Having a good job (which reminds me, I really should get back to work...).

I'm probably older than a lot here, but having a good job which pays all the bills, mortgage, allows room for saving, planning for the future, etc. make playing poker for recreation so much easier.

I mentioned this in a recent post to a new poster (guy took it the wrong way / was too immature to understand) but the fact is this: We all know the old joke regarding the preflop mistake getting us into horrendous trouble later in the hand ("Mom, it's Billy and I'm in jail, don't ask why..." etc.). But I really think with poker the biggest mistake you can make in a poker hand is PRE - preflop. Be properly rolled, ideally with recreational money that doesn't mean a thing.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I started playing live after black friday. I am using money I won online. The best advice I could give you is to accurately record your winnings, don't live like a millionaire for a couple weeks because you won a few K, don't spend your poker money till you are comfortably overrolled for your stake.
My fiance would only care if I lost money, so I don't "treat" her with special gifts from poker money, I just show her the money I have saved/made from poker. She has taught me a lot about saving money and living within my means. I could go to the casino today and win $100,000 and it wouldn't really be fair for me to live my life any differently because she has quite a bit saved and she's not ballin. When you start looking at the cost of our wedding, college for kids, remodeling a house, losing a job, or whatever may happen in the future a few hundred thousand really isn't that much to be living an elaborate lifestyle.
I've started off my live NL career winning 9/9 sessions (45hrs) at 2/3/5 $500 max buyin game for $5905 so **** bankroll management lol live poker. jk i know i know

I'm positive I can find a ton of money that you can save if you are willing.

1. Do you pack your lunch for work or eat at the cafeteria/out?
2. Ever go out to lunch or dinner?
3. Ever go to a bar with your buddies for drinks?
4. How many apps/iTunes/video games you bought lately?
5. Mac 'n Cheese and Ramen noodles are filling for dinner.

There's hundreds of others. It just comes down to how bad you want it. If you want it bad, you can save the money.

Don't downplay Ramen... I have it about every day or two and can afford to eat out daily with Mrs EN09! Mac/cheez I can do w/o, Ramen is a staple. Mix in some sliced pork, green onions and... okay, heading to the pantry now...

cautionary tale about keeping br and rl monies seperate
So we were playing .01/.02 in the cafeteria and mikey, who has a serious choco milk problem kept running big and blowing his whole roll to the lunch lady.. guy had no concept of brm... he borrowed .75 c off of jonny on a one day .10 vig and he lost it all and then jonny beat him up and stole his pants and he nevver got another backer. fortunately my dad taught me to save a penny every day so by the time i got to 1/2 20 years later i already saved a buy in and took a shot. i lost it and saved another 20 years and then ran like a god and i have a 6 bi bankroll and live under a bridge. I am a winner!

That was a lot funnier in my head.

If you are a rec player save 2.5 buy ins and take shots every few weeks (tight is right). yes variance will kill your roll but it will also fill it. just don't spend out of your poker roll when you start winning and it grows itself.

If you ant to transition to pro just start hacking away at everything that costs money in your life (food that isn't a casino comp, relationships, cars, nice apt etc) sell anything that won't fit in your new rent by the week motel by the casino, get a job that provides enough to pay off your outstanding loans pay rent and still have a refill for your roll and go be miserable ggrinding until you can afford to have nice things again.

personally I'll just keep my small refil roll and enjoy my life and the free gas money i get from poker.

I worked to build a roll, Went broke (in poker roll terms) a few times in the early years, and Worked to replenish.
Now that I am not terrible... I have one and keep it completely separate.
It's in a safe place. Has been around for 4 years and has been growing. No one knows where I hide it.

Any time you spend at low stakes to build one is MUCH better spent working at least half of the time you would have spent playing and the other half working on your game.

As others have said, get a 2nd job and save the $ completely seperate for your roll. If you have time to play poker, you have time to work a seperate job, right? If you're not dedicated/disciplined enough to do this, you prob will struggle at Live poker. Be patient. I think if you did this (work hard and earn $) you'ld also be less likely to tilt off $'s cause you worked so hard to save it.

For me, I was lucky enough to have disposable income. I lost ~4K initially then figured out Live poker and now have grinded up to +40k.

This. When you see the chips as real money, you will make more emotional decisions.

The first time I played 2/5 all the 1/2 tables were full and I didn't want to wait 2 hours in a smoky casino to play. Since I only had about $2500 in my bankroll at the time, I was scurred money since the losses would hurt me. It helped me keep a tight range pre-flop, but also made me much easier to bluff and far too passive. If you see chips as car payments and food money, and not just chips, you are making it much harder to win.

You cant think of a way to make $4000 right quick ?? come on man !

You missed the royal wedding you should have got a ticket out to london bought some flags on a stick and some kate middleton and prince William masks and you would have your bankroll by now you moron.

Right now there is nothing much going on as i know of. So I suggest learning some magic tricks going to the beach showing the tourists and getting them to tip you ! obvoisly you will have to look homeless I had a homeless friend who used to do this and he would be very dissapointed if he didnt make $40 in any given hour, he would just work maybe two hours a day tho just enough to get messed up and get a hotel for the night. Its not that hard it will take you two days to get 3 good tricks down.

Anyhow just go out and make some god damn money will you !!

The only real hard thing about online BRM is that there is no potential to "move down" past $1/2 (usually) if your bankroll suffers (or if you had a small one to begin with). I've bought in for $100 at $1/2 with a 1K bankroll and been more than comfortable, and although most players would chastise me for buying in 50bb, it's worked out pretty well.

To be honest, if you're a pro, you're going to have a sufficient bankroll either by coming from online, or playing live. One way (and again, will be chastised for this) is to take shots with a few BI's. I don't think taking shots is a horrible way to start off as long as you're committed to playing a rush only UNTIL you have a comfortable bankroll - meaning, maybe you have 2 BI's saved up for the game, and you play it until you get up to 10, then start buying in half-stacked until you reach 20 full BIs.

Though, if you have a constant influx of disposable income, having 20BI at any one time is somewhat subordinate to being comfortable buying in/no chance of going lifebusto. Players that have 20BI + bankrolls don't BRING 20BI to the casino. It's more of a guideline for players who use Poker as their sole or primary source of income so they don't go bust and have to beg for change, but if you have a non-poker way of making money, it's not a big deal.

Luckily I'm still a student so after black friday I was able to just come home and live expense free while I work a crappy job to save up a bankroll.

I wasn't planning on coming home for the summer, but eating/living for free and having 100 percent of my income go straight to the roll is too good of a deal to pass up.

Just take a shot with 1 or 2 Buy ins and wait until you have another 1 or 2 buy ins to play again if you bust. Face the problem when you get to it imo.

You might win a couple buy ins the first time and never look back. I don't see why u need to have more to start out if it means you are going to wait to play at all, assuming you are prepared to lose that money playing poker anyway.

You and I sound like we could be the same person. Mrs Foldhmmm is the exact same way. I've never been a losing live player, (well not since the early day 6-7 years ago). In fact I give 25% of my profits to my partner every time I get home from playing and I still get grief.

Quote from other night. I come home after playing for only 1.5 hours with $603 profit. Wife "Do you know why you won?", My response "because I study the game and are good at it". Wife "No, because you left the casino". I've taken her on holidays with winnings, bought a $2000 + bed, new computers etc.

I don't spend any money on drinking or going out and my only hobby is poker. I am home every night. I ask to go out on a Saturday when the games are the loosest and most profitable and its like I'm asking permission to have an affair.

I never take more than 2 bi's which equals $400. I leave the ATM card at home. I don't play any other games at the casino. Still I get grief from the partner. I'm lucky if i can play 2 times a month. (Maybe I should put this in its on thread)

You are not alone. Mine is the same way, at least she was until I got laid off from work in January, grinded up a roll playing backed online, and now grinding 500NL live on my own dime and making ~$40/hr.

She still hates it, hates the idea we could go busto, but really, all it takes is to convince her that money grows on trees, and you have a skillset that will never leave you without an income no matter how F'd up our economy is, or what Uncle Sam decides, there will always be a game to play somewhere.

Anyways, been covering all expenses and adding more to savings than I was while working full time, in addition to building the roll larger and larger.

CLIFF: Built my roll from expendable income, spent/saved most for living expenses once laid off, built a new roll online, PROFIT.

Put me down for 1 diamond necklace, three laptop computers over the past 4-5 years, a ski weekend for her in Montana, and assorted other stuff. I don't fork over any of my winnings and she doesn't share in any of my losses. Home most of the time, no going out for beers with the boys, no golf, no boat or Harley. On-call 24/7 with the railroad to boot! In addition, I don't drink or booze it up at the tables, but she always asks if I was "flirting" with the waitresses (in a good natured way) LOL!

Wait until she see's my cash from FTP hit the bank! She has no idea how much I have on there, only I play ".25 and 50 cent" games online when I'm home alone and she's off at work. never play when she was home but since BF hit I decided to go once a week or so and play local. Hasn't been well rec'd but wtf, what else do I do except work the RR and stuff around the house?

I'll do you guys one better...not only have a financed several vacations and rescued us from having to turn down trips/nights out because the budget was tight (I will not use savings for fun), but I have tell mine that I'm playing a $20 freezout when I go...so basically my roll is stashed around my house and car, and when I leave for the game it's like the opening scene in Rounders, I'm digging cash out of every nook and cranny of our house.

I think the major issue with all of our wives is that they will never be able to disassociate the "buy stuff" value of our rolls, regardless of how we do with it. I have buddies like that too...my favorite is when a 25-yearold buddy is complaining about losing $1k in his 401k when the market crashed, like he was going to need that for his mtg payment next month or something.

While I can relate to the "poker vs the missus" issues above, I disagree with going to the table with upwards of only 2 BI. It just takes one unlucky hand as a huge favourite to get on our 2 BI, and then we'll soon be in a position where we're probably making a preflop mistake of not playing with the maximum BI and having the droolers covered. FWIW, I take 4 BI to my 1/3 ($300 max BI) so I'm never making that preflop mistake.

I'm saying this tongue-in-cheek (but the joke has to be made): the last like 10 posts are the most whipped things I've ever read on 2p2.

anyways, I built my roll from grinding for years online. Built multiple rolls online, lost them doing idiotic things. I've been on the same roll for about a year now and have made the most money from poker I ever have. Grinding 1/2 is diff (newly being legal has made me go more since I'm not afraid of getting perma-banned) but poker is poker and I've done pretty well at it so far.

I have used my 2nd job to fund my roll for live when it gets low in the past. Before BF I had a live roll and an online one. Guess I just have a bigger live one now.

For me it is not a question of bankroll. If I had $200 disposable, I might go skiing or play poker... whatever I felt like. If you dont have a roll, you are not a pro. Do something else till you decide to go pro. In the mean time play when you can and build a roll strictly from winnings.

The idea of saving $2000 before playing is serious LOL to me. If you save $200 a week for 10 weeks, why not play on the first week. If you are good, you will get to $2000 faster, if you are not good, saving the money before you start will not do anything but deny you of some badly needed lessons that are better learned when you are forced to think about them for a week before you try again.

Mrs. Bagzzz doesn't understand the concept of variance. I only played with recreational funds, and no matter how much I was winning, she would only remember the losses.

I solved this one by keeping my roll separate.We have a place where only poker money goes. It was never intended to be a "roll" because quite frankly we can afford to play much bigger games than we do using our ordinary income. But keeping the money separate helps explain variance. Our "roll" is over 6K and it came from one day me deciding to put the winnings from one buy in into an envelope and use it only for poker. I play about 1-2 times a month and 4 business trips to vegas a year. The "roll" was started 2 years ago.

Now as long as I use the money from the roll, I can play whenever and however I want without any flack.

For those who say we are whipped, I say it is worth it and also some wives have a point and keep people out of the casinos that shouldn't be there. If you can't explain to her your theories and rational, you might not know them well enough to be profitable anyway. You learn something much better when you have to teach it to someone else who will question you.

$700 saving + $1300 tax return= $2k roll, now ground up to a more comfortable 1/2-1/3 roll of $4.5K. Hopefully ready for 2/5 by fall.

Certainly not a "whipped" scenario inside the EN09 household. It's her level of understanding of the game of poker. In her mind, and the mind of many others obv, poker is a "problem" not a recreation. even though Wyoming has passed laws making games legal, she still thinks it's illegal somehow and I could get in trouble if a game gets busted lol. I think it's the instilled stigma of gamblers and their lifestyle of "not working" but gaming instead.

Some times she asks, "How much did you lose?" w/o regards to variance. Or she, in teh past, thinks I'm "gambling our money away". I've explained to her one does not always win. Her beloved Cubbies for example. In June we're heading to Wrigley for the Yankee series, $300 per seat/game just behind the dugout. Yet the Cubs are perennial losers! Teams don't always win the games they play even against inferior teams - "variance" honey!

Going to the game tonight! Wish me run good!

thanks for all the resposes guys. i think im just going to put a little bit away at a time until i reach about 2k or 2.5k and play 1-2 NL buying in for about 200, and playing tighter.

set aside abotu $1k, played 1/2NL really abc tight. this was when florida was $100max on all games. built it up to around $2k or so, then when florida raised the limits it was like shooting fish in a barrel. worked that $2k up to about $7k, took shots at 2/5 and ran like god for 2 months straight. then had like $15-$20K and then made 2/5 my main game with a nice roll for someone who still works a full time job outside of poker... but often times make more playing poker 20hrs a week than at a full time job.

I see why Chino Reem moved to miami. I forgot they had 100 max on all games.

work my real job and start with 1k, slowly built up