I use 17 or 18 as standard 6m. Maybe I'm a swingy nut. My original #'s were from mememory; you made me actually plug in the numbers and I was a tiny bit off.

1BB/100 + 18 STDEV for 2% RoR = ~630 BB
0.8BB/100 + 18 STDEV for 2% RoR = ~800 BB
1BB/100 + 18 STDEV for 1% RoR = ~750 BB
0.8BB/100 + 18 STDEV for 1% RoR = ~930 BB

You know, maybe you aren't quite as LAGgy as I am. Even filtering my FR games (this was a lot of 20+ tabling), I"m seeing 17.4 STDEV. Are you playing 23/15?

I will be headed to foxwoods tommorrow and playing the aforementioned stakes. sorry to drop the big word it just flowed well.

i have been a winning 48 player for sometime but i am sure i have leaks. without seeing me in action what are some experienced players full ring advice for me.

Should i always 3 bet for respect preflop with a hand i would of normally just call with? making 3 betting a standard part of my game.

and just other advanced tips i could use to hopefully walk away a 5 buy in winner :-D

PS - i am predominately a NL player, but have transitioned well but could use more tips on that as well

'small stakes holdem' by sklansky and miller is your ticket to success

The Commerce has recently (within the last couple weeks) started a 9/18 full kill game. I haven't had a chance to sit in it. Actually, my experience with kill games is limited, so I was wondering if there are any fundamental strategy changes I'd have to make if I wanted to play on one of these tables.

What does it mean to buy the button?

Raising from the cut-off or hijack position, so that the button folds. That way you will have position in the rest of the hand.

I meant this in the context where you come into a game as a new player. Some casinos will not let you have the button as first hand.

In this context, it means something different. Generally, when a new player sits down at a table, he cannot take his first hand in the small blind. However, some card rooms allow what is called "buying the button", which allows the new player to post the small blind AND the big blind for that hand, and receive cards. Next hand, they will receive the button.

The people that would be the small and big blinds that hand don't have to post them, but will have to next hand.

I think I've also seen people posting missed blinds in this fashion in Vegas.

Yes, at card rooms that don't allow buying the button a player has to post both blinds if they want to be dealt in. This usually happens in the CO.

I have a new respect for limit players after playing 10k hands recently. I just have one question what are your average swings? I am running at like 1.2 pt/bb but 500 hand sessions where I lose 100 big bets seem to happen a lot and also the opposite where I run like god for a few hundo hands happen. I just am curious if this is common or just that I am too loose/cally.

over big sample sizes, 100bb is meaningless. 250 or 300 bb is where it gets mildly noteworthy, and 500+ is a big deal

im not even sure about this.

i lost about 70 BB this weekend (live) in great games playing decently (not amazing but decent) with only a few glaring mistakes (that cost me 2-3 BB total), just getting bad turn/river cards.

i would think a 500 BB downswing for a very good live player would be inevitable over a sufficient time frame (lets say over a 30 year career)

Here's a chunk of a Jesse quote from this thread
You take Jesse with a 2BB/HR WR and a 15 BB/HR standard deviation at 20/40. His 1% RoR BR is ~ 260BB.

You take me at 3/6 6m, with a 1 BB/100 WR and a 17BB/100 stanard deviation, and my 1% RoR BR is ~ 665BB.

In essence, a winning live player is going to see downswings smaller than a 6m donk (me) by a factor of about 2.6. That's huge. You're going to have 200BB downswings about as often as I have 500 BB ones. A 500 BB live downswing would be like a 1.25k downswing for me. I'd have moved down 3 limits before that happened... or quit forever.

Over 30 years, sure. I know that I'm not tilt-immune, so as my WR goes down, these big swings become more likely. If you're a Hold'em bot live, your RoR would be .015% to go bust with a 500BB BR 2 BB/HR WR and a 15 BB/HR STDEV. If you drop 500 BB, you had the worst 6 days of your life, back to back.

That same 500BB swong online is like the worst month of the year for someone who has as low a WR as I do.

Jesse sucks, my 1% RoR is 162BB. The worst swong I've experienced is 134BB.

lolsoftlivemidlimitpokeraments

[cue doom switch]

134BB? That sounds like a Monday to me. Pretty much any Monday you choose. I envy you.

What do you feel is a proper buy in for a given limit..ie: how many BB's for a given limit.

At a 10-20 game what would you initially sit with...how many BB's ?
What would you consider sitting short with...BB's ?

Assume this is LHE and that I'm posting before lock or move.

I'll answer the second question first. I never consider sitting short.

Twenty bbs is a minimum; but, I always "round up" to the nearest rack.

buy in for 2 racks or more; never begin a hand with less than a rack.

When it's said you need 300bb as a winning player to play a specific limit level, does that mean it is the minimum you must have or just a starting point? For example, I play 10/20 limit. 300bb for that is $6000. Do I drop down levels when my bankroll reaches $5999 or less, or do I dropdown at a lower point? On the other side of the coin, as a 10/20 player, say I get my bankroll up to $12000. Can I now comfortably play 20/40 or do I drop back down to 10/20 when my bankroll is $11999 or less.

Basically, is the 300bb rule the bare minimum amount, where you would drop down if you had 299bbs but move up if at the next level you had 301bb? Or is it just a starting point?

If the game is a 2chip/4chip game ($5 chips) this is probably on the high side, but the concept is obviously correct.

in a 4 chip/8 chip structure, a rack = 12.5 BBs thus 2 racks = 25 BBs. Even though it is theoretically possible to but in 16 BBs in a singe hand of LHE, this is such a rare occurrence that starting each hand with ~ rack should be adequate.

Many would say that number is outdated. For online play the number is 600BB or even more in higher-variance games. For live play I think it's still fine, and many move up with fewer than 300BB.

The concept of bankroll is (or was originally) 'how much you're willing to lose before you quit and never play the game again.' It was determined that 300BB was enough to ride out variance.

To answer your question... wait for it... it depends. Some people--at least those that have strict rules about when they'll drop down--do so when they've lost 100BB, others when they've lost 150BB or maybe 200BB. A lot depends on what levels you have to drop down to. If the next highest level is 2-4 you would only need $1200 to have 300BB for that level, so you could lose $4800 (240BB) at the 10-20 level and still be fully rolled for 2-4.

If the next level down from 10-20 was 8-16 you'd probably want to drop down a lot sooner. For one thing, if you wait until you've lost 240BB at 10, you've one bad session from having to drop down from the 8 game as well. It's also easier to build your BR back up to 10-20 levels playing 8-16 than 2-4, so you can drop down without feeling like you won't be playing 10-20 again for the next 18 months.

Personally, I don't think you should have a hard-and-fast rule. If you feel that you're playing well and the competition at 10-20 sucks, but you're still getting murderized, you can more accurately blame variance and keep plugging away. If you feel uncomfortable at 10-20 and often feel like you're not the best player at the table (you should usually feel you're far and away the best player at the table), or if the money lost bothers you--not as BBs but in a "WTF I just lost two month's rent" way--then you should be quicker to drop down.

If you want a solid number, I'd say if the next lowest level was 5-10 and I felt like I was playing with morons, I wouldn't consider dropping down before I lost 150BB, probably closer to 200BB.

Edit: Just reread your question. 300BB should be your starting point. You should not be considering dropping down at $5999

I'm going to change my location to "the never start a hand with less than 12BB rule is bunk"

For one, there are advantages to being able to go all in that outweigh the benefits of being able to cap every street. For another, I've never seen a live hand capped every street. I've seen plenty of people put in 15+ bets, but at that point it's HU and 12BB still isn't enough; you'd need to always have the table covered if you really wanted to maximize every quads over quads hand you were dealt.

I don't follow the "min 12BB" rule, but I'll keep like 6-8BB always. I used to go lower but ran into situations twice (in 100+ hours of play) that I ran out. I had an interesting coversation with someone last session. He was recalling a hand between the two of us two weeks prior. He started that hand with 6BB and was all-in on the turn. He said "that's the one time I was down to 100 and didn't rebuy". (On that hand he had 55, I had JJ, and the flop was 55J.) The message is if you keep 6BB on the table you will run out, but it shouldn't happen often.