kleitches
Visionary
Silver Level
Wow, it feels pretty cool to actually be contributing to this forum now. 
Lately I've been battling it out on 10NL, and of course encountering the inevitable variance that come with it. I recently have considered something that I think other players trying to build a bankroll may benefit from. At the very least, this will just serve as a healthy reminder of something most people already know anyway.
I've read that your bankroll can be viewed as your working capital. Viewing your online poker playing as a business is actually a great way to look at it. You encounter constant decision-making with the ultimate goal being to maximize your profit while minimizing your losses. But what I think a lot of beginning players fail to grasp is that getting off the ground does not always mean instant profit.
When I first started playing online about six months ago, I felt overwhelmed and extremely outclassed whenever I would visit this and other poker forums, with people discussing their latest bankroll breakthrough or latest tourney win. I would look at my own statistics and began to feel disappointed that my own poker endeavors were not nearly as impressive. I now realize that my failure was not my inability to manifest a 300% ROI within a week, but that I had set unrealistic expectations in too soon a timetable.
If I focused only on statistics, I would probably lose all motivation to keep playing poker. What matters though, is not whether or not you are making large and immediate gains, but are practicing solid and fundamental poker. It's been said a million times, but saying it again won't hurt. Being results oriented is detrimental to your game. Just as a start-up business does not expect to profit within its first few years of operation (or hell, even expect to break even), growing a bankroll will more often than not require patience to ride out the variance (especially at the lower limits with the high rake).
Recently I felt down and out about such a huge downswing that I ran into, but I realize that downswings and variance are always going to happen. Being in the process of growing a bankroll, it's easy for me to see that I'm barely profiting at all thus far, and that I can sometimes make more money looking for loose change on the street than play poker (we've all had those days). But I choose to ignore that for now and focus on the long term. I try to maximize my expectation and as long as I'm consistently moving up, no matter how fast or slow at first, I know that poker is a winning game.
So to sum things up, don't focus on short term results, don't compare yourself to people who are at a completely different level than you, and stay patient when building your bankroll. Your time will come.
Thoughts, comments, flames encouraged.
Lately I've been battling it out on 10NL, and of course encountering the inevitable variance that come with it. I recently have considered something that I think other players trying to build a bankroll may benefit from. At the very least, this will just serve as a healthy reminder of something most people already know anyway.
I've read that your bankroll can be viewed as your working capital. Viewing your online poker playing as a business is actually a great way to look at it. You encounter constant decision-making with the ultimate goal being to maximize your profit while minimizing your losses. But what I think a lot of beginning players fail to grasp is that getting off the ground does not always mean instant profit.
When I first started playing online about six months ago, I felt overwhelmed and extremely outclassed whenever I would visit this and other poker forums, with people discussing their latest bankroll breakthrough or latest tourney win. I would look at my own statistics and began to feel disappointed that my own poker endeavors were not nearly as impressive. I now realize that my failure was not my inability to manifest a 300% ROI within a week, but that I had set unrealistic expectations in too soon a timetable.
If I focused only on statistics, I would probably lose all motivation to keep playing poker. What matters though, is not whether or not you are making large and immediate gains, but are practicing solid and fundamental poker. It's been said a million times, but saying it again won't hurt. Being results oriented is detrimental to your game. Just as a start-up business does not expect to profit within its first few years of operation (or hell, even expect to break even), growing a bankroll will more often than not require patience to ride out the variance (especially at the lower limits with the high rake).
Recently I felt down and out about such a huge downswing that I ran into, but I realize that downswings and variance are always going to happen. Being in the process of growing a bankroll, it's easy for me to see that I'm barely profiting at all thus far, and that I can sometimes make more money looking for loose change on the street than play poker (we've all had those days). But I choose to ignore that for now and focus on the long term. I try to maximize my expectation and as long as I'm consistently moving up, no matter how fast or slow at first, I know that poker is a winning game.
So to sum things up, don't focus on short term results, don't compare yourself to people who are at a completely different level than you, and stay patient when building your bankroll. Your time will come.
Thoughts, comments, flames encouraged.