true to an extent. I have a career so replenishing a bust-o roll is always an option

and yes i agree. I don't spend any and everything above 10k. but if there is something i want that i normally couldn't budget I will take it out of my +10k roll (aka just bought a puppy for the family)

i really want to play 5/10 which was my initial goal of getting the BR to...but it has oddly stopped running in all but one casino in the NE and that is 1 game...and m-th from 10-8 lmao

Nuts line is to have a decent paying job which easily covers all your bills / savings / life / etc. and to then play at relative steaks where having a "poker bankroll" ain't even really a thing.

GcluelesspokerbankrollnoobG

Safety deposit box at the casino.

As I am still in bankroll building mode i just keep it all there, when the amount in the box gets to what I feel is appropriate for the steaks I play/aspire to play, I will start to take some out and invest it.

Later this year I’m also going to Vegas, so I will eventually take some out of the safety deposit box and put it into a bank account that has yet to be opened in a bank that has branches at my location and in Vegas so I don’t have to travel with a ton of cash and I have easy access to deposit/withdrawal cash


Since I started playing more consistently I do 2 things

1) whenever I cash out for the day, I always put the money into the safety deposit box, less any money that doesn’t equal $100. So if I cash out for $1754 total, I get $54 in cash in my pocket, rest in the box.

2) I take 10% of my month net winnings and put it towards debt I currently have. Whenever the debt is paid off, I will put it into savings/stocks.

When/if I get to a point that my roll has exceeded what I can consistently play (my room spreads 10/20 uncapped consistently, so it might take some time to get there), I may start to remove more than 10%



This is where I’m currently at but I still think it’s important to keep solid BR management. I have felt less stress while I’ve had a solid BR than when I didn’t before, even though I could just grab more money from the bank account if I needed it.

I've been losing after 200 hours, and my winrate is $65/hour over 1800+ hours. variance is variance, sometimes you gotta grind through it.

Anyone who hasn't gone through a 100+ hour losing streak should not be considering playing professionally, because you haven't experienced true negative variance. Game is easy when you're crushing, it's when you can't win a hand that the true pros are differentiated from everyone else.

Too many players are big winners when they're winning, but once they start losing regularly they punt, or just play their C game at stakes where their C game can't cut it.
Some people can crush when they have the confidence of winning every session, but get people to start calling their bluffs and they fall apart.

tl`;dr: you shouldn't try to be a professional unless you've had your heart stomped under variances boot for 100+ hours, and still wanna play

LOL at 100hr downswing/breakeven stretch being considered a real measure or mental challenge of a downswing. I get it, all downswings suck. But if you think of playing professionally you should absolutely consider that negative variance can easily result in 500+ hr downswings and breakeven stretches.

Check out the variance calculator at pokerdope and you will see that 100hr breakeven happens very frequently.

After playing full time for a couple years now, I've come to the conclusion that most of the full time players are just running in the top quarter of the bell curve and haven't had a real downswing yet. Once the real downswing starts most just quit.

Fwiw I'm almost out of a 500hr breakeven stretch with a 20k downswing at 2-5. And still over a 10bb/hr winner over almost 3k hours. So if I'm a little salty about the subject, that's probably why

I've been playing a bit with the poker variance calculator on Primedope.com, and its both very interesting and incredibly scary. I've got a measured win rate around 30bb/100 (10bb/hr) and a std dev. of around 130bb/hr (over a 3k hour live sample) which I'm not sure if that translates to a ~400bb/100 std. dev or not?? Probably some smoothing that happens there. But still, that means its totally possible (like 5% of the time) to go a whole year as a loser, even if you are actually crushing it!

This of course also throws measured win rates into a lot of doubt as to their sustainability or accuracy. Essentially, I'm coming around to the position/belief that the variance is so high in live poker that all of our stats and win rates are just platitudes in the face of variance. Even if you are a crusher and don't run good you can still get smacked around for longer than any grinder is likely to afford. All this reinforces the 'secondary income' advice that seems really sound. When your life roll is coming from your bankroll, its gonna get really nasty when variance is no longer your friend.

yeah, didn't mean to imply that 100+ hour breakeven is as bad as it gets - I've had several. Just that if you've never even hit that, you haven't played enough and shouldn't be even considering going pro. We get people in this thread a lot being like "I've been crushing it for 300 hours, should I go pro?" and my thought is always "No, wait until you're getting crushed for 100+ hours, and if in that moment you still wanna go pro, then maybe. maaaaybe consider it."

Poker is fun when you're winning. When you're getting crushed, it is ROUGH

500 hour breakeven sounds incredibly rough, sorry you're going through that. Agree that must pros are just running hot, especially the ones who have only been doing it for a year or two.

Honestly, I think a 500 hour breakeven stretch is pretty impossible for some players at live low stakes 100bb poker. That's not to say that someone who goes on a long breakeven stretch is necessarily a worse player. There are differences in games, stack depths, playing styles, % of hands that go to showdown, etc. People compare it to breakeven stretches online but it's not really comparable. In live, the edges are astronomically greater. Online players push every edge they can get. Theoretically this is how players should approach live cash too but the vast majority do not. Players are focused on booking daily wins, winning weeks, monthly results, etc. They aren't looking to push every edge possible. For example, lets say a live pro on the button gets to the river in a bloated pot with a weakish hand like bottom pair, and he ranges his opponent on pretty much just busted draws. If he's truly pushing every edge possible he should be betting that river weak hoping to get bluff-raised. Virtually every live player I know is checking back that river because the pot is big enough for them. (maybe not the best example, but you get the point).

The likelihood of long break even stretches substantially increases when you go for thin edges, when you play deeper, and when you play a more value oriented game. The shorter the stack sizes the less relevant a single pot or two will be to long term results. The more pots you generally win without showdown, the less relevant equity run bad is. That being said, I have a hard time grasping someone like Gman, despite going for thin edges and playing super deep, would have a 500 hr breakeven stretch vs the mouth breathers on Hustler Live. His edge is so great, with players that are just going to gift him their stacks so often with little to no equity. Even if he runs super bad it seems like it would be tough for him to breakeven for that long in the soft lineups he's currently playing.

I know that we've had this conversation before, but I still maintain that you are just mistaken in the position that a big (10bb/hr) winner cannot have long losing or breakeven stretches. Most likely that is a result of not experiencing the low side of variance, which is very fortunate for you. We have variance calculators available where you can input your winrate and standard deviation and simulate thousands of series in order to get an actual mathematical model representing the possible outcomes. I agree that it is not the most likely that a crusher loses for a year of live play (only happens around 5% of the time) but it certainly does happen.

Additionally, it is quite possible to have downswings of more than 10k bb's with a 10bb/hr winrate. Likely, not especially, like again only happens at about 2-3 std deviations from normal. But its going to happen eventually to almost everyone. As poker players we are fine to ignore the statistics and keep telling our selves that we are just that good at this game and pretty much can't lose. Or, I prefer to have a more accurate grasp of the potential outcomes and plan accordingly.

I do agree that the standard of live play tends to attempt to reduce variance. And the lower we can get our std dev the less likely we are going to have big swings to the negative (or positive). In regards to Gman, I wouldn't be surprised that his win rate in bb/100 is quite a bit higher than 20-30 which will further reduce his variance. But I have no idea what it actually is. This is why poker continues to be the game it is, people 'instinctively' assume these positions regarding statistical outcomes apart from evidence. The real possibility of how much variance affects our results in our LOL live samples, is something that many of us are just uncomfortable with I think.

No crusher is losing for a year of live low stakes poker. That is completely absurd. This is where players just use variance to justify the fact that they haven't solved the live low stakes game.

You're talking about a losing year when I struggle to have losing sessions. The vast majority of my losing sessions involve me both playing absolutely terrible poker AND also running poorly. Overall I'm a much better poker player today than I was 10 years. Back then I would play awful quite regularly and would still rarely have a losing month. You can say it's just variance but the players are ****ing terrible. They don't study. They haven't played millions of hands of poker. Your average live low stakes players has absolutely no ****ing clue what they are doing in virtually any spot whatsoever. They are literally just giving money away. It's not variance when you are 100% to win the pot and a player calls off their stack. It's not variance when a player tells you they know you are bluffing but they can't call because it's too much money. This is not variance when you are given free money.

These numbers seem made up tbh. 10kBB downswing is definitely not a -3 sigma event for a 10BB/h winner, more like -6. A full time losing year is not a 5% chance, more like .0005%.

You've never ran bad in your life. Congrats.

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Mix of 1/3 - 2/5 and 5 card PLO. Travel so tons of different casinos.

Biggest Draw down was about 20k

Invest most of my money now and don't play as much. Looking to get back into action as I don't have much else going on at the moment.

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I have just started my adventure in Nl300 live games and i consider myself better than average players from my lvl but im -374 euros behind in 8 sessions. I know is not a big sample but i just have the feeling i have lot of trouble to fight against variance. Before yesterday i was +230 in 7 sessions 35hours of play and struggling a lot.

Yesterday i had too very similar spots AK< AA all in preflop.

The income of that session was -600€. First allin was the other guy had 280€(90bb) behind with straddles and the second one was BTN (AA) against me in the BB with 250€(me) left behind which sent me home. Even the kings came on the flop when the baord was shown both of the times, yes, not funny at all i was really angry at that point.....And I felt destroyed inside, cause i have the dream to play for a living woth this. People in the table even told me i played well and i was really unlucky.


I would say yesterday i only play bad one hand and thats what im going to talk about. Cause the other two is just bd luck, nothing you can do....

The other was me having A5s clubs the other guy 78 (he called a rol preflop in BTn)

A77 two diamonds

i cbet player calls

Turn 3 clubs
I x he bets 2/3, i call

River Q
I x he bets 3/4 i call

I have to say that in this particular situation i would make a fold lots of the times but it happen to me when im on a bad run i make worse decisions myself. I just tell myself: " im really loosing all this hands or im folding too much" or im really beat? It is impossible im loosing all the hands, lets call he might have missed draws or also an Ace, eventhough i knew i was beat but i couldnt believe it myself (im really running that bad? Lets call). Yesterday was a nightmare i was missing my draws. Other hand i had JJ against a 3bet squeeze i just decided to flat behind bc i was deep and decided to make pot small.
Flop came K72 and just decided to fold directly on the flop sometimes i would decide to call flop and reevaluate turn but feel it so frustrated i had the feeling i was getting fuked all the hands.


When you guys have a session like this. What do you do to make better decisions? Is it normal feeling? You also play worse when u run bad?

What do you think about handling that AK vs AA twice in the same session? Is also that very common?

Yes. Even worse it isn't even that bad a day. Most long time posters have lost 2 or more buy ins in less than 30 minutes.

It sounds like you don't have a large enough bankroll. The right amount is dependent on how readily you can replenish it, your skill level, the ability to move down in stakes and emotional makeup. The standard answer is 20 buy ins for an recreational player that wants to only touch their poker bankroll and up to 50 buy ins for someone has to depend on their winnings for their livelihood.

As for your play, I'm confident you misplayed the AK<AA hands and made lots of other mistakes. At low stakes, a 4bet or a call for most players is AA with the occasional KK. No matter what you think, the players aren't playing back at you often enough to call at this level. A better than average player is a losing player in poker. You have to be the best or second best player at the table to make any money.

As a newish poster, I'm going to leave this here for now. Ordinarily, it goes into the Bankroll and Winrate thread. Any other questions should go in there.

This 100%.

The idea that a very good long term player has 5% (or whatever) chance of having a losing year due to variance is absurd. I haven't in 16+ years. And like Dream Crusher says, vast majority of losing involves playing badly AND running poorly.

All downswings involve both. No one talks about the idea of low stakes good player (say 10BB/hr @ 2/5 over 8000 hrs) playing 1200 hrs/yr having a 1200hr year where they suddenly make 20+ BB/hr and it's just due to variance, right? But others say the opposite can happen and you have a losing year? C'mon people...

Another thing:

Winning players play poorly at times. But when it happens, the player isn't aware of it at the moment. No good player says "this is the wrong play here, hmm.. OK I'll make the wrong play".
It's only in (honest) review do we look back and say "yeah, I really played poorly this last session/week/month.

People who consider themselves real good players but having losing months/year while playing significant hours just aren't being honest about themselves or capable of honestly reviewing their play. Too much ego gets in the way. "It can't be me, It's variance"

How im missplaying my AK?Im on BB against BTN with 80bb in the second one. And first one stack eff was 90bb with straddle and two limpers

As i told u my only mistake was the A5s hand. And yes im better than average.


Trust me if i normally make msitakes are not huge ones....


I have around 20buy ins

Put my numbers in the variance calculator and played around with it a bit. Likelihood of losing after 1k hours is like 0.0003% (This is effectively a year of play for me since I average 80-100hrs a month, so I should have a losing year once every 300,000 years or so), after 500 hours is like 0.06%, 200 hours is like 2.1%. Never came even remotely close to a 10kBB downswing after simulating tens of millions of hours, even getting above a 2kBB downswing was rare and I think my highest was 3.8kBB which was significantly higher than anything I've actually experienced so far in 10k+ hours of live play.

I too am throwing the BS flag on the 10K BB downswing due to variance.

I've played for 25+ years but I didn't keep records until 2007 when I started playing a lot. I've had two years that were loses. I killed in my local home games and thought I was very good. But when I first started playing against a much better poker room crowd, it showed just how little I knew and it took me a while to admit I needed to change. Even then, in those two lose years, I was barely below break even, between $1 - 2 /hour negative over about 1000 hour years.

I'm still not what I would call a good player by any means. There is discussion that happens here that goes right over my head and I struggle with maintaining the discipline to fold pre. There are local pros who play me like a fiddle. But even still, I've only ever had 5 losing sessions in a row one time, my session losses average about 70% of my wins, I win over 80% of the time, and my biggest draw down was $5600. My long term avg is 8.5BB since 2007 and has been trending steadily up.

There just no way for me to lose $50K. I would have walked away from the game long before I got half way to that mark.

Don't listen to the other people at the table when they talk like this. If they are good players they will encourage bad play because it makes them money.

AK vs AA when stacks are not deep is just a cooler. The stacks you mention are enough you should be able to get away from it some of the time but not always. However, if losing 2 stacks upsets you and sends you home you don't have a big enough bankroll or enough experience with variance yet. Typically regular players bring 3 to 5 full buyins when they play and expect to lose all of it occasionally.

You have to learn to recognize when you get tilted like that and take a break or just quit for the day. Poker is a game of odds and in the long run they will balance out but that doesn't change the decision in any particular hand.

It is something you can learn over time. That sort of mental discipline is something that almost nobody has at the start.

Poker is swingy. I've lost 8 buy-ins ($1800) in one single 8 hour live session and have won 10 at the most, and I've been playing for years. The end result of a single session doesn't mean much, the end result of hundreds of hours does. If you can handle downswings & you get couching/study, you'll be fine. If not, I wouldn't waste my time.

It's normal to swing 2-3 buy-ins up or down in a single session.

I've been stacked on back to back hands on multiple occasions. That actually happened to me yesterday. It's not a big deal whatsoever. My 1/2 record was losing like $1500 to the same guy in like an hour or two of play when I was just pushing small edges hard and never once put my money in with an equity disadvantage.

Ok... so there are a few things going on here, and I think that we are talking past one another a fair bit. First off, before anyone throws the BS flag, I suggest you navigate your browser over to the primedope.com variance calculator and then play around a bit with it. Remember that the numbers going in are in bb/100 for the calculations there, so I multiplied by win rate and std dev. by 3 in because I measure them in bb/hr for live poker, and I assume that roughly three hours of live play is equivalent to 100 hands. Run a few sims, and then scroll down and you can expand the drawdown results from 100k to something like 10M hands. Sure, in the long run its a nearly straight line up, but there are plenty of 5,000 bb drawdowns, at my inputs. Occasionally, even a 10k bb drawdown.

My inputs. I used a 10bb/100 win rate and a 400bb/100 std dev. These reflect roughly my measured stats over 3k hours of live play. TBH my win rate is slightly higher and my std dev is probably slightly higher too, but I did estimate that there should be a slight smoothing effect when bringing std dev over from hours to 100 hands. Don't take my word for it, actually go measure for yourself what the likely outcomes are going to be. Of course, maybe the website is completely bogus, but I didn't make this stuff up.

Secondly, there is far more <information I think to be innacurate> in this thread in the last few posts than is merited. For example, 411heelhook said...

"Put my numbers in the variance calculator and played around with it a bit. Likelihood of losing after 1k hours is like 0.0003%".

What numbers were used for your std dev? You must have an astronomically low std dev. A well agreed upon "Low std dev" from this thread is around 80bb/hr or roughly 240 bb/100. With a 30bb/100 win rate that is still around a 5% chance of losing after 1k hours of play (30000 hands). That is so very far removed from the number quoted to show that the data used in entry was almost certainly invalid.

Additionally, it's ridiculous to assert that a 1 in 20 outcome (5% chance of losing for a year) isn't possible because "I've gone 16 years and it hasn't happened to me". It's quite possible to go more than 20 years and not have a 1 in 20 bad year, you know.

I expect that this post will be viewed as being somewhat defensive (and it is.). But, I'm trying to add to the conversation here, and if you would like to add to the conversation I suggest that we actually state the data we are using in the calculator (or whatever tool we use to measure probable outcomes). Statistics are not everyone's strong field, that's ok. But I hope that in learning what potential outcomes are we can be better prepared as poker players to handle the variance in live poker.

In general, poker is profitable because of the variance, and humans are especially bad at grasping large variance situations because we equate reality with our personal experience. I think its important to remember that our personal experience in live poker is just a fraction of the potential outcomes, as no-one can possible play enough live hands to generate a full sample.

I was clearly not playing my A poker yesterday but i got unlucky too.... so it was clear a mix of that....

AK is not always push preflop around 100bb or even less i know, but i just felt that i had to be in.... it was a blinds and straddle situation and i thought that would be the spots to move in with AK... almost a little less than 100bb... but anyway.


Seems to me quite a lot 8 buy ins up or down on a 8 hours game..... i never seen anyone on my tables swinging up or down more than two buy ins as far neither of them... but you know 8 sessions are very few sessions, 41 hours of game, -1 buy in.


I have to work a lot of that mindset. Im pretty good with the game but my weakness is that poker mindset which is a very important thing