Not sure about the $30 but the free room was available to anyone on 2+2 if they shared the room with another player who came with them

This was months back when I thought I'd have time off imminently and now that it seems like I'll have time available on December/January I'm thinking about doing it again so honestly don't know if offer still stands (would be very surprised if no longer on offer) and I'd need to have a friend IRL who both has the time and won't get felted because offer only for groups of 2 to share a room

If you want pm me and I'll send you there email

Sounds tempting, but travel rake is tough to beat.

Hi everybody, I'm looking for feedback on my current bankroll management rules. This is my first post on 2+2 and I haven't been keeping track of what's been going on here for a while, so if this thread is not the suitable place for this post, please let me know and I will make my own thread to keep track of results.

First, some background info about me: I played full time online and live during the online poker boom, crushed 100NL at CDpoker and TitanPoker (if I recall correctly, these were skins on the "iPoker network" or something like that). I had some luck in massive micro buy-in tournaments with guaranteed prizes. When I had 20 buy-ins, I moved up to 200NL and thought that I crushed that too. I moved up to 400NL before I had 20 buy-ins and got felted. I thought it was variance, but in retrospect it was probably tilt, tilt and more tilt, with a sauce of dumb decisions on top. Went back to school, finished my degree, and 12 years later I'm doing quite well in my regular career. I find myself now on/in a place with an unstable internet connection, but with nearby casino's with max $25 rake on cash games and a limited amount of home games, usually with $20 buy-ins or lower. So I don't play online, only live. Also to relax and get out of the house and out of the office, as the core group at the home games is a great diverse group of friends. This year, three poker tours dropped by with MTT's ranging from $200 to $2250 buy-ins.

I track my money religiously and make monthly budgets. I've tracked my financial poker results for about 18 months and recently started to log the hours too, so I will know more about my hourly win rate. I'm up several k since I started to track my results.

I keep track in excel of two separate bankrolls, which are partly in a separate bank account and partly in physical envelopes: one that I call "regular poker" and one that I call "Big MTT's". For about a year, I budgeted $50 per month for my "regular poker" envelope and just kept adding the profits and that monthly $50 to that envelope. I don't add anymore from my budget, because that bankroll now has about $2K. Instead, I add $100 per month to my 'Big MTT's" bankroll.

From my "regular poker" bankroll I play $0.25/0.50 home games, $1/$2 in the casino's when there is a poker tour and $20 buy-in tourneys in home games. I play tight and hardly bluff at $1/$2. My rule is to have at least 20 buy-ins in that regular poker envelope so I shouldn't be playing $1/$2, but the crowd attracted by the poker tours is very juicy. I don't intend to play $1/$2 in the regular cash games outside of poker tours. My goal is to get this bankroll to $10K and play $2/$5, and move everything above $10K into investments, and move back to $1/$2 if I this bankroll goes down to $8K.

So I now add $100 every month to my "Big MTT" bankroll and I play max $300 buy-in live MTT's with that. I've cashed a couple of times already and I am more than half way to my goal of $8K in that bankroll. After reaching $8K, I intend to move everything above $8K into investments.

I bring max 2 buy-ins to the casino for both cash games and big mtt's, and max 3 buy-ins to my $20 tourneys and $0.25/$0.50 home cash games. I've set a max loss per month of $300 for a while but never lost that in a month. I think that I should now set my max monthly loss at $400, and stop playing that month after losing that.

What do you think?

A bit nitty imo. However, if $100 a month is all you can put towards poker from your regular income to help with the downswings then being nitty about it makes sense.

Thanks. I thought my rules were loose, as in <20 buy-ins for the big mtt's.

$100/m is all I want to put towards poker, mainly to prevent negative emotions.

You're not a pro, if you have to wait a couple months for another MTT buyin all that gets hurt is your time having fun and opportunity cost of tournaments you could've cashed in *shrug*.

yeah man, incredible you waited 13 years to make your first post

i think your system is fine, having an artificially low bankroll can help bring more enjoyment to microstakes

but for mtts, especially if they are just a few times a year, just open the wallet and play

you likely have an edge and if not, there are far more expensive hobbies that would have cost you much more anyway

THIS. I was a significant online limit 6-max winner and a slight winner starting my live NL run. My dad recently gave me guff about playing poker and I asked him "so this year for hunting how much money did you spend on shotgun shells, gas, the lease on your hunting cabin, and wages for your guide/cabin caretaker?"

He's also worried about me getting stabbed in the casino parking lot for my roll... but it's not like my friend could accidentally shoot my face off at the table when the board pairs and he gets excited.

+1 to that.

The cost of having this amount of money on stand by is bigger than the cost of taking big MTTs as a hobby.
You can also use your regular poker roll to buy in on this kinda of tournament... it’s close to 1 buy in of $1/$2 that you will lose what... once each 3 months?

I think it’s better to move your MTT roll to your regular poker roll (making only one poker roll), having a smaller chance of loosing it all and stablish yourself goals and limits of how many big MTTs you are playing and how many rebuys are you willing to put in each of em.

That way your limit of loss could increase (it’s so normal to loose 2buyins on any cashgame), that way your hours played could increase too.

All that said... the main thing is that you should do what gives you peace of mind.
If you don’t feel confortable with my “suggestion”, than you should keep doing what already is working for your reality.

Multiple rolls seems overkill for a part timer with a job, as does needing 20 buy ins. I’ve played 2/5 on as little as a 3k “roll” before. It’s not ideal, but if you consider yourself to have an advantage over the field, playing 2/5 is a significantly better use of your time than 1/2 and the fields are typically very similar in skill, especially if you’re in an area that runs higher stake as better players will matriculate to those.

Regardless, like others have said, you need to be comfortable, so do what makes you comfortable if it works for you and disregard the above if you don’t think you can do it.

Yes this is funny, as is people who don't track when they are running really bad. Also people who include promos in their winrate. I know some whose winrate is almost all promos since they only play during promo hours. Not much of a reflection of skill, except perhaps game selection.

I keep track of promo $$, but only for tax purposes.

Yeah, i mean if you have the likely skills to beat 2/5 and can easily replenish your roll through work or other sources of income i dont see many problems with aggressive shottaking. One of those few problems may be that i think it is bad for you mentally to go busto, even if it is a 3K "roll" playing 2/5.

For myself i have played as part time income now for several years and/or to raise my lifestyle and quality of life. Like, my work money is enough to cover rent, bills, food that kind of basics. My extra poker money each month gives me more spending money to shop different items like clothes, eating out at resturants, buying new electronics like laptops or smartphones. At the same time i am very aware of preserving my bankroll well, so that i will be able to earn from live poker also in the years to come helping me to keep my lifestyle. Busting my roll is not something i want to experience for various reasons.

Thanks everybody for the responses! I really appreciate your insights.

I just realized that I didn't explain why I wanted a strict set of rules, and that was that my losing streak on 400NL eons ago was quite traumatic, since I had been high on a roller-coaster and then lost most of it. I was at a difficult moment in life and pretty much the only thing that was going well was poker. So when that took a dive too, I hit rock bottom. 'Hopes down the f*cking drain' as Teddy KGB put it so eloquently. Got diagnosed with depression and was on antidepressants for a while.

Now, years later, I've been given a lot of opportunities and am doing quite well in life, work, and society. I associate my depression with my losing streak and I just don't want to go down that freaking rabbit hole again.

I don’t use winrate as a reflection of skill. I only care about the money, not comparing myself to others who aren’t even playing in the same player pool anyway.

I include everything in my winrate that’s part of my realizable expectation (BBJ is not realizable, stuff like comps and high hands are)

I like the winrate primarily to compete against myself, but I agree the money is paramount, which is why I focus on monthly profit. It's always satisfying to set a new monthly record.

Also, you include comps? I never even thought about that. I suppose I knew I was saving a lot of money on food costs (probably hundreds of dollars a month), but never thought about including this in my winrate.

Extra expenses?

Win rate is not a reflection of skill? I guess ERA is not a reflection of pitching skill either?

The best players win the most money long term. End of story. Anyone who disagrees with that has an obvious reason to disagree. It makes them feel better about themselves.

What do you mean? Are you asking if I deduct expenses from my win-rate? Depends on the context. For purposes of evaluating expected bankroll growth and RoR, yes. For comparing different travel destinations, yes. For bragging about how much bigger mine is than yours, no.

I didn’t say that anywhere.

Win rates can’t be compared like that. The same player will have different win rates in different venues. You could argue that identifying and getting yourself into the best games is a skill, but where you live isn’t.

You didnt say that anywhere?

mmm no it is not. It is a reflection of skill + how you run.

I have a $62/hour winrate over 1400 hours. I also have 5 sessions that account for a quarter of that winrate.... about 40 hours out of 1400 that account for a quarter of my winrate. I don't show up those days, I get sucked out on instead of scooping that $5000 pot, whatever, my winrate drops from crushing it to real solid.

If you take away my 5 biggest loses to make it 'even' or whatever, I still lose about 15% of my winrate.

A lot of poker is being there when someone decides to dust off $5000, not being the best player in the room.

I dont buy the "how you run" argument. Not when we are talking about long term. But then I dont play in games where people dust off $5K. And people say I play in soft games in S. Florida? LOL

In 6000 hours Ive never played a 2/5 hand with a pot over $2500. Ive probably only played 3 pots over about $1800.

I find it pretty hilarious that people think my games are soft and then I hear talk of $5000 pots and 5 sessions that account for 1/4 of a win rate.

A few days ago a guy opened 66 and ended up folding the turn to me on a J962 board when I made a huge turn check raise. We started the hand $1800 deep. Guys in my games aren't playing massive pots unless they have the nuts. Again, I dont know where you guys find guys dumping that kind of money but I guess if that's the case, then what I said isn't true. I sure dont see that kind of insanity here in S. Florida (or anywhere else Ive ever played) though and if you see that kind of craziness often enough, your win rate should be sky high and be able to absorb 1 or 2 suck outs in huge pots because you're making much more in the pots you win.

mike, i've never played in florida but I would be surprised if the reputation it has of snowbird games being soft and wild was incorrect

it seems pretty unbelievable you've only played 3 hands of 300+bb pots

are you seeing others play in pots this big?

do you by any chance wear a hoodie and have headphones on and don't really engage with the rest of the snowbirds socially?

"I don't use X as Y" does not equal "X cannot be used as Y." browni talked about what he personally finds important IRT winrate, and it's not dick measuring.

Mike, you have trod the edges of the "no drama in this thread" rules for a long time. This is your formal warning that any more questionable posts ITT will result in your banishment from it. I don't care if it's "not as bad as some others have posted." This is a lifetime achievement warning and if you do get banned from the thread it it will be for general tone issues, not that straw that breaks the camel's back.

I mostly agree. The "how you run" argument is mostly put forward by people who arent good enough to beat the current games for a solid amount, people who went busto or people who refuse to realize that it is a matter of skill when we talk longterm/several thousand hours. Yes variance is a factor mostly shortterm, but longterm winrate is one of the few factors we can objectively track.

Now, i am not saying that Ranma is one of those bad players mentioned above just to be clear.

Sent fra min SM-G975F via Tapatalk

Agree completely. "how you run" argument opens up a giant can of worms. If you take that line of logic into winrate, you also have to take into account how all 8 villains at a table run ("how they run").

You can't argue winrate isn't accurate because "how they run"......(long term)

Also you can't isolate the top ~5ish winning sessions and say they aren't part of your true winrate anymore then isolating the bottom ~5ish losing sessions. You can't argue that over ~2000 hrs dropping 15 top sessions and dropping 15 bottom sessions gives a more accurate winrate.

Hourly winrate isn't a perfect measure of ability, but it's pretty much the best we have (long term)