Quote:
Originally Posted by n0npareil
If I have a $4000 BR playing 1/2, should I leave the game once I've made a certain amount? In other words, what is the maximum percentage of my BR should I have on the table?
There is a camp that believes fervently that you don't leave a game no matter what as long as you are on your A-game...
but as someone who has had to grow a roll from scratch several times, my answer is more pragmatic.
There is only so much risk we should be willing to take with our rolls. I mean, the whole point is to grow our rolls and we can't grow our rolls if we aren't able to leave tables when we are up.
To that end, my advice is that when you are at $4k, the most "profit" you should be willing to risk is 20%, so when you hit $800-ish, it's time to just pack it up and leave.
It really comes down to objectives. When my bankroll is $4k, my objective is to BUILD MY ROLL.
To that end, there is only so much risk I should be willing to take. Or put another way, lets say there is a table full of mega-donks at the 25/50nl table. These players are the worst players EVER, they love to overcall and gamboool. Minimum buy-in to the game is $4k. Should we take our entire $4k bankroll over to that game?
No. No we shouldn't. Because we can not afford the consequences of busting our entire roll (google "Utility of Money")
If I were to flip the argument around and look at it from a different point of view, A good question to ask would be: "What are the consequences of cashing out when 10% or 20% of our bankroll is on the table?"
Is it really so bad to do so?
Below are two tables which show a 10% BRM and 20% BRM winstop respectively
Sessions
.... 10% winstop
... 20% winstop
......0
...............4000
...............4000
......1
...............4400
............... 4800
......2
...............4840
............... 5760
......3
...............5324
............... 6912
......4
............... 5856
............... 8294
......5
...............6442
............... 9953
......6
...............7086
............... 11944
......7
...............7795
............... 14333
......8
...............8574
............... 17199
......9
...............9432
............... 20639
......10
...............10375
............... 24767
So as you can see, there are worst things in the world than increasing our bankroll in 10% and 20% chunks. Obviously there will be some losing sessions in there as well... but the point really is about risk vs reward and how much risk can/should we tolerate in building our rolls.
This kinda reminds me of the tortiose vs the hare. Slow and steady wins the race. Poker is one long session, so we can take a deep breath, relax, and cash out. The game will be there tomorrow.
Another aspect is the mental aspect of cashing out repeatedly. The piece of mind that comes from making money and cashing out goes a long ways towards keeping us on our A-game for the next session. The reverse of this is having a $4k roll, being at a super juicy table, getting up to $1.2k and then getting coolered or a bad beat. The fact that we made $2k in Sklansky bucks but have no real money to show for it isn't going to help our mental state. We will be obsessing about that "suck out" all the way to our next session. Gee, wonder how good we will play with that ball of tilt inside our chest???
Anyways, when I am in "build my bankroll" mode then I adhere to the 10% - 20% rule of thumb, I will cash out once 10% of my bankroll is reached, but if I'm at a super juicy table I will double that to 20%.
Once I have a healthy bankroll, then I can loosen my BRM or even take shots at bigger games or tolerate more risk and play with even 30% of my bankroll on the table if I'm at a ridiculously juicy table that can make my entire monthly nut in one night... But until I'm well rolled, I will adhere faithfully to my 10% - 20% rule of thumb depending on the table dynamics.