Bankroll and Number of MTT Buy-ins

[XYZ2123]

I’ve read various suggestions for proper MTT bankroll management, anywhere from 50 to 1000 buy-ins. Given the huge variance of MTTs, huge field sizes, possible duration of downswings (can last 100+ buy-ins), and the necessity of rebuying/re-entering, I tend to want to stay closer to the 1000 buy-ins. I’ve worked hard to build my roll to 1K from nothing, but that means I can only still play $1 MTTs. unless they’re really small fields, freezeouts, or I satty in to something bigger. Either that or micro cash games. This is discouraging and its hard to keep motivated.

 

[fundiver199]

1.000 buyins is only needed, if you exclusively play tournaments with 10.000 or more participants. If the average field size is 1.000 players, then 300 buyins should be enough, and if its 100 players, then 100 buyins is enough. Its also fine to use an average buyin strategy, so with a 1.000$ bankroll you can absolutely take some shots at 8-12$ tournaments, as long as you still keep the bulk of your activity in 2-5$ tournaments. This approach has worked fine for me on 888 Poker. Over 1.400 tournaments my largest downswing playing this mix of limits has only been around 150$.​

https://www.sharkscope.com/#Player-Statistics//networks/888Poker/players/fundiver199

 

[bellicoso]

I agree with fundiver, 1000 buy-ins is a lot... you should play smaller buy-ins for the most part, but have some fun too. Just don't do anything that will wipe out what you've built.

 

[maxi_j]

It depends on your risk tolerance, win rate, field size, capability to get staking and so on. But 1000 usually to much. Play with variance calculators.

Also you can make shots to higher levels with part of you bankroll.

 

[fundiver199]

Also you can make shots to higher levels with part of you bankroll.

This is a really important point. Bankroll management rules assume, you always play the same game, which is generally not true especially for tournament players. I recently played a 5,5$ "Winter series" tournament on pokerstars, which saw around 15.000 entrants. A variance calculator would probably suggest, that I must have a 5.500$ bankroll for this tournament.

But I am not going to play this tournament 50.000 times. I am only going to play it this one time. So what I actually did was pay the 5,5$ entrance fee out of the 170$, I still have left on Stars. And this is completely fine. I got the experience, I wanted, and assuming those 170$ were my entire bankroll, which it is not, I still had plenty enough left to go back to a daily grind in 1,5$ multitable SnGs.