Why 20 buy-ins is not enough

Chris_TC

Chris_TC

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I haven't posted in a long time, and I won't post again for a long time.

I'll post this to make a point: if you're averagely good, 20 buy-ins cannot be considered safe bankroll management. If you do the math, you'll see that over this stretch of 419,000 hands I ran at 1.46ptBB/100. And I still pulled off two swings that would make the devil cry.

Please go ahead and attribute all (or most of this) to tilt, if it makes you feel better. I used to do that, too, when someone posted a sick swing.
However, having looked over these swings in a lot of detail, I'd give the following numbers:
Swing 1 (-36 buy-ins): about 30%-40% attributable to tilt
Swing 2 (-50 buy-ins): about 10% attributable to tilt

Take it or ignore it.

P.S.: Stakes are all 6-max and some HU, buy-ins $0.25/$0.50, $0.50/$1, $1/$2, $2/$4, $3/$6, $5/$10, $10/$20
 

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Zorba

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This is beyond my comfort zone but that graph shows you make a valid point.
 
KingCurtis

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yeah i have always set up a standard roll amount as limits go up.

10nl-25nl = 20 BIs

50nl= 30 BIs

100NL=35 BIs

200nl= 40 BIs

I think passed 200nl 40-50BIs is a good number, especially since these levels are a lot of the time used for income and better safe then losing your house lol.
 
Deco

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hmm I think I may wait till I've got 30 buyins till I move up to 100NL
 
BelgoSuisse

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Good thing you didn't post the $ graph. I guess that's even scarier... :eek:

And I agree, beyond micro stakes, 20 buy-ins is nothing.
 
icemonkey9

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Chris is you don't mind, if you use HEM, could you let us know your Standard Deviation?
 
Dwilius

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I like this post very much so

...me too, and thanks for the link belgo. Interesting to think about, you could play 100k's of ev+ poker and still lose if you play a high variance style. Puts downswings into perspective.
 
S93

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...me too, and thanks for the link belgo. Interesting to think about, you could play 100k's of ev+ poker and still lose even if you play a low variance style. Puts downswings into perspective.
fyp
 
Dwilius

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True, I was looking at 2BB+/100 winrates which would be very unlikely to lose over such a sample playing low variance, but still possible. Lower winrates which would be good at midstakes are obv. more prone to long breakeven or losing stretches.
 
cardplayer52

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i'm still missing something. if you dont have 20 buyins for the level your on you would drop down. yes you can lose more than 20buyins do to variance and not bad play. but this is why we put BR management into action. allowing for more buyins is ok. but i think 20 would be good enough to start a level. obv you cant stay at the level and lose all 20 buyins. you would need to have 20buyins at the level to stay at that level. and 20 buyins for the next level to move up.
 
KingCurtis

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stop playing poker? lol wtf happened, glitch?
 
BelgoSuisse

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It reinforces my point. Out of 100 players with a true winrate of 1.65ptBB, one player managed to be stuck around 50 buy-ins after 225,000 hands. If that's not scary, then I don't know what is.

this.

Also, you can't really know your true winrate until you play something like a million hands.
 
F Paulsson

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I can't be bothered to create and attach an image of my graph, but over this year I'm at 3+bb/100 for 200NL, and I've had one 30+BI downswing and another 20+ BI downswing. So yes; if moving down in stakes is not an option (maybe because you need to play the limits you do in order to support yourself and/or your family) then 20 buy-ins is definitely not enough. If I absolutely could not afford to move down and wasn't playing fulltime for a limited time only, I'd require a 100 BI bankroll to play 200NL.
 
Chris_TC

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Also, you can't really know your true winrate until you play something like a million hands.
This calculator is really great for estimating your winrate.
http://www.castrovalva.com/~la/win.htm

If I plugin my own data and want 99% confidence, then my true winrate is between 0.13ptBB and 2.79ptBB.
Even assuming one million hands, a 99% confidence gives a fairly wide ranged 0.6ptBB to 2.32ptBB.

So imagine this: you ran at 1.46ptBB over one million hands, and there's a larger than 1% chance* that you ran more than twice as well as you should have. Over the course of one million hands. Talk about a hot "streak".
*someone know the actual number, I can't do that math?

Variance in poker is so much larger than our puny little minds could ever imagine.
 
eNTy

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i want to shoot variance with a bazooka

hu variance is the best :D
 
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