1. Treat it as a hobby(it seems you may not be a winning player)

2. Download session logger from androind app market

Thanks guys for the posts. I am american, when i was playing fulltilt 6 player 6$ sng's i checked my results for the year and it was positive, not by much though, was less than 100$ for the year even though i paid 6-7 hundred in rake.

Live has been good, been playing at foxwoods alot, havent kept good records, but i won my last 7-9 sessions, which usually last about 20 hours. My best session was buying in at 200 and walking away with 640 after 5 hours ( left early because was with family).

I havent kept a seperate bankroll though i just spend it like normal money. I was thinking about trying the 1k and keeping it seperate from my other money expeses no matter what, and trying to grow it.

I usually play on weekends as the games are really good, usually make money off people playing very bad, or reverse tells. My game is pretty solid, i play tight and fit in some bluffs once in a while after establishing my image.

One thing I dont like is the rake seems kinda crazy compared to online, its like 6 dollars a pot with 1/2, then add a 1$ tip to the dealer and its 7 dollars a pot. Adds up really fast. Well its 10% up to 5 $, then 1$ for bad beat jackpot.

So I'm going to take the 1k in 1/2 nl live, play alot more and see what happens. 5 buyins is quite abit to lose imo, if I lose it then i will prolly not play anymore or not very often. This is going to be my shot to see if i want to take poker more serius.

In response to Soma, i usually stop playing if i lose a buyin, because its almost always from a bad beat sometimes i will rebuy 1 time and thinking back it usually works out well, im usually able to make my money back by the time i quit.

Last session was a loss, had pocket kings, raised it to 7$ 2 people called, fish min raised to 14 (i call him a fish cause saw him two hands ago get it all in pre-flop in a very bad spot with ace jack) i re-raise to 65$ 2 people fold, he calls flop come queen jack 4 rainbow, hes first to act and shoves, i make the call for 78$ he shows trip jacks.

Just keep your poker BR separate from your other money from now on. It doesn't matter if you only have 5 buyins, you aren't playing for a living or anything like that.

A bankroll is more crucial for people who don't want to reload it if they go bust. Since you play as a hobby and have a job don't worry about being under rolled.

There's a significant chance you'll go bust with 5 BIs. Don't be too hard on yourself if it happens, it's just consequence of playing underrolled. Best advice is to pick on bad passive players and avoid big semibluffs while you are below 10BIs.

I'm in a similar situation, well as far as bankroll goes.

Would it be better to play lower limits if possible? I live in London at the moment so there is plenty of choice, but still I think the lowest game is 1-1. I hear the rake on this limit is a much higher percentage than 1-2 though and I expect the player pool to be equally as bad at either, so should I just take a shot at 1-2?

Good point. Will try it and see what happens. 1k is quite a bit of money to me still though, if I lose it will prolly give up the game. Thing is playing for anything under 1-2 is not fun for me, and i dont take the game seriusly at lower stakes. winning a 500 dollar pot gets my adrenaline pumping.

How cool would it be to play professionally though?

The one thing i dont like so much is the rake, just feels like such a big % of money goes to it by the end of the night. Maybe would be better off finding home games.

Also i see on the high stakes poker games on tv that they run the pot twice alot. Should i try to do this as much as possible especially since my roll is small?

Do you think a 5 buyin roll is enough to determine if i can make money playing 1-2 in this format? I think im a pretty skilled poker player with a winning formula at 1-2 but it might not be true. I know that i to often give up value on the river by checking a pretty strong hand out of fear of a re-raise shove leaving me with a impossible decision. The person will check behind often and i see i could of gotten some more money out of it.

But anyways im rambling, maybe i will be on high stakes poker someday and have this post framed on my wall in my mansion.

$1k is playable *if*:
1) you are prepared to reload if you go bust OR
2) you keep topping it up every week or two with another $100

A couple of thoughts:

As mentioned above - you MUST keep a record of your results. I keep a spreadsheet detailing day of week, hours played, game played and profit / loss for every session played. Without a record it is easy to convince yourself you are performing better than you are, it is human nature to remember the wins and forget the losses.

Keep a separate bankroll. If you are serious about moving up do not touch this bankroll for any purpose besides poker. If you don't do this you may either never move up, or get bored and start shot taking before you should (the second is far more dangerous than the first).

Don't remember the bad beats, ever. You will get plenty of them in your poker career and if you keep track of them you will go insane (last night all-in pre in a $1k pot, I had QQ, vil1 had AK, vil 2 had... 22. 22 flopped a set. I played the hand correctly so not particularly bothered by it). Remembering them will also not help you develop as a poker player, you have nothing to learn from them. Instead you should be thinking back to some of what may be less obvious spots, possibly in much smaller pots or pots you folded incorrectly. Working through those will help your game far more, don't dwell on your bad beats. This also leads to a very subtle and sinister element to creep in where one starts thinking "I am a big winner in this game except for those bad beats that keep happening". Bad beats are part of the game and everyone cops them, if you are not a winner when including the bad beats then you are not a winning player.

I agree with having a pre-set stop loss for the session. Yes in theory you should keep playing if the game is good, however in practice, especially when starting out and on a small BR, losing one or two buy ins can put us in a very negative mental state where we will play well below our best.

Until you have a record showing you are a winning player at 1/2 then you are not a winning player at 1/2 It is an excellent start that you can see this right from the beginning.

deposit $50 online and learn to beat the micros from 2-10nl and then prob go n play 200nl live, if u can beat 10nl online u prob a winner at those games live & you learn the game for cheaper...

I've had days where I have lost 5 buyins, but went on to recover that amount. It doesn't happen often but it certainly can. You really are at the mercy of variance, you could run bad through no fault of your own and lose it. If you had like 25 buyins at lost it all, that would indicate a problem with your actual play.

For those wanting to play live I think starting with a budget is the critical thing. Ask yourself how much you can add to your roll every month or whatever, and then do it. Either you lose and it disappears or you win and it goes into your bankroll. Maybe you can only afford a buy-in every four months, but if that's the case that's how it has to be.

I think this approach works better for multiple reasons:
1. Very few people have a proper sized poker bankroll saved up, and even those that do may be and should be reluctant to be willing to risk all of it immediately.
2. You are playing less scared money. A $1k bankroll can be wiped out pretty easily. If you lose a couple of buyins and are facing a large bet you are going to start thinking "if I call this and lose I'm almost busto". Whereas if you have a poker budget you don't have to worry about losing all your poker money since you will get more later.
3. You'll never go perma-busto (or degen and start gambling money you can't lose)

I also think budgeting your poker roll makes budgeting your life roll easier too (easier to think of your bankroll as "money I have already spent on poker" rather than "money I have lying around")

e: I also think implementing a time-based stoploss is important for building a roll. When I started live, I had enough life money saved up (and disposable) to start with a poker bankroll. But I chose to do this:

1. start with $200/mo
2. deposit everything at end of month into bankroll
3. not withdraw from bankroll

Pretty extreme. Basically if I dropped my first BI I was done for a month. But psychologically moving from dropping a $10 BI to a $200 BI is pretty tough and I would experience long-term tilt. Even though I could afford to lose, it sucked. $200 can buy lots of things! So I think taking a break at first helped me get over that. Furthermore, the longer I go between sessions the better I'll play. I'll study and review in preparation for an upcoming session, get a good night's sleep and have a good morning's breakfast. That doesn't happen if you're playing as often as you can.

I don't think taking a month off if you lose your first BI is necessary but I do recommend spacing out your sessions if you are taking it seriously.

In b4 ban.

Good stuff itt esp DK Barrel's (I am in kind of the same spot atm, not sure if I want to put money online and grind or do what u did with Live; sick dedication though, very sick indeed)

OP looks like u are doing good but I would recommend continue to build the roll before withdrawing any money (be rolled enough for 2/5 imo which is like 10k, maybe more maybe less)

Can't speak for where you play but I find that both contain a lot of bad players, just different types of bad players. 2/5 bad players generally have more money to burn so will get it all in with strange holdings and you are more likely to have them raising too much than being too passive. Leads to big big swings.