Not sure the recs will have the money to throw at poker if the economy tanks. We're definitely riding the edge of a bubble right now. Detroit scene went belly up in 2009. wasn't good for any pros.

BR & BRM

I have been reading chunks of this thread, some from the beginning pages and about the last 50 posts up to submitting this post. I came to LLSNL most recently from 10/20 LHE and prior to working my way up stakes ladder of LHE, I played and built poker BR starting at $1-$5 7-card stud in Atlantic City, NJ and topping out at 10/20 7-card stud before transitioning to LHE as low to mid-level stakes stud games started to disappear.

During two occassions in my life did I rely on playing cards for a significant portion if not all of my income: once during the summer after I graduated college and also for about a year after the dot come bubble burst. At all other times, playing poker has been a recreational hobby.

During the times I played 10/20 LHE as a 'full-time pro' I used the 1000 Big Bet BR + 3 months living expenses set aside rules. I minimized expenses, played extremely tight, i.e. didn't 'gamble' a lot of hands, and averaged anywhere from $16-$20/hr in live play, essentially just under 1 Big Bet/hr - not bad in the days of $4 rake or $5/30 min dealer down time collection. Nothing to get rich from, but managed to survive what would've been an otherwise bad time in my life. Other times showed about same hourly win rate but with higher variance and larger STDVs.

Now playing 1/3 NLH as a 'serious' recreational player, I carried over the BR from LH and have worked to build up so that a 100BB buy-in is ~1% of BR; I am still ok buying in for 150-200BB where I can, but still use 5% BR stop-loss. Since the re-opening of casinos (and after much needed studying, learning, and training), I have been averaging 5-7BB/hr with a STDV of about 3BB so ~65% of the time at or near break even to small/medium profit with about 10-15% of the time as losing smallish to medium and about ~1.5ish% of occasions of max or near max losses, i.e. no more than 5% of overall BR in one session between buy-ins and top-offs as stop-loss measure.

I'm not sure how to apply Kelly Criterion to poker bankroll (as opposed to say BJ card counting base unit bet sizing with respect to BR) to properly assess Risk of Ruin (RoR), but I am constantly told that I am 'over bankrolled' for 1/3 and should be playing any of the $5BB games. Aside from lack of comfort/confidence or just feeling more likely to be 'outclassed' at this higher level, am I just better off staying where I am with current BR levels and continue current BRM practice of 'paying myself' a 'minimum' wage (~2BB/hr) for all hours played at the end of the month (assuming overall profit over last 90 days) and re-invest all other proceeds? It's not that I don't want to move up in stakes, but I want to feel confident in both my skill level and that my BR can handle introductory phase/period adjustment swings - nothing like having to sweat over dough after moving to 'new digs'.

The agreement I have with my wife is that I do not use monies from my, hers, or our salaries to replenish BR losses. Trips to Vegas for work-related purposes are paid from/by our respective employers expense reimbursements. Any Vegas trip that I take alone that is purely for recreational vacations, i.e. spend weekend with guy friends, all expenses are paid from my poker BR and/or profit proceeds.

So I am still over bankrolled? Should I really work to move up to $5BB games sooner rather than later? Or should I work to increase my hourly rate at 1/3 before considering move, with respect to comfort level with supporting existing BR?

Assuming you're a winner, which it seems you are, you are massively over rolled for the stakes. So, that's not a problem at all.

The real issue is that you need to get your wife under control.

I don't know how you log your sessions but it's not hard to calculate standard deviation in Excel. Mine is about 91BB/hour calculated over my last 1500 hours of 1|2 100BB cap.

I wouldn't bother trying to apply Kelly Criterion to poker. For RoR you can use a simple calculator or formula. http://www.reviewpokerrooms.com/poke...uirements.html

Remember to subract money coming out of your bankroll to "pay yourself" from your winrate. Your RoR with your bankroll, win-rate and a realistic SD should be practically 0. Even moving up to 2|5 it should remain near 0 and you can always move back down.

Did you play 10/20 LHE at the TAJ? I played it on a couple weekends in 2007. I can see why you became bankroll cautious, it was actually $50 just to see the flop.

aren’t you the same guy that tipped $60 in a hand history I just read? Great that you’re so generous but really tough to contemplate a 5-7bb an hour winner tipping like that while attempting to build a roll to move up in steaks

you are saying u have a 30k roll for 1/3?

It sounds like you have a BR + multiple salaries that take care of the day-to-day bills/etc. and basically play for recreation? (the stone cold nuts method to approach poker, imo)

I wouldn't overstress/overthink it. If you're feeling fine mentally / confident / etc. and the bigger game looks good that day, then jump in (perhaps shortstack until you have your feet confidently under you). If you run bad / confidence starts taking a dive / etc., then sit in the smaller game until you feel like taking a shot again.

Ggoodluck!G

2/5 isn't as hard as you think.

Yes, I used to play 10/20 LHE & 10/20 7-Stud at the TAJ and Borgata. For the few years after and the Moneymaker miracle and before the brief shutdown of AC, NJ casinos, the games were quite juicy, albeit a little wild - especially on the weekends when all the tourists would flock down and just donk off racks on racks.

I had just gone back to work after the dot com bubble burst, so I wasn't playing as a full-time pro, but still tried to play it pretty close to the vest so as not to just donk off my own BR. As the old saying goes, if the table has gone loose, then you should tighten up.

I would play fewer hands, continue to the river less often, but if I got to showdown, I generally had the goods.

As mentioned above, in the LHE world it is/was recommended to have a 1000 big bet BR + 3 months of living expenses set aside. So if you said, at the 10/20 level that you needed $20K to cover 1000 big bets and ~$3k/month to cover living expenses (rent/mortgage, utilities, car payments & insurance, food, etc.) along with maybe having ~$1k set aside for unexpected emergencies*, then $30k is not really that far out of the question.

My total funds is a pool from which all poker and poker-related activities are paid, i.e. not only session buy-ins but things like personal recreational (non-work related) trips to Vegas for a weekend to hang out with friends as per agreement with the wife regarding not using earned salaries to contribute/support poker BR.

It is also the source from which I paid for some online training materials, e.g. UpSwing's poker lab, which has yielded a good ROI as I went from being around break-even (OK, probably small loser) in 1/2 and 1/3 to now showing a more consistent, albeit modest win rate in these games.

* Not to digress too much into the financial lives of today's average American household, but since a majority are living paycheck-to-paycheck, most would be hard pressed to cover an unexpected $500 or $1000 expense or emergency.

Yes, but like I said ~$50 was a result of being paid out an additional $532 from a promotional side jackpot (PSJ) for the straight flush - 5-10% toke for the dealer isn't uncommon relative to PSJs (yes, I am aware of the whole notion that since players are the ones funding PSJs, winning them is really only being rebated a portion of that money already paid, i.e. rake-back in another format - but that's a whole other thread I suppose). ~$10 was for the actual $1200 pot from table stakes of all players in the hand.

Even $10, while still less than 1% is/was a bit 'extravagant' when I normally toss the dealer a single or a couple $1 chips for more 'average'-sized pots won.

Moving up in stakes (not steaks*, like the dinner meal) from 1/3 to 2/5, isn't my immediate priority. Increasing hourly win rate at 1/3 is more my current focus, but doing so without external bankroll pressure/demands.

* I know it seems pedantic

You certainly use a lot of words.

I am not very smart and I dont like reading much so I am unable to offer any insight

??? Maybe 2+2 will become pictographic? Manga-style hand histories?

Just saw this.

~$700 profit from table stakes
~$532 PSJ
60/~1200 = ~5%

Out of curiosity, how much, if anything at all, would you tip dealer in live game if you were to receive table share of Bad Beat Jackpot?

Are you a strictly 15% (or less?) tipper for service-hospitality workers?

A useful way to apply Kelly thinking to poker is to think of your buy-in to a particular game as your 'wager,' Renormalize your win rate, variance, and bankroll size to buy-ins, assume a typical session length, and you can work out the right bankroll size to be playing at whatever fraction of Kelly you are most comfortable with.

One issue with moving up is that while you can have some confidence of your win rate at your current level, you have little idea of what it is going to be at the next level up. The prevailing playing style is going to be different, it will take some time to adapt, and even after that it is going to take a lot of hours to have confidence in your win rate at the higher level.

If what you are doing is working, there is no need to change it. If you need, or want, to win more money, move up. If things are good at the level where you are, stay at that level. You are not obliged to move up, and you are not obliged to go pro. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Sam,

1) Steaks is an old 2+2 "joke" spelling.

2) Please discuss tipping in the C&CP tipping containment thread. Generally speaking though, tipping on pots is not really related to percents. Jackpots more often are.

3) If you have a job and are playing for fun, you don't need living expenses and emergency fund as part of your bankroll. DUCY?

4) General rule of thumb for no-limit is 20 Buy-Ins for your main game for a winning player, though it obviously varies wildly based on your SDev. Unless you are particularly loose or tight, figure your SDev at about 100bb/hr.

5) As others have mentioned, nothing wrong with shot-taking with the money that is above your normal game's BR requirements. If you run well, you can stick at the new level. Or just shot take when the game looks good/until you're comfortable.

+1

Neither is 5/10.

I'm gonna disagree and say that 2/5 and 5/T are harder then most new people realize. If you're at the point in your poker career where other people's opinion on the difficulty of the game impacts your decision making, you're probably at the point where you're gonna break even or lose in those games.

Most of the people I sit with at 2/5 think they are long term winners in the game. Obviously, most of them are not.

There's a pretty big difference between 1|2/3 and 2|5. 2|5 actually supports people playing for a living, while at 1|2 a pro would pretty much be scraping by depending on where you live, so there are a lot of better players at 2|5. Honestly most live pros are still fish relative to good online players but you'd still rather have a rec in their seats. 2|5 also just generally plays slightly better in every aspect of the game. There's less preflop limping, more 3-betting, less Vpipping of total garbage like K6o vs raises. More postflop aggression, etc. Of course everyone is still pretty bad in every aspect, just not as mindnumbingly horrible as the people common 1|2 who limp/call 80% UTG.

Today I learned Dave Ramsey's username.

I chuckled.

Sigh...now I feel old understanding that joke.

1. Now I just feel like an Eastern European trying to pronounce 'sticks'

2. Saw the thread, especially recent posts...wonder if it should be (further) broken down between cash & tourneys...but that's neither here nor there for this thread.

3. Yes, having full-time salaried employment with benefits is a completely different world/life than solely playing cards for a living. As mentioned, my BR is the result of having then played 10/20 LHE full-time (I just can't get myself to ever say 'pro') along with some growth along the way (recreationally playing LHE & 7-card stud in the post-Moneymaker poker glory days) and the recent transition to incorporate LLSNL like 1/3 into the mix.

I still occasionally sit 10/20 & 20/40 7-stud & LHE games in Vegas and East Coast when I can find them and just have one BR for all poker not separate ones for each game/type/'steaks' (technically I would need $60k to sit 20/40 7-Card Stud 'full-time' @ 1500 Big Bet rule [due to extra betting round]).

4. Assuming 1 BI = 100BB = 5% total 20 BI BR & 1 STDV = 100BB/hr, then with a ~34% possibility of losing/risking <10% total BR within as little as two hours, isn't that putting RoR = ~7-10% (excluding availability/possibility of larger max BIs [133.3-166.7BB or even 200BB], and something well within the variance of poker independent of (winning) player skill? Wouldn't a 40-50 BI BR bring RoR ~<1-2% or ~3% (even with 200BB BI & 100BB/hr STDV).*,**

5. 10+ BB/hr winning rate at 1/3 sustainably over a longer duration interval (i.e. 1500 hrs or 12 months, whichever comes first) while not impossible, is the stuff of legends? Is there a performance metric indicator that would denote time to move up? I anticipate at $5BB game level that Darwinian-like evolution would force me to improve?

* I'm assessing RoR from the perspective of other types of full-time gambling endeavours, e.g. conservative BJ card counters would never entertain putting themselves over 1% RoR...yes, Poker is to BJ card counting as apples are to a Coca-Cola bottle.

** Obviously 2 STDV (sigma) hits the ~95%, both in the positive and negative dimensions that much possibly faster...accelerating possibility of RoR that much faster?

it's not the stuff of legends at 2/5, so I don't think it would be at 1/3? The rake is worse but the players are much worse.

General rule of thumb I've seen is, when you have an excess roll, whatever that means to you, you take shots at the next level game when it looks good.

If I was trying to move up from 1/3, I'd shot take a good 2/5 game when my roll was over $7,000 and it looked good. Buy in for 60bb, play tight, get a feel for the game.

10BB/hr is often sustainable in the lowest games. But really, there's no magic formula. Move up when you're comfortable.

my w/r @ 2/5 is over 10 bigs per hr with a massive sample size

if u promise to use less words I will help you

It's not that I haven't or won't sit a 2/5 game; since August 2020 I have taken some 'shots' but they amount to less than 5% of my total hours played in the interval since then.

I'm just debating whether I should be increasing that number of hours/% playing time. I'm just not sure if/when I'll ever have it be my 'regular' game or even 1/3 of total playing time. Had mixed results during the last few trips to Vegas (yes, more 'pros' there), but overall didn't feel completely out of place. I'm just very conservative as it relates to BRM.

There is debate amongst my LHE friends as to which is more preferable: $25/hr at 10/20 where competition was softer (lower variance) vs. $30/hr in 20/40 where competition was much more skilled (and variance somewhat higher).

Move up on the LHE ladder was different because again, mistake there 'only' costs one (more) big bet (albeit a big bet at 20/40 is twice that of 10/20).

You can't talk about RoR without win-rate, so I have no idea how you're getting any of these numbers.