Hi All,

As we are heading into 2018 and I feel the game is getting much tougher which could mean that swing will become bigger.

I am put together a Bankroll for different games and sites and I would like some feedback if I'm on the right track or not.


Full time

Online MTT (stars) @ 700-1000 buy-ins
Online 180 and Euro MTTs @ 300-500 buys-ins
Online Cash @ 40-100 buy-ins
Live Cash @ 30-50 buy-ins


Part time

Online MTT (stars) @ 300-500 buy-ins
Online 180 and Euro MTTs @ 100-300 buys-ins
Online Cash @ 25-40 buy-ins
Live Cash @ 15-30 buy-ins

I'm note sure about live MTTs as there can be a lot of cost involved.

Thanks

It depends on how good you are.
If you're crushing the stakes you're playing, 10 Buy-ins may be more than enough for Online Cash. However, if you're losing money, infinite buy-ins would not be enough in theory.

It also depends on the stakes you're playing and your income/expenses outside of poker.

Overall your bankroll management seems pretty strict to me.
What exactly do you define as bankroll? Just the money you have on the site, or all of the money you're worth?

Anyways, if you think you're breaking even overall, this may be a decent BR management. However, if that's the case, it would probably be better to play even lower stakes, so that you're winning some.

I separate poker money from real life money.

I feel that is the most secure way.

Whether your playing part-time or full-time the numbers will stay the same mate.

I've never really played tourneys professionally, I mostly just play the classic 6max cash online. For my games, 40 buy-ins has always been the magic number. I used to play with 20 a few years back in the $200 games and I only ever had to top it up once. If I were playing in the micros today I'd feel real safe with 20. 100 is way too much. If you need that many you should drop down to a game you can beat more easily. I personally wouldn't ever bother going higher than 40. I've never lost more than 25 in one stretch throughout my entire career. Millions of hands. But I haven't played a lot recently.

HU, and 9 seater tables, are both different. I'm sure someone will have some numbers for you. (9 seater games will require less, HU more).

Ps. Just ignore Zkesic. He missed some big mistakes in your post, and you will never be safe with 10 buy ins. That dude talks a lot but he sucks.

If you actually beat 100nl at 10bb/100 like you claim, you'd feel safe with 10 BI.
I have a win rate of about 12bb/100 on a certain site (over 100k hand sample), and never had a downsing worse than 5BI. Lifetime my worst downswing was about 15BI, at zoom.
If you lost 30BI at some point it's pretty bad.

Edit: Also, it's pathetic that you edited the post to change the number of BI you lost from 30 to 25
It's obvious that most of the stuff you say is bull****.

* Work out how many BI you can afford to lose without it affecting you financially/mentally.
* Use a slightly larger amount than that number.
* Profit?

If you're disciplined about moving to lower stakes if you start downswinging, you never risk going broke if you have X amount of BI for your usual games. (Provided you're a breakeven or winning player in the long run). I mean, it's not as if you're gonna play 100 x 180s at the same time, so you shouldn't really need more than 100 BI just sitting in your account.

Please to not be doing the ad hominem baloney

Sorry old boy I dont speak Latin. What are you saying, that 10 buyins is a safe bankroll for some online cash games??

The fact that I changed it to 25 is not pathetic... It doesn't mean everything I say is bull... During that one time I had to top up, I put in an extra $2000, an extra 10 buyins, and so I wrote 30. But then I thought, "oh no, I didn't lose it all. Lets just say 25". I dont know what the exact number was.

Hmm... I'm quickly losing patience with this site again. Why you scorn me Rusty and not this monkey! Thinkin' I might just leave everyone to get their advice from Zkesic. Good job 2+2.

I dont think bankroll management is worth discussing. Just dont be stupid with your money.

Rusty was saying that you shouldn't be insulting people just to win an argument. You should instead be trying to discuss the topic.

Like I said about you in that other thread:
I was talking about extremes. I said: "If you're crushing the stakes you're playing, 10 Buy-ins may be more than enough".
If you ever had a win rate higher than 10bb/100 (especially with RB), you'd understand what I'm talking about.
If someones win rate was absurdly high (like 20bb/100), the variance would be pretty much non-existent at that point.

Poker is soo complex now just have a couple buy in that allow you to win back your losses . More is better than less, but not so much that your money is sleeping there too much. But please dont start with the variance calculation because all this time could be better spent thinking about ranges or something

You know, I have been struggling to keep my Zen on here recently. I do get hounded far more than anyone else by the Mods. They do allow people to follow me around giving me **** for every single word I say. And if I try to battle back, fighting fire with fire, the Mods do try to tie me down with warnings. I do expect more from this site! I do think I deserve it. I do think 10 buy-ins is a joke of a stack!! But, I do honestly feel a bit sorry for Zkesic too. So Rusty, do your worst, I'll try to be a gent regardless.

Hi All,

Thanks for most of the comments.

Maybe what I posted is too strict, I guess I wont know until I hit a big swing. (Hopefully not)

I find utilizing a 10BI BRM structure is far too aggressive under almost any circumstance (given you're taking the game somewhat seriously). #
It seems you suggestions are purely based upon personal experience which I find quite ignorant ("never had a downsing worse than 5BI. Lifetime my worst downswing was about 15BI, at zoom.").


"If someones win rate was absurdly high (like 20bb/100), the variance would be pretty much non-existent at that point." fwiw I also find this statement absurd.

(sorry no official quote, due to response to statements from multiple comments)

I was talking about extremes.

It's a fact that the higher win rate you have, the lower the variance is.
So it is theoretically possible to have a win rate high enough, that a 10BI downswing would be close to impossible.

Again, I never claimed that people should be using 10 BI bankrolls. I was just trying to say, that the amount of BI you need for BRM also depends on your win rate.

I used the word "may". ("If you're crushing the stakes, 10 BI may be enough")

Variance is something that's hard to calculate with math, so I think in these topics personal experience is what matters.

and yes, I can tell you from my personal experience, that if you're playing on a table filled with bad passive fish that only bet/raise with nuts, it's almost impossible to lose even 1 stack, since you have almost complete control of the pot size.

The main reason why my WR is so high, is because I play in a really soft field, with 90% RB. That's why I know how low the variance can be, if the opponents are bad enough. It's like stealing money from them, 3 bb at a time.

Variance in absolute terms is going to be fairly constant regardless of your win rate (ignoring a bit that differences in style can cause changes in variance). But variance in respect to your win rate is a more interesting or important number. It's important enough to have it's own term: "coefficient of variation" which is standard deviation divided by the mean.

It can seem absurd to talk about playing with a small number of buyins, such as 10, because it's tempting to think "you could have a bad run right at the beginning and lose 10 buyins." It's true that a downward streak of 10BI could happen at any time, to anyone. But, whenver you don't start with a downswing, if your win rate is very high then you start accumulating more bankroll quickly.

There is a basic "risk of ruin" formula that you might find useful. The forumla is
ROR = e^(-2WB / (S ^ 2))
W is winrate, S is standard deviation, B is bankroll and e is the numerical constant e

We can reorganize this to solve for the size of a bankroll required for a given risk of ruin. Let's use "R" as risk of ruin.
R = e^(-2WB / (S ^ 2))
ln(R) = -2WB/(S^2)
S^2 * ln(R) = -2WB
B = -S^2 * ln(R) / 2W

So let's consider some numbers. Let's say your standard deviation was 100BB/100 hands. Win rate ridiculously high, like 20BB/100. And let's say we're comfortable with a 5% risk of ruin - that is, a 5% chance that if we never change stakes, we'll go bust.

B = -100*100*ln(.05)/(2*20) = 748 BB
That is to say, that player could get by with a 7.5 buyin bankroll. If you're happier with a 1% risk of ruin, you'd need 11.5 buyins. Note that if you can move down, your risk of ruin becomes lower, but for a lot of people, moving down isn't practical.

But that's a really obscene example. You can play around with other numbers.

This calculator is really interesting and useful also. It calculates risk of ruin and stuff like that, but it also visually shows you what a sample of players with those stats would "look" like over time. If you plug in W=20, S=100, R=0.05 you'll see what I mean
http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

I ran a simulation of flipping a coin, to compare hero's WR with variance:

This is a graph of flipping a coin 20k times (50% win chance, 0bb/100 win rate):

Pretty high variance, right?

Here's the same graph, with hero having a 51% win chance:

The variance seems quite a bit lower. I'm pretty sure 10BI bankroll would be acceptable.

This is what it looks like if we have 55% chance of winning:


and if we had 100% chance of winning, the variance would be exactly zero of course.

This is why I'm pretty certain that higher win rate = lower variance.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think your BRM outlook is pretty solid. Idk how anyone can recommend a bankroll of less than 15 buyins for cash. I do think its important to aggressively shoot stakes when you feel ready. I also think you should drop down with solid discipline when your shot doesn't pan out.

I think it is a very individual thing, choosing your bankroll. Each player will have different safe amounts in different games. My brother who ran a staking business has always used 40 buy-ins as the magic number for playing 6max cash games for all his players, but I usually go lower.

Well, people use the term "variance" to mean "how much the $ won line seems to deviate from the expected win rate line visually" but variance is an actual term with a definition. Variance does not decrease with win rate.

Coefficient of variation does, of course (stdev/winrate) and that has a huge effect of the apparently swinginess of a $ won line.

I have no problem with the theory presented & find it to be correct that we need a less conservative BRM structure with a higher WR, so perhaps I was too critical in my first response; I just find the suggestion/example of 10 BIs to be too few. *Note exactly what I am agreeing with. As mentioned by @RustyBrooks variance is truly independent of WR, it is just the outcome of variance on players with different WRs which shall differ.

"Variance is something that's hard to calculate with math, so I think in these topics personal experience is what matters." I do still think that this thought process is incorrect. Concerning (almost?) everything in poker it is best to avoid drawing conclusions about theory/concept(s) from personal experience, BRM being no different. Sure variance is hard to calculate with math, but this is no indicator that personal experience should be taken so much more into account.

Your coin flipping simulation can be useful at drawing some broad conclusions from in relation to poker & variance, but there are many flaws in the comparison which I hope (I'm sure) you're aware of.

fwiw I am currently using a very aggressive (subjective, but widely agreed) BRM of 20BIs with a WR of way over 10/100.

Super interesting, gj. Will have to look into this in more detail at some point. Out of interest where did you find this 'risk of ruin' formula; where was it first presented? Np if not sure