I gotta be perfectly honest with you. I don't really have downswings, unless winning less than normal is a downswing.

Which pretty much sums up the ridiculousness of this thread .

Congrats on your continued success!

No downswings huh? Good for you!

When I mentioned 100 buyins being ridiculous I was strictly talking bankroll, not liferoll. Even when I played for a living, my life expenses were pretty much nothing so that's not something I really consider.

Anyways, I think we've had this discussion quite a few times and have come to the conclusion that crushing players will rarely ever go on $10k downswing in typical 2/5 games. That's why it's hard for me to grasp needing a $50k bankroll for 2/5.

Personally I just think if you lose a lot of buyins there is probably something wrong with your game. When I play well, I pretty much win every session and when I play poorly I win nearly all of my sessions too, so how the hell am I going to go on a $10k downswing? My guess is that players that go on these downswings are trying to push every single edge, even when the edges don't actually exist. That's when I tend to have my bigger losses.

I agree with you on alot regarding these topics. Its worth as a reminder though that not everyone on this board is a crusher, and may go on bigger downswings as a result.

Either way, being overrolled is certainly the best option- and for experienced players its obvious why. In slow livepoker you can run over expectation for a freaking long time, months and even years if you dont log alot of hours to smooth variance out both ways. But when the death run hits you, even though its rare, you need that big bankroll to avoid going mentally crazy.

It also comes down to personality to some extend. How well are you built mentally, can you still show up to play good +EV poker after seing your 50 buyin bankroll being cut in half by the worst downswing in your life so you only have 25 buyins left? Can you really manage that stress?

If you play fulltime for a living with no other sources of income, i dont think 100 buyins is unreasonable. If you play parttime however, with another job on the side also bringing in money/or you have other sources of money coming in i agree that 100 buyins is taking it too far.

But i mean, after a couple of times into DGAFs "The Abyss", i really learned how important it is to play properly rolled, and if possible overrolled.

What's your session winning percentage?

GcluelesswinningpercentagenoobG

Not everyone is a crusher but most people aren't even winners, correct? My guess is that most players that go on 50 buy-in downswings in live low stakes are not winners at all, or at the very least are not playing winning poker. These players may be better served to have a smaller bankroll.
No clue, and not super relevant since I do often exercise the bad habit of not leaving until I am unstuck but if I had to guess historically it's probably around 80%, maybe 75%. Since getting back into live low stakes again and putting in lots of sessions starting in late October, it's over 90%, which obviously involves running above expectations.

Ok, just trying to figure out what "pretty much win every session" means, and I'm guessing 75% isn't that ridiculous, especially if you mostly attempt to play until unstuck. I'm at 66% myself at 1/3 NL (mostly always leaving at a predetermined time), but over a lol 627 session sample size.

I've also never been on a 1000bb downswing, but again lol sample size of only ~5K hours, and obviously very low variance style. But if I ever played for a living I know the bigger the BR the better with regards to mental health, so I have zero problem with people overestimating versus underestimating in this regards.

GcluelessexpectationsnoobG

I've lost 5 buy-ins in less than 20 minutes playing AA AA KK AA QQ

It's why I asked the question snowman. 75% does seem high, but he does admit it is a guess plus that he mostly attempts to play until unstuck, so it doesn't seem completely farfetched.

GcluelessfarfetchednoobG

I remind everyone of the rules they agree to when they come in to the is thread. Getting chippy in here. Stop it.

Graphs and screenshots of PokerIncome or it didn't happen.

So did that end up being a winning session or a losing session?

You've been able to accomplish these things without being super great at poker nor having adapted your game much over the years. I have much more experience playing poker than the vast majority of Live Low Stakes players, but it's not like I play really good poker all the time. I'd say I play pretty bad really. At times I have fancy play syndrome, I gamble too much, and I struggle with mental game issues...not as often as earlier in my poker career but even a short lapse in focus can be very costly since I don't play predefined ranges like a typical TAG might. Still most of the opposition is playing much worse than me which makes it very difficult to lose.

I think that it also bears mentioning that there may be big difference between a person's view of BI's. I consider a BI to be 100bb. So if you are short stacking with 20bb, you will need more BIs if you mean 20bb but likely not as many $$s.

When I'm playing 200-500bb deep on a daily basis, my variance goes up dramatically. I don't see how it's possible to play deep and not end up down swinging a 1000bb (might be just a couple bad hands). It seems that my win rate has also come up a lot along with my variance as I play deeper more regularly.

Sure if you buy in deep and the game plays big then the variance can be way higher. In my last session a player at my table was stacked for like $7k flush over flush. The game has a table match so the player took an immediate $7k hit to his roll. Even though the stakes were technically 2/5 the hand was more comparable to a $10/$20 hand. Buying in for $7k into a game that plays big is not really comparable to the swings one can expect in a typical live low stakes games.

I guess one shouldn't care much about session results, but I think it's human nature, and one thing I like about playing short stack is that every hand is impactful and no single hand will make or break your session. Being stacked AA vs KK with a 60bb stack is no big deal. I can literally win 50% of my stack back on the next hand without even going to showdown.

I recently started buying in deep to 2/5. The first time I did this I bought in for $3.5k. In one hand I ended up 4-betting to $600, 1 player called all in, and a loose maniac who covered me also called $600. Long story short, flop was 884r, I had KK, the all in opponent had KK, and the loose maniac had 85 which left us both drawing dead on the flop.

Fortunately the run out was such that I only lost another $600 bet on the hand. I could have easily lost $3.5k, but as it stood I still lost $1.2k. The maniac ended up leaving and the table reverted to a normal 2/5 game that was playing pretty small. That was literally the only hand that played big the entire session. That's probably the one thing I really don't like about playing super deep. 1 or 2 hands can completely make or break your session. If I play perfect poker as a short stack, I might as well have a printing press just printing money. However, if you play perfect poker deep, 1 hand could cause you to lose your ass.

Of course it's all one session so who cares blah blah blah.

Exactly. This is why it is important to have a proper bankroll. When playing deep the variance can be large. So have more BI's makes sense not only from a ROR standpoint, but from a mental/emotional standpoint to be able to see a large losing session (say 3-4k) and it not phase you 'cuz you are properly rolled.

If I've only got 20 BI's (at 100bb BI's - so 2000bb = $10k) a $3k losing session is catastrophic. But if I've got a $50k bankroll, not so bad.

Short stacking is a viable strategy that takes little skill to implement and can regularly turn a profit because players are so bad at adjusting to it. However, once multiple players start short-stacking it sure sucks the fun out of the game. And if players are at all decent and adjust (which is far easier than adjusting to a good deep stack player) then much of that profit dries up. I've also seen tables simply break when too many short-stackers show up, as most people are interested in a fun time at the table and seeing flops, something that short-stack play generally discourages.

60bbs is a relative short stack for live but it's far too deep for a prototypical short stack strategy. I'd say it takes a lot more skill/knowledge/experience and a hell of a lot more work to play a 60bb LAG strategy than it does to play a typical 100-200bb TAG strategy that most winning live players implement.

I have an infinite bankroll, but I still prefer printing money over leaving it up to the luck of a single hand or two to determine how my session goes. Of course, if every hand plays deep it's no big deal, as it's just like playing a T/20 rather than 2/5 but when the game is playing like a 2/5 and then just a handful of hands play like a T/20 then the variance sucks because it will take a very long time to realize your expectations over the long run.

I'd prefer to play T/20 with 100bbs rather than 2/5 with 400bbs if the 2/5 game is mostly playing like a 2/5.

Wouldn't you need a larger bankroll for the former than the latter?

For sure, but bankroll is not the issue. For me it's more about consistency. We can expect ups and downs in any form of poker but in live cash games I have the expectation that I will win consistently month in and month out. If I play in 5 monster pots in a month and I run below expectations in all 5 then it doesn't matter if I played perfect poker all month long, that's a losing month. By contrast, one month I lost all in preflop 7 times (0-7) with AA and still had a big winning month.

How many hours do you play on an average month?

i finally met dream crusher in person shortly before leaving Texas, and i used to think hes a troll. but from seeing him in the poker room, he seems to actually be a good player. i will bet he wins. and very few good players live in dallas. thats why games are better in texas. i shouldve stayed there instead of coming to florida.

I'm trying to limit myself to 20 hrs a week but have yet to achieve that in the past 5 months. This month I put in 160hrs (+4 hrs for a free roll tournament).