Also depents on yourself, if you play fine with a 15 BI roll, go play with it (if you have the option of moving down in stakes). If you feel kinda scared money with 15, take a larger roll

$2000 should be enough

$2,000/10 buy-ins.

An optimal bankroll is a minimum of 20 buy-ins($4,000). But with 2k you can take a shot at 1/2 without significantly endangering your risk of going broke, but still making it more likely.

(4-5 buy-in downswings are very frequently and happen to all players probably once a month or so. 10 buy-in downswings are rare but still happen to everyone a couple times a year.)

I guarantee you will go broke with a bankroll of only $900 so please take my advice and don't play until you save up at least $2,000 to take a shot with.

Guarantee is obviously ridiculously strong unless you mean a $900 bankroll at all times (ie can't add winnings to the roll). If 2K is good for a shot a roll that is like one good weekend away from being there can't be drawing anywhere near dead (unless you mean must always withdraw. In that case I agree).

Guaranteeing he will go broke with only 900 is a tad ridiculous. I wouldn't suggest playing with all of it, but he could easily run 5 100bb buyins to 10 without much trouble

i play in a 1-2 game with fish and no reasonable amount of runbad is a threat to my bankroll.

obv there's variance but when you're playing bad people you're getting in the money good so often that it really doesn't matter when you flop the bottom end of a straight or get flushed on the river.

Hi, I am a current 1/2 live player. I mostly play on local casino's, been playing poker since I was 18, I am 26 and now feel like I am getting a better understanding of the game.
My biggest problem has always been bankroll management It seems like for the past years the main reason for always going bust is that I never have enough buyins to stand for cooler's or badbeats when they happen. I took a break away from the tables, I am currently just reading and studying or watching videos. However I am thinking of getting back on the grind in Aug or Sept. I also play microstakes online, just to get a lot of hands in and too improve my live play. My plan is to grind out microstakes online until I reach a big enough bankroll then go back to playing live. My biggest mistake was when I played online or live I would always grind with a 5 buy in backroll . (Example: I played 5c/10c micro online with a $50 bankroll). This time I plan on grinding with at least a 20 buyin bankroll for online and a 10 buyin bankroll live. Please any comments or suggestions will help, thanks.

A 5 buyin bankroll for 5c/10c is fine, because if you go bust (hopefully) you can find a way to make $50 and get back in it. It would be a terrible mistake to make 1c/2c if you can be 5c/10c just because your "bankroll isn't big enough"

This concept works up to a point. I could probably stand to lose $1000 without thinking too much about it, so playing 50NL would be a waste of my time/earning potential if I could win at 200NL. If I have a bad stretch, I'll be out of the game for a time until I can rebuild but it wouldn't be that long.

I wrote some pretty nice sims about this years ago, I should dig them up or recreate them. Standard bankroll models are based on the idea that you have $X and if you lose it you are DONE and there is no way (outside of poker) to rebuild. The model I used was, "I can add $Y to my bankroll every week, and I currently have $X, what stakes should I play to have a given risk of ruin" and the answer is "a lot higher than the 'normal' bankroll model"

Would definitely be interested in this.

Yeah I never fully understood why (winning, ldo) live players who have a normal job keep a bankroll of 50 buy ins. If you know for a fact that you are a winner in the game you play you only need to keep aside money that you actually need to prevent you from not being able to play for a certain period.

Let's say you have $600 a month on income you could use to fund your bankroll, you can add 3 buy ins every month should it be necessary so even if you only have $1000 left you know you have an additional $600 if you lose that $1000 so at least you'll be able to continue playing.

Also when you have $3400 but feel like you need at least $4000 to never go broke, instead of waiting another month just start playing and add there is a very high chance you'll never even need the extra $600.

Of course when poker is your only source of income you need to drastically change your BRM.

"the main reason " == ??

If you "win", you could still lose, because of rake. What rake have you paid compared to the amount you've bet/won/paid in blinds/tips/charges/costs/fees?

Maybe you are a "winning" poker talent, but the rake you pay is so large that you are losing your money over time.

Maybe you could try a "home game" or some "no rake" tables and check how your chips fare.

There was one post about this win rate which had someone talk about the effect of hourly win rate due to buying bottled water. After calculating these costs, they decided to bring a water jug to the poker table instead claiming that this made a significant difference. So, obviously, there are many things to look at. Some casinos or sites apparently have very high rake relative to others (someone has talked about Crown Casino in Melbourne, for example, or another in Perth with high rakes), but it's something to check.

Maybe someone has a way to easily calculate what amount you would expect to pay in rake over a given time at a given table. Then, you could compare some numbers with how you perform in a "no rake" setting to check where your money is really going.

On a h2h table online, pushing chips back and forth, neither side really "better" than the other, you could both be losing fair amounts even though your poker talents are basically equal.

If the "no rake" goes well enough, maybe you could use those winnings to pay the rake at the other tables.

I like your post I am currently on a little bit of a downswing, mainly because I was under rolled when playing live. Took a break for a few months, However next month I start my grind again. Thinking of using your strategy buying in for $200 5c/10ct online. Maybe when my bankroll gets up too 10 buyins ($3000), ill start making my trips again to the casinos. Until then, LET THE GRIND BEGIN !

Here is what I don't get about "bankroll management".

Say I have a $4000 bankroll and feel ready to crush the 1/2 NL. Now I have a bad run and lose $1000 of my bankroll. Now, every dollar I spend on expenses has to come out of my bankroll. I've won no money, and I now have to rebuild the br to $4k.

I'll keep my day job.

I don't think you should try to play $1/$2 for a living, and if you do, and it's your only source of employment, you must have a LOT more than $4000. I don't think I'd do it unless I had at least 6 months in expenses in cash. Maybe more.

Suggestions for bankrolls on the order of 20 buyins are operating under the assumption that you aren't going to be spending the money.

Think about it this way. Let's say you can make 10 big blinds/hour. At $1/$2 this is $20/hour. If you plan to play 40 hours/week that's $800. If your expenses were $500/week then your profit would be $300/week, or $7.5/hour (3.25bb/100)

So if you're going to use a bankroll management formula, then you have to use 3.25bb/100 as your win rate, NOT 10bb/100, because your actual win rate after expenses is only 3.25 bb/100.

Most general bankroll suggestion are based off gross winnings, they don't consider your expenses (I mean, how could they?). It makes a big difference.

5-7k imo..

Kinda depends on what your monthly burn rate is. This is why I have no chance of playing poker for a living, I'd need so much more than 7k.

I think you can just treat your added $Y as win-rate.

For example,
you play $1/2
you can add $200 a month from outside of poker
you play 1,000 hands a month

You are adding 100 bb over 1,000 hands so you can add 10 bb/100 to your win-rate in your bankroll management equations...

do you have a coke habit

Nah, I just have a wife, a kid, and expensive hobbies. Although if I went back to playing poker as a 2nd job I guess I could ditch the hobbies.

Black friday is about the best thing that ever happened to me. I lost a bunch of weight, started racing bikes, in the best shape of my life. **** ain't cheap though.

I'm not expert on this, but I recently read you don't wanna play with more than 5% of your bankroll at any one session. So if you buy into a $1-$2 with 100BB that's $200. So you'd want a $4K bankroll.

From what I've read on the subject it's as rusty says - it depends on what you take out of your bankroll for expenses, your winrate, and how aggressively you can move up and down stakes to make your bankroll relatively bigger.

Yeah, so, first of all, one-size-fits-all bankroll formulas are bad. Sure, 20 buyins is a reasonable metric to start with but it's based on assumptions about
* your risk tolerance
* your win rate
* your standard deviation

It's better to understand where the risk formulas come from and adjust from there. I'm a few beers in and on my laptop, maybe I can post more later.

The biggest consideration for someone who plays for a living is: what's the minimum level I can play at and make enough to scratch by on? If your bankroll falls below the level where you can play at those stakes then YOU ARE BROKE. It's the same as if you actually lost your entire bankroll. If you can't live off $1/$2 (and you probably can't) then even if you aren't broke, but you "need" to step down to a lower level, then you are ****ed.

It's not like where if you play for kicks and when your BR is too small for NL100 you step down to NL50. It's like your salary is slashed to below minimum wage and you are out on the streets. **** gets real when bankroll calculations are involved with "can I eat this week"

Hi, i am new here,

i just have a question that looks simple but i don't know the right answer,
so please help me to find it !

that is the situation,
I have 2 kids, ( 6 month and 7 years old) and a wife.

i will like to play poker for live in 1/2 game in casino, where i wanna play is with 50 euro min buy in and no max...

My wife says that she is afraid about the idea and she will like a guarantee for the family,money guarantee in case that i will have downswing that i know will happen aswell.

so i was thinking to open two bank account, 1 for poker and 1 for the family.
So my question is how much MONEY should i put in the first bank account and how much money in the second account !!??

My Idea ist to put 10.000 euro for poker and 20.000 euro for the family bank account, DO YOU THINK THAT IS RIGHT ??

How u will manage this situation ?
With how much money u will sit on the table every time ? 500 euro ? with other 1000 euro in the wallet in case ?

House is payed car is payed so the family will need just the money for eat and staff that the children will need.

PLEASE HELP ME TO FIND OUT WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION !!!

i work know and become a check every month 1.400 euro
i was thinking to play 4 times a week, from 10 until 18-20 and when u calculate 18 euro every hour in a poker game that absolutely possible is will be 3.500 euro every month WHAT U THINK ABOUT ?

Most important question:

Are you a winning player?

Most people walking into a poker room will tell you that they are, and yet maybe only 5% of them actually do win money.

For playing 1/2 you only need about 5k in your roll to be rolled plenty well. Buying in for 200 is standard at 100 BB but if you can buy in for 150BB it will increase any skill edge you have. I suggest you keep your BR in cash and don't touch any accounts if your wife is concerned.