depending on comfort, i'd start taking shots at the 5-6k range, something like 1 out of every 4 or 5 times you go play, play 2/5. as your roll increases and if you're having success playing 2/5, i'd increase it linearly so that at 10k you are playing 2/5 close to 100%. by 15k, you should def be playing 2/5 100%.

all that is assuming you want to move up. some people are content playing 1/2 and being over rolled (or playing 2/5 and being rolled for 5/10+).

though it should be said, you should play the best game in the room that you're rolled for. if you see a bunch of 400bb stacked fish on a 1/2 table and you're a "2/5 player" and all the 2/5 games suck, go play the 1/2 game and crush it (hell, even if the 2/5 game is ok, it's probably better to play 1/2). for some reason some poker players tend to get a big ego about being a "x/x player" and they feel playing lower stakes is beneath them, i never understood it, take the easy money... leave the ego at the door and you'll make more money.

It doesn't matter how bad the players are, and below a certain level, it doesn't matter how good you are.* You aren't getting the math. Read up on "cumulative risk of ruin."

As with any discussion of risk, you have to figure out what your risk tolerance is. So, what happens when you run out of poker money? If the answer is, "I have to eat mac-n-cheese for every meal for the next three months," you aren't rolled for 1/2, let alone 2/5. If your answer is, "I'll go the ATM, shoot I make a half-mil a year, I don't even know what my account balance is but it's somewhere around five figures" well, knock yourself right on out. With the main problem in the latter case being, your don't even know what your bankroll is, which could be trouble, gambling-issue-wise. If the answer is, "I'll have to stop playing poker," trust me, it's a blessing in disguise. Shoot, I go bust and quit playing poker all the time, but not in that exact sequence. More like, I get fed up and quit playing and then use my br to buy stuff that's better for me, like motorcycles or, I dunno, cigarettes.


-----
* Proven true in blackjack, I'm assuming the same principle holds in poker.

This calculator is pretty awesome: http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

Should give you a better idea of what can happen.

As Abqdave already touched on, it totally depends on your overall financial situation and how poker fits into that.

From the tone of your post I'm going to assume you're a recreational player (i.e. you don't depend on income from poker for your living), and at this moment if you all of a sudden lost your entire bankroll you wouldn't be out on the streets, but you don't have the option of just pulling another $1,000 out of the ATM either (i.e. you would need to save up money from your job for a while to get back in action).

If that roughly describes your situation, you can be pretty aggressive with BRM. I'd say you can start thinking about dipping your toes into the $2/$5 games with a bankroll as small as $2,500. Just keep $2,000 aside as a roll for $1/$2 and feel free to use whatever you have above that to take shots at $2/$5.

Just for some more background I'm currently in college where i don't really have much in terms of monthly expenses so yea If i lose 30 or 40% of my roll taking a few shots it would suck but not really have any effect on my life. From what I've read so far I think I'm gonna keep grinding 1/2 and when i get in the 3-4k range take the occasional shot at 2/5 when the games are real good. Once i get to the 6-7K range ill start playing more regularly and then around 10k probably move almost totally over to 2/5

Size of BR has one very important factor: ability to win.

So rather than worrying about what you need for BR, you should be focusing on winning and yet I haven't seen it mentioned once in your posts.

I had this post sent to me a long time ago and I don't know who originally posted it but it's the single most important lifestyle and bankroll management piece of information I've ever received

"Personally, I think you should wait. You really want like a year's living expenses put aside. You sound a bit eager so I doubt you'll do that, but perhaps a few other tips I can give you that's kept me from going back to 9-5 for the past 12 years will be of use.

[I realize this is unsolicited, however I think you're a bit shallow on the funds and there's a lot of aspiring pros here, so I apologize for the hijack if you don't find it useful or if it comes off parental. Watching a lot of talented young guys come up and down over the years, though, these were their biggest leaks].

Life leak #1: Do not live based on your daily results at the tables.


Get a rough estimate of what you feel your expectation is, and pay yourself an hourly wage. I have no idea what your money management is like, I'm sure it's good, but there's a world of difference when you're doing it professionally.

Managing upswings is actually more difficult for most pros than managing downswings. Anyone can see that their bottom line is getting narrower when they are continually getting their nuts kicked in and something has to change (e.g., lifestyle, stakes, etc.), but when you're crushing the world and the money is easy, many people spend, spend, spend and find themselves behind the 8-ball when regression toward the mean kicks in.

However, this is very easily avoided. I'll just quote a post I made on this last year at the end of this post (more for online, but easily modified for live), if anyone's interested.

Life leak #2: Never loan professional poker players money.


This game is all about managing money, so if they come up short, then there's a glitch somewhere in their business plan. A glitch that will always have them broke/debt.

That's not a good person to lend to, and if it's a good friend, then you're only causing them more problems by not forcing them to address the root causes earlier, before they are so buried they stand no chance (Dustin Woolf is a good example, although he was more straight-up degen than anything else).

The point is it doesn't matter how good you are; if you're broke and need money, then you're ****ing up somewhere and you need to fix that instead of borrowing money. Telling them to get a job and play on the side to get back in the game full-time is the best way to ensure this person doesn't **** up in the future.

High stakes players (particularly) don't like to hear this when you tell them no and to get a job after they ask, "Well what am I supposed to do then?" (as if it's your fault their irresponsible ass is broke), but borrowing thousands to get into a game is just delaying the inevitable, exacerbating their situation and creating a new one for yourself. Don't do it.

Buy them groceries, pay a month's rent, whatever, but don't lend a stake. At least when you don't get paid back, you'll know your money went to good use at the time.

Life leak #3: Actually work.


This is another reason why paying yourself an hourly is better than just blowing money when you've scored large; that is, you know well enough how much you really earned when you played a short session, regardless of what you leave with, and if you only give yourself access to your hourly, you won't be living above your actual means. If you want to make more, play more.

I've seen so many newbs make $10K in an hour and then they hit the bar and party for 4 days spending $2K and thinking they're still up $8K for the week. In reality, they've earned maybe $200 and are actually $1800 in the hole for four days when regression toward the mean comes knocking.

Having money, freedom and youth in an atmosphere that thrives on this can be distracting and worse. The casino is your workplace. Party somewhere else and realize you have work the next day.


Life leak #4: Play with an edge, not with your ego.


This is all pretty self-evident but can become muddled when it's not recreation. I could go on with this one, but suffice it to say, extending sessions out when games turn bad or when your table image is completely shot in order to avoid booking a loss is losing grasp on what your objective is for sitting at the table.

Those guys that party after an unusual hot-streak at the beginning of a session are the same guys playing 20 hour sessions when they are stuck. When their table image is good and can get away with taking more than they typically could, they leave; when their table image is completely shot and inferior players have confidence to make plays they typically wouldn't, and are now playing them more correctly, they stay.

Poker doesn't owe you anything. If you remember that from the outset of your professional endeavors, you will likely never become one of those insufferable, self-absorbed, narcissistic douche-nozzles at the tables. That's a great way to stunt or even halt your growth as a professional player.



<money management post>

I run it like a business, because it is a business - it's a sole-proprietor business. I pay myself a wage despite my results at the tables. I pay myself what my overall expectation (EV) is in a game.

I'm not going to use my figures, but let's say you play $1/$2 NL and your established win rate is 6bb/100. This means that you earn $12 every 100 hands, or $12 / 100 = $0.12 per hand.

Your EV in the game is $0.12 per hand. If you played a 1247 hand session, then you earned, in EV, $149.64. It doesn't matter if you won $1500 or lost $1500 - those are deviations from the mean and have little to do with anything and nothing to do with your actual worth at the table.

This is why broke winning professional players are broke. They spend lavishly during upswings and come up short during downswings because they've never actually determined how much they truly are earning (long-term) at the tables and compensate themselves accordingly.

So what you do is decide what percentage of total expected profits (EV) will go toward business capital (depends on a few variables). Say you want to cut 20% to the business and keep 80% of your EV (wage).

Now that 12 cents per hand becomes 9.6 cents per hand; the other 2.4 cents go toward expanding the business (i.e., larger capital = better investment opportunities).

Let's say you played 8274 hands in a week:

8274 * $0.096 = $794.30 to you for your time at the tables
8274 * $0.024 = $198.58 to the business for financing your play (even though it is you staking yourself)

Keep separate business and personal accounts. The business account is not for you to touch and buy a $5,000 Rolex, for example. If you can't pay for that watch out of your own personal bank account, then put more hours in at the tables (see the Full Tilt debacle for what can happen when you commingle business capital with personal finances).

I suffered the longest break-even in my life a few years ago. I had 4 million hands in the bag before that and never had anything close to that stretch nor thought it was even possible. However, I was still paying myself my wage for my time at the tables - for months.

No one matches IRA contributions, no one pays 75-80% of health insurance premiums, no one splits tax liabilities, no one pays for sick days, and you don't have the option of collecting unemployment benefits during long downswings. As a professional player, you are both the employee and the business owner. As a business owner, you must pick up the slack in those areas and be able to compensate yourself accordingly.

Health insurance premiums, IRA's, etc. disbursements must still be paid out - just like it is at any other corporation that's suffering a downtrend - you must pay your workers for their time. Fortunately, you, as a responsible business owner, didn't overspend when times were good and can afford to keep greasing the wheels when times are tough.

As you can see, if you pay your business a suitable amount of your profits and never pay yourself above your expectation, then you can weather the swings when the time comes and continually expand the business (move up) at the same time."

4 mil @ 25 hands/hour = 160,000 hours played...

That probably includes online hands.

It was posted by z4reio in response to Pay4MySchool here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...3&postcount=89

obviously...

this is obviously posted by an online player, you can tell that by the big blinds per 100 and the quantity of hands

This discussion reminds me of the early 1990's when I was in Vegas on business 10-15 days a month… and playing about 30 hours a week during weekday evenings. Once the 10-20 Limit Holdem regulars realized I was not "just a tourist" I had some revealing chats with some of them.

One guy told me he played for a living (???) eight hours a day, 5 days a week, all year (it was late July at the time). So I asked him "how are you doing for this current year?". His answer was a surprise - down $7,000 for the year. Of course that might have been a bluff, but I had gotten to know him after a while and think that there's a 95% chance he really WAS down for the year.

$1000 a month over 160 hours each month. About $7 per hour or 1/3 of a big bet per hour.

At the time I thought to myself "I would probably find another line of 'work' after 7 months. That 7-month session, around 1000 hours, meaning about 30,000 hands (at 30 hands an hour) … if that's not pretty much close enough to "the long run" then to us mortals "the long run" doesn't have much meaning. But he was serious that he "played for a living".

you couldnt be more wrong if you said the sky was purple.

basically if you think 30k hands is the long run, you are just delusional and will end up looking at data is still statistically insignificant.

at 30k hands you can start to infer things, but the problem is with live poker, by the time you hit 30k hands, you probably play so much differently compared to the first 10k. it's the equivalent of a dog chasing it's tail...

Well... assuming that you are improving your game with those adaptations, or at least trending so that you will be improving over time, can you not still infer things? #Mostlikelyanignorantnaiveresponse

30k hands may not be the long run, but it's definitely enough for a live player who is beating the game at a high enough wage to play for a living. Having a losing month for a true live pro is rare enough, being down after 7 months has nothing to do with getting to the long run.

What is typical limit holdem hourly stddev?

This is not true. A pro winning 30$ an hour and playing 4200 hands a month is most likely to lose 2 out of the 12 months during the year, (SD of 400$ an hour used). It is not that unlikely to lose even more than that.

Just saw that your post might be talking about limit, in that case disregard my comment.

I have known plenty of losing "pros." Can't base anything off of what someone calls themselves. The losing "pros" that stick around just have money from outside poker. Quite common in my experience.

Wow!! So my statistics knowledge is rough (I think I'll sharpen it back up, should be fun).
Is 400/hr reasonable?? So I ran STDev of my data, its only 100/hr. But the data points I used were average $/hr for each session I played.

Of course it's unlikely to lose more than that. That's how you arrive at the estimated numbers of 2/12, because it's by definition unlikely to lose more than that. I'm not even arguing that 2/12 isn't okay (even though that estimate is of a $30/hr winrate and I'm not sure why anyone would be playing 5/10 over 2/5 for that) but 7 months of not turning a profit? There's simply no way he is good enough to make a living at that game.

Taking session STDev of your sessions and trying to extrapolate the per hour data is not as simple as just dividing by average session length. There is a complicated calculation I saw in twoplustwo somewhere.

I think 400/hr is reasonable for 2/5, going to depend on your playing style, how deep the game plays and on opponents.

Alright, yeah mine is for 1/2 & 1/3. I'll just have to take these simulations with a grain of salt, cuz I've done plenty of simulations in other fields... garbage in = garbage out. Pretty decent garbage in = garbage out.

You should be able to afford three losing months of 600bbs a month. Plus living expenses. And having a roll to play with. Without this you will have a very high risk of ruin. Alot of pros don't factor in their losing months in their overall winrates. A losing month is just that...you LOSE MONEY.

Lets say you have a 15k roll and you feel very rolled for a $500 buyin 2/5 game.

Month one you lose 3k and have 2k in bills. Roll 10k

Month two is the same. Roll is 5k and too small to grind 500nl so you switch to 1/3

Month three you lose 1800 and have 2k in bills. Roll is 1200 and you're ****ed.

This is how it works in reality but most players (myself included) dust off a few hundred after large winning sessions and it makes our risk of ruin even higher!

This whole thing about "10bb/hour" really irks me. Plenty of people are saying crushers can win at 2/5 at 10bb/hour which is so BS imo. @ 25 hands/hr, this gives us a 40bb/100 winrate. There is no way any player on the planet can attain such a winrate after any reasonable converged sample. Magorko (one of the 500z regs) recently played 20k hands at 2NL with a 20bb/100 winrate. 20bb/100 at $2NL. From one of the biggest crushers in online poker. This is likely unsustainable for 200k hands either. So how can we be saying 40bb/100 is attainable by a $500NL live "crusher"? Sure 10bb/hr is achievable over 100-500 hours, easy. But it's just not possible over a converged sample.

I would think at 2/5+, if you're winning at 5bb/hr over 2k hours or more, you're crushing.