Were you saying a player with a large win rate and a low standard deviation should keep a smaller bankroll than someone with a low win rate with a high standard deviation? If that is the case, how is that counter-intuitive?

I think you missed my point. Which is that 20 40 players often have huge bankrolls partly because they have a small edge in that game and also because they would have a smaller edge still in the next higher game. Since they don't have the bankroll for the larger game they play the smaller game with a bankroll much larger than what would actually be necessary for that game. Thus if you survey these player's bankrolls you will find that the average is higher than the actual "proper" bankroll.

And don't forget that as you go up in limits the acceptable risk of ruin has to shrink.

That's a good point not often mentioned. And another reason that a 1-2 pro needs a gambling bankroll smaller than 10% of a 10-20 pro.

20 BI or 50 BI - for breakeven ! -that level of BankRoll assumes you hardly ,if ever lose a BI ,the very best of live and online pros can go on a downswing that would chew that up in a day or 2 live or online in an hour or 2 ( as most are firing multi tables) - It shouldnt ,and doesn't happen often ,but is way within normal variance if you are playing any sort of volume.And with such a small BR the chances that when down to say 50% of total so only 10-25 BIs remaining that it would effect your mental game must be far higher,this threshold will vary player to player depending on skill and ability to deal with stress of course ,some it will be far lower ,some even higher.The pressure to repair the damage ,the worry of going broke will turn most players to either nit right up ,missing value when it is available or take make silly calls or shoving ,bluff in unrealistic spots in the hope of ******ing or reversing the downswing . If you play as a "fun" /rec player I guess so long as the BR at risk ,should it all disappear in a single session not effect your life or cause any hardship on yourself or those that you are responsible for then any figure be it 10-20-50-100 BIs is irrelevant . If this is not the case then a figure (BR amount) needs to set and achieved that allows you to play at your optimum with the greatest chance of not busting ,this needs to be at the higher not lower level of those already discussed by others for reasons already tabled in detail by Mason ,Little & others .

TY arty ,great link ,some keen stuff there at pokerdope .
9% of 100BI downswing - god forbid ! but we both know a few "good" grinders that have been on that hell train ride right it happens & needs to be factored in . I'm convinced that still the most over-looked leak in many players game ,after they have a decent grounding in game theory & strategy is BRM .Most seem to either not understand or just dont want to bother with the "boring" side of the game.Lack of BRM is a key factor in why many decent players will never achieve their goal of being a winning poker pro .Like any part of the game it requires work

Stopped reading at very best of pro player going through 20-50 bi in 2 days

None of this makes any sense. How does having a 20-50 BI BR assume that the player rarely if ever loses a BI? A pro could chew up 20-50 BI in a day or two???

This post is completely crazy.

I was just thinking about the copies sold versus the number of poker players. Even just limiting the number to serious players, the copies sold is a small percentage. That would seem to limit how many people know what it says.

It is a pity that more people don't pick up some of the older books by you and David as they are enjoyable reads.

Going back to something I said earlier, shouldn't this thread really be titled Mason [or Malmuth] on Bankroll Requirements?

Amateur players don't need a bankroll at all.

The purpose of a bankroll is so a pro player can be sure of being able to stay working at his profession of poker even if he has a bad run.

An amateur doesn't need to stay working at poker, because poker is his hobby, not his job. If he loses everything, he can simply stop playing poker until he has some spare cash to deposit / take to the poker room again.

Now if he's a good amateur, he probably doesn't *like* having to put money in. He keeps a bankroll big enough to make it unlikely. But he doesn't have to fret about the exact risk of ruin, because his risk of actual ruin is zero.

Hi Doc:

I think today this is true but am also sure it wasn't the case a number of years ago. Again, it's my belief that Gambling Theory and Other Topics is one of the most influential poker/gambling books ever released even if only a relative few today are aware of it.

Obviously I agree with this. But it's also my opinion that there is still a lot to be learned for most readers from many of these titles.

Probably, and I'm thinking of rewriting some of this and presenting it as an article in our Two Plus Two Online Poker Strategy Magazine, and when this happens, it'll probably have a title more along the line that you suggest.

Best wishes,
Mason

The way you become a professional is by acting like a professional, not an amateur who reloads whenever he loses his pocket money. As stated, if you are a loser, bankroll management will not help you. My goal is to take amateur players and turn them into professionals. To do this, they must practice bankroll management.

I think an amateur, even one who has no aspirations to be a pro, should be concerned with bankroll management.

This is true. And what does it matter. What you're saying is a truth, losing players don't really care about BRM. Thus, most small stakes NL players shouldn't have any BR, because as losing players they need a gaming budget. By setting aside a ridiculously huge amount of $ and pretending to be winners following BRM, they're ignoring the fact that their biggest need is to improve at poker. I hang out in the Beginner's Forum from time to time, and this comes up endlessly. You have some new player who wants to get into poker. He starts a new thread "how big should my BR be". The real answer is always that it doesn't matter. Saving up a bunch of cash won't help, because until he wins he'll always lose everything in the long run.

What about small winners? Tiny winners can indeed have your $20K BR for the RoR Mason assumed. Is that 5% RoR or 1.5% or whatever. They'd be much better off improving than really worrying about 100BI. I doubt most beginning or breakeven players can mentally be decent at poker after dropping $10k, and having lost all that money (and then their minds) they're actually losers and BRM once again goes away. It takes a lot of mental toughness to downswing that much and play well.

After ruling out losers and small winners from BRM, then you're left with big winners. Then Mason's points dominate. In practice, nobody has a huge BR to begin. If you were to demand your 100BI roll to move up to 2/5, the guy who believed you would never save enough to move up in any reasonable time. Your BRM would be a huge opportunity cost. He'd be way better to shot take on a smaller roll, move down as required, and use some short term rungood to move up to a game with much lower rake.

Really the best BRM advice I've seen on the forums is from the person who linked me to this thread. Xhad posted a long while ago practical online BRM advice, using the possibility of moving down to make your effective BR much larger. You could apply it to NL, but we're a LHE forum. David and Mason talked about moving down long before this, but Xhad's post is a good guideline for new players to avoid the trap of silly/large bankrolls for recreational players.

I am an amateur and a winning player and I certainly am.

BRM is a tool for a winning player to protect an amount of money that is significant. Losing players can't use the tool because the answer comes back as infinity. We recreational players have a huge edge over pros, as we don't have to regularly withdraw from our rolls. They exist just to let us play poker. You get that nice race between your roll going to infinity and the 1 in whatever chance you have a really bad run.

Small Stakes Shorthand mod Leader did a very nice analysis of BRM for pros who were forced to withdraw (for things like rent and eating). He shows the impact of cashouts on risk of ruin on various bankrolls.

I have a practical question about this topic: say you start playing for a living with a BR you started with a job, but then you do go on a downswing before you go up in stakes. What do players do to build back up the bank roll? You can't move down in stakes, and you would have to run way above expectation in order to once again have an adequate BR that helps lower RoR. Doesn't that create a strange paradox where you're rolled to play higher, but have to play lower because if there is no job to go back to, you can't afford to go below the BR requirements for your win rate. Maybe there is a sweet spot there between too big to not move up and bigger than needed because there is no other income or level to go down to, but it seems like this would require a different formula. What do people who are living full time at 1/2 do when they go from 40 BI to say 25 BI?

Probably play until busto, or find a job.

In b4 "if you lose 15 bi at 1/2 you shouldn't be playing for a living"

The BRM formula assume that you start with a number of givens. That's WR, SD, your EV (which is constant), at a starting roll, and with an allowed risk of ruin. You then play that limit forever until you have all the money or are broke. If those numbers told you to start at 40BI and you do something else after losing down to 25BI, you were playing on a 15BI roll all the time. What you're effectively doing is taking a much larger chance than your RoR of doing this different thing.

The math for BRM doesn't really match the world, and your observation is correct. Most of us don't play the same WR forever, and people generally overestimate that -- they cherry pick data to feel good. A few points

• Going pro at the lowest limit spread is nuts. It leads to misery. It removes your option to move down and preserve your roll.
• If you need a certain earn to cover expenses and that has to quickly come out of your roll, significant withdrawals cut your WR and they make you go bust. That Leader post I linked has a nice discussion. If you mix this with playing at a low limit, you likely won't play poker for long as a pro.
• If you can move down several limits and still cover your nut, your BR is effectively very large. As a 20/40 NL player who can cover bills at 5/T, your 40BI roll is 160 BI at 5/T. This is a happy thing.
• Pros that survive tend to have money stashed for living expenses and to have a much bigger roll than the BRM formula says.

tl;dr to say that I doubt there are many happy 1/2 NL live pros

Thanks for the detailed response. So it sounds like if you really want to play for a living and avoid a high ror, you must be a winning player at 2/5 or higher, and after using the calculator, you need to have much more than what it recommends saved away in order to avoid falling below a level where you really can never recover on poker alone. Makes mathematical and common sense. Thanks.

If you need to make $15/hour (playing reasonable hours) to cover your expenses and you make $18/hour in a given game, your effective earn over expenses is $3/hour. That's misery and requires a huge roll. It also says if you somehow had a game to move down where you make $12/hour, you can't pay expenses or you play 60-80 hour weeks.

I'm honestly saying crush 5/T or higher NL before considering it. For LHE, crush 40/80. Have the ability to move down and still pay bills. Going pro in small stakes leads to sadness.

Good advice. Thanks.

$1/$2 NLHE is so weak passive today and everyone plays with their hand face up you really don't need anything more than $2000 and all your living expenses in order to live off a $20 a hour job if you'd like to play for a living. I actually play $2/$5 NLHE in Detroit now for a living and I haven't experienced a downswing of more than $2700 in a couple years. Most the people here are weak passive tight. Not many are trying to play it for a living. If they are and crush it they move to a bigger city ASAP or they move over to the way more juicy PLO game where a lot of the big fish are now sitting. What I do on a downswing is simple. Lets say I usually buy in for $500, after I lose 4 buy-ins in a row I'll start buying in for only $400. If I lost more, I'd drop my buy in to $350. Buying in all the way down to 65bb when running bad, playing bad, or a combination of both simplifies the game for us, gives our depleting roll more bullets, and in turn lowers our overall risk of ruin.

DO NOT ever let anyone tell you that you need something like 10k+ to play $1/$2 NLHE live.

The players are LAWL bad and you will consistently be getting your chips in 65%+ favorite.

Also, you will never have to get your chips in as a huge dog as most the players you play against are just as bad in value extraction (from you) as they are in paying you off with their clearly inferior or second best hands.

You get to play every hand with X-Ray Vision.

If someone is just starting out and consequently doesn't have the necessary numbers to plug into the formula, how would they know how much they need to play certain limits?