if someone plays $1-2 NL at a place with NO CAP on the maximum buyin, how much should they buyin for? im sure not buying in more than i have to i usually buyin $100-120. this is a little low since my roll is $13,000 but once u subtract 6 months of living expenses (and take into account this is the lowest my roll has been in 2 yrs) my roll is about as low as u can get.

forget about my situation, im not changing my buyin (unless i start doing $200 instead of $100-120) but how much do MOST of u buyin for? assume that u arent getting any other income and cannot replace it if u lose the whole $13,000 and will be homeless and panhandling if u go busto. and assume that like me, your hourly will run somewhere between $12 and $20 per hour

your question how much more to do with your bankroll then it does the buyin cap.

Obv if you're rolled I'd want to cover the table almost always. Maybe not very beginning of session but slowly add on as to not scare off deep fish.

with ~8k roll, $200 is fine

Under the scenario you describe, I'd want my stack size to be at least 100 BBs (so I have enough maneuvering room post-flop), but not buy in for 200 BBs or more. Thus I'd probably buy-in for $300 or at least $250 so I don't need to constantly top of my stack.

forgot to include that here in the las vehas golden nugget, most of the players who are deepstacked buyin from $500-2000. then some of the regulars who are used to buying in $300 max elsewhere, (regulars but not regulars in THIS room) they buyin the same $300. and about 1-3 people sit with $100. me, and a few broke tourists.

sometimes there is 6 or more with $500-3000 out of 9 max players

I wouldn't consider your 11k as a bankroll if you don't have six months living expenses saved. I would buy in for 300 in your case. But if you actually had an 11k bankroll I would buy in for at least 500 or play 1/3.

My philosophy would be pretty much what it is at capped games. I buy in for 100bb minimum and the lowest amount that still covers every player I consider myself to have a decent edge on. If there was a fish with $2k id buy in for $2k. If the fish were all sitting on $200 and the pros all on $500 I would buy in for $200. Cover fish and limit risk vs skill.

and if the amount the fish had on the table amounted to 95% of your bankroll, and u had no job or other income to replace it, how much would u buyin for? lets say the fish had $23,000 and some of the pros had quite a bit too.

There are 4-5 fish sitting with $2000+ in this 1/2 game? If thats true, why is everyone always complaining about how bad and nitty the games are in Vegas?

because no one ever leaves the strip to come to the nugget downtown. many tourists have never been downtown and ONLY visit the strip. many tourists dont like the room because they dont realize they now give $2 hour, now have wifi, and now have comfortable chairs, none of which they offered 5 years ago. so they dont know about the game. plus, they wont ever play $1-2 even if the average stack size was a million dollars because their ego wont let them move down in stakes. and i didnt say 4-5 fish were sitting with $2000. i said 5-6 were sitting with $500-2000 plus at times.

it really dont do much for me seeing as i only buyin $100-120 but of course short buyins give u a huge edge over anyone whose deepstacked. and the deep stacks know u have the advantage which is why they dont like them.

Because no one in Vegas wants to play 1/2 and/or go downtown. The Golden Nugget game is a gold mine. It's not common to have 4-5 fish sitting $2K deep, ime, but I'd bet it happens. It's common to have 4-5 fish sitting ~$500 deep.

4-5 fish sitting $500 deep is a gold mine. That game could be beaten for $50+/hr. Screw the Aria. Id be slumming downtown.

I guess that boils down to risk tolerance. I personally would buy in 10% of my bankroll or enough for the largest realistic pot (whatever is less) if there are multiple endlessly deep fish in a 1/2 game. Common wisdom would be 5% or less of bankroll.

Is the golden nugget game really that fishy? I've always held the assumption that downtown games would be bad compared to the strip

lmao get real.

You're never going to buy in 10% of your entire BR if you have absolutely no other source of income/ability to get a well paying job and would be forced into homelessness.

We're answering from his perspective, not our own

If I couldnt answer these questions, I wouldnt be trying to play 1/2 for a living.

Buying in for 10 percent of your total bankroll is crazyness imo (if you dont have anymore money, other type of safetynet or other sources of income), and will put you into a decent chance of going totally busto if you hit a real downswing. Like if you have a $2000 roll and buys into 1/2 games for $200 at a time, you are just praying that you dont go on a downswing in order for you to not go busto. Its poor bankrollmanagement, and its demonstrating a poor understanding of the very possible swings in poker if youre gonna play your A game- wich amongst other things consists of not being scared money and not being afraid of taking the spots that occure.

Also what Mike said. If you are unsure of such basic things i think its very very likely youre not ready to go pro and play cards for a living.

Kinda hard to answer that without knowing just how much of the roll the 6mo living expenses represents.

Regarding BIing short versus deepstack is also pretty dependent on an accurate view of your skill advantage over the table short vs deep. My guess (?) is that most overestimate their skill advantage deep, but I could be wrong (simply cuz I suck at deepstack myself).

And I've yet to play in games where anyone is punting big stacks on a regular basis with lol holdings (and yet people punt small stacks *all the time* with lol holdings), so I kinda think the whole deepstack thing is a bit of a myth. Even most massive fish who punt shortstacks all the time play deepstacks vastly differently, imo. Although having said that, I can see how if you definitely do have a big edge deepstacked then it could perhaps be a goldmine; but you have to know you have a big edge.

Gshortstackingisfine,imoG

GG 1 hunnit percent correct here. Most would be significantly better off not playing deep.

Also your new avatar sux ass. You should use the 1 miami suggested

When speaking about deep stack we r thinking of 200bb+?Deep stack,in theory,should reduce variance ("luck" factor).Probably that's why rules in that Libratus vs Humans match were -every next hand resetting to 200bb.

I challenge anyone to provide convincing evidence that the variance of our results in dollars decreases with stack depth.

There is a formula to calculate risk of ruin depending on your bankroll, SD and win-rate. You do not need to subtract 6 months of living expenses to figure out your "poker bankroll." Your poker bankroll should NOT be considered separately from your living expenses, except for an emergency fund. A month or two of living expenses should be fine, so that if you go busto you don't have to live on the street while you look for a job (AFAIK it doesn't take six months to find a job).

Use the calculator here:

http://www.reviewpokerrooms.com/poke...uirements.html

Before you enter your win-rate, you need to make an adjustment for your expenses. Take your monthly expenses and divide by the number of hours you play in a month, and subtract that from your win-rate.

When inputting your numbers err on the side of caution. It is more costly to overestimate your win-rate than underestimate it.

Both your SD and win-rate are going to depend on what you buy in for, and it's hard to model. If you are used to buying in for 100-120, I would just stick to that, since drastically changing your strategy is risky and also relies on you to correctly estimate your new win-rate and SD. If your RoR is really small then consider buying in for more and play for awhile to get more data. Don't feel bad about hitting and running. If your stack is above an amount you'd comfortably buy in for, leave. It's Vegas and you can finish your session at a ton of other places.

The actual formula is given by BruceZ (awesome poster!) on this page:
http://archives2.twoplustwo.com/show...fpart=all&vc=1

OP did actually ask how much we personally would buy in for. Yes I would risk 10% bankroll. I did also acknowledge that it went against traditional advice so I don't see where the problem is.

Unless we are highly disabled or have a criminal record homelessness is simply not realistic. Fast food and other **** jobs are always there if worst comes to worst. 10% roll in a fantastic and rare spot vs having to temporarily work a **** job is fine with me.

No lol, you're just not exploiting it.

If they aren't "punting stacks", that means they require a nutted range to call it off for 300+bb. So that means you should put them in super tough spots and overbet 3x pot often when you know their capped.

Obviously if you don't know/aren't willing to bluff and implement such a strat, buying in super deep won't do you much good unless you cooler them .

Let me put it this way. Golden Nugget is the only place I play $1/2 in Vegas. It is an easy and very profitable game. I haven't seen the fish get their whole huge stacks in very often in my limited sample size, but I've seen medium-sized pots with absolute crap many, many times.

When I go to Vegas, I'm not there to grind. I'm on vacation, and when I play poker I'm usually at $2/5 or at a big donkament, because neither ever runs where I live. If I were grinding, though, I'd probably play at the GN where the other grinders aren't and where stacks are much deeper than the other grinderless spots like the Excalibur, at least until my roll and my skill level allowed me to play bigger games without reducing my winrate or increasing my RoR.

FWIW, I usually BI for $300-400 at the GN, and keep an extra hundo or two in greens in my pocket for topping up if I lose a couple pots or if I see a spot I want to cover. As for what I would do in TBC's case, I'd prob BI for about $250, which would allow SPRs big enough to play some speculative hands, even given the oversize raises that 1/2 often sees.

actually i think only 3 months is needed, according to my phone i only have 1 bad month at most per year, sometimes 2, but theyre not consecutive. but only one losing month in poker. it only tracks poker, not any other games.

most of the time in the past 2 years, which is tracked on my phone, my roll was between 13k and 25k. it once got slightly lower and once got higher. most of the time it was about 17 to 19k. in the time period 1993 to 2008 it often was well below 10,000 so im happy with these figures.

so im thinking 2500 per month in rent, food, Uber, and miscellaneous. so if 7500 is needed to hold onto for 3 months, or 15,000 for 6 months, this takes a lot out of the roll, which is why im not comfortable with 2-5 instead of 1-2. sometimes ill play 1-3. when u subtract either 7500 or 15000 whats left is actually the poker roll.

seperating them any way other than mentally is pointless for if u go broke in the living roll u dig into the poker roll to survive. and if the poker roll goes broke, u dig into the living roll to stay in action. when u have been without a job for 25 years with no history of ever having one, and the most u can earn is the minimum wage of 7.25 per hour u wont want one no how.

but yeah if at all possible i would like to start slowly raising my initial starting buyins and seeing if it helps increase my win rate per hour. either this or try to slowly migrate to 2-5, but i dont feel comfortable with 500-1000 swings daily mentally with less than 25k

as to why my roll never gets big about 2 times per year i tend to throw away 20-25 percent on blackjack. bad idea i know but i do have a big plus count when i make them big bets but i bet way too much to get unstuck so if it goes badly, then

at poker im more disciplined by far, u will never see me putting this much of the bankroll at risk. i like to buyin for 1 percent of the roll and hit and run if i get it up to 3 percent.

yeah... how much we would buy in for given his circumstances.

lol, you're never going to build another roll AND pay bills grinding an $8/hr job. All your money will go towards sustaining yourself via rent/food etc.

Even if you score a $10/hr job and work 50 hour a week, that's ~1600/month after taxes. Food/rent is going to cost you at least 800/month unless youre in a total ****-hole eating ramen. Add on phone/internet and anything else you might buy as to not lose your sanity, and you're looking at maybe 1-2 buy ins per month (again, assuming you live with the bare minimum).

So, it'd take you about 6 months of grinding through hell to get back to a opportunity to play poker again. When you've never worked a job before and you have to work a fastfood/retail job for 50 hours a week, and your home/food is **** as well, well, idk about you but I'd go insane.

As I've said before, if this is your reality if you go busto, then your Risk of ruin is wayyyy more important then maximizing EV. Buying in for 10% of insane.