone of your qualification levels can get or hell even a white collar job in an office that has set hours, set asks and no freedom unless they beg for holiday time off.

This explains so much.

Well I am already profiting at present but that is only recent and took a lot of practise to get a rigid set of optimal moves and to prevent me thinking of short term result justification.

Actually never mind, I assume this will be replied to with sardonic things too.

Man, if you only knew how much I want you to succeed and become a good player. You are getting a lot of flack because most of us went through the same phase, where our egos far exceeded our abilities.

It is clear, from some of your advice, that you aren't as great as you currently think you are. You can get there. I believe you can, but it is going to take some work and starts with being aware of your current limitations and ability.

Well I can't speak for anyone but myself. But I know with me, I'll never quit poker. It's in my blood. I may go 6 months or a year without playing, but there will never be a day where I wake up and go "the last poker session I had will be the last game I ever play" it's just not going to happen.

That being said I have been a notorious fish, losing somewhere between 30k and 50k over the course of the last 7 or 8 years of playing poker. (Much of this can be explained by a complete disregard for bankroll management, as well as very bad play. I believe I'm just now getting to the point of being a decent pkayer)

I've only ever managed to work up a proper bankroll once. Sure I've ran $100 or $200 up to $700 or $800 or even $1000 or $1200 before (doing that right now actually, turned $115 into just over $700 in 3 days, again with no BRM) but only once did I actually build what would be a proper bankroll.

It was back in late 2010/early 2011, I turned $100 or $200 into just over $4400 over the course of 2 or 3 weeks grinding 1/2Nl. I thought I had turned a corner, and I'd never go broke again. Oh how wrong I was. After peaking at $4400 I feel back a bit and coasted for a week or so, before watching my bankroll start dripping away day after day. Finally, after 3 or so weeks of losing I found myself down to my last $1200, I should have moved down in stakes, in fact I should have moved down it stakes much esrlier, but I didn't. It only took me 3 hours to lose that last $1200.

I've vowed to myself if I could ever build a bankroll like they again I would practice BRM and never let that happen again. So far that's never happened, but in really determined for this time to be the time.

I don't think you should ever quit playing poker unless you just don't love the game anymore.

I think most people struggle with bankroll issues, mostly because no one is there telling you how to do things. You can swim in deep water with sharks and get your leg bitten off very easily. There's no protector for you because poker is built upon being responsible to yourself. Like other people have said you need to lower your limits when you begin to lose many times in a row. Also stopping to evaluate where you may be playing differently that is causing you to lose suddenly is critical as well.

Poker is a double edged sword. It is very easy to say I'm going to throw my last 100 BB to the highest limit possible to get back a loss but in the end you will end up a loser with no money! Keep that in mind.

u must managment bankroll....20 or buyins in your bankroll for the tourney that u play

New poster here. Been playing for 20+ years (even though I'm only 36). I've always been no worse than a break even player and have had many more profitable years than negative ones, but still, I find myself learning more about poker on an almost daily basis.

One thing to keep in mind about bankroll management is that you're only broke if you're BROKE. If you have a job and your bills paid then your bankroll isn't $200 in your online account, $500 in your wallet or $6000 hidden under your bed. Your bankroll is whatever you can afford to lose or play with without it negatively effecting your life. Personally my "bankroll" is never more than a few hundred bucks because I know my actual bankroll is significantly more than that.

This week I've grinded out a $600 profit in 9 hours across 3 days in my local casino playing 1/2 NL after putting in a full day's work at my normal job. Since I only bring $400 to the casino, $200 for my buy in and a $200 parachute, my "bankroll" is always extremely short for the games I play but only because I know that if it ever came to it my real life bankroll could sustain me.

So yeah, if you lost the $6000 but you have $50k saved up, no big deal. But if you lost the $6000 and your checking account is empty it's a huge deal. These are the true implications of bankroll management.

I used to raise my bankroll many times and lose at big bets, now if I raise my bankroll I play very carefully or play small bets and not expensive tournaments

If you have a decent job, not someone who does not interfere with trying to play 1 hour a day to build a bankroll without deposits.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but since some of us are facing BRM issues when we play cash, myself included, wouldn't it be wise to set a higher threshold before going up stakes, as a form is rigid self discipline? For e.g 80-100x instead of 40x?

Especially useful for those of us that rely on poker for a significant proportion of our income yes?

I always play without sticking to the bankroll (if there is free money and time), I can play and play.

Usually I playing on pokerstars, and sometimes be up, my element the limit games. More money loose if grind 12-14 in a day. And given the fact that I focused only razz.