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Originally Posted by Magnum1111
Thanks. that is what I was thinking of doing, is just bringing 2 buy ins. I play online poker every day and you know, I don't have to put any thought into buy ins or top off money because the money is already on the account and it auto tops off.
2 questions.
1. Do you think that since my game is 133bb max buy in that I should bring more than more than 2 buy ins? You are basically bringing 400 big blinds and if I bring 2 buy ins it is considerably less, 266bb.
First, it is 400bbs if the straddle isn't on. The straddle is usually on, in which case it is 200bbs.
More importantly, there is a way that the size of the blinds has less to do with one's win rate than the size of the buy-ins. Many people (example: Bart Hanson) claim that in games with a buy-in cap, if you happen to double up, your win rate after the double is going to be higher than before, simply because when you do play for stacks, the stacks are going to be bigger.
So for bankroll and stop-loss purposes, I choose my guidelines based in how much I buy in for, not what the size of the blinds happen to be.
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2. Do you think this should impact the way I view my bankroll strategy?
(Just so you know, if this isn't apparent, I am basically a rec player, live. I used to play live quite a bit when I was single (4-5x/month). Now, I'm married with kids and I haven't played in 18 months because of covid. I would like to start playing again 2-3 times per month. I have a good job and make decent money but what I DO NOT have is a $20,000 roll that can be devoted exclusively to poker, nor do I have the kind of discretionary income where I can lose $800 dollars twice a month and not feel it, nor do I have the kind of wife who is going to think that is ok if it goes on for too long. Haha.
I was going to set aside $3k for a 1/3 bankroll to start with, with the ability to add to it. 10 buy ins has always been sufficient for me when playing online stakes. But, they have raised the max buy in to $400 so now I am putting together $4k.
I completely understand that most people recommend 20 buy ins and that pros recommend significantly more than that. I am not trying to go pro obviously. I also understand that lowering bankroll standards causes me to play a little more conservatively until I build up the roll a little bit. Understood. Over time, I would hope to build my bankroll up to 20 buy ins for $1/$3. That would be my goal.
****My concern is that if I am really going to liberally top-off and be willing to lose $800 every time I show up at the casino, maybe I should be considering 20 buy ins of $800 dollars as my goal, not 20 buy ins of $400, liewise, starting out-comfort money should be 10x$800, not 10x$400. What do you think? Thanks.
If you have disposable income that you are willing to spend on poker, and you are not trying to do this for a living or at least as a significant supplement to your income-excluding-poker, you do not actually need to have a bankroll as such.
A cash flow of disposable income can be the equivalent to a bankroll. Consider this thought-experiment
(I am not actually recommending this as a bankroll management strategy!!!):
Suppose you have $200 per month disposable income that you are willing to put towards poker. Instead of saving it up until you have enough for a buy-in for the game you want to play, you do something different: you take a cash advance on a credit card of such size that the monthly interest payment on that cash advance equals $200. If the APR on your card is 18%, and your credit limit is sufficiently large, the amount you could borrow would be $13,333. That $13K can be seen as the bankroll-equivalent of your $200/month cash flow.
If you are a homeowner, you could get yourself a home equity line of credit and do the same thing, at a much more favorable interest rate -- the interest payments for which would be tax-deductable in the USA. Again, I am not actually recommending doing this. I am simply trying to demonstrate the equivalence of a cash flow and a bankroll.
In the end, though, bankrolls matter only to winners. If you cannot beat the game over time, no bankroll is big enough. If you can beat the game, and compute your win rate and variance, you can compute the size of a bankroll such that your risk of ruin is less than whatever number less than 1 you choose. And if you can replenish your poker fund next month, even "ruin" is a temporary setback.