I just got a part-time job and I'm saving up for poker.

I make about $250-350 every two weeks.

How much should I save before I start playing two days a week on my days off?

First post. Plz help. Thanks!

In before lock.

If you feel confident about being able to build from scratch, and you aren't playing for a living, 3 BI is fine.

Otherwise save up the conventional 10BIs.

If you're first starting, you're going to be a losing player anyway (almost certainly), and therefore the total bankroll won't matter.

You should give yourself a set budget to add to your "roll" each week. Eventually, as you improve, you will become a winning player (hopefully) and get to the point where you no longer need to be adding money.

Use some of the money you're making to buy some poker books and learn one of those days and play the other.
It'll be cheaper when you're first starting out.

As stated if you have an income you can take a 3 BI shot.

Welcome to the forum

Welcome jack

$350 every two weeks will make it difficult for you to start up a decent roll to play twice a week. To be honest, it would be much more realistic for you to find a .25/.50 cent home game to play in. If you have recreational poker goals such as improving and building a roll, then play with whatever you are willing to lose but for God's sake, don't buy in for the minimum.

There's a thread for this here.

If you have a part-time job, I'd say whatever you can afford to lose. If you want to play full-time, I'd say don't even think about playing $1/$2 for a living and wait until you can beat at least $2/$5.

You're not playing for your living, you have an income, and if you lose you can still re-load for more poker from your other income. So, why do you need a bankroll? Just set a budget and play out of your discretionary cash.

*IF* you plan for this to be a part-time job for income and it'll be financial trouble for you if you can't play... then 10 buy-ins is a decent rule of thumb. But to really answer the question you'll need to know your winrate, standard deviation, and plug the data into one of the online calculators that are out there.

edit: do you know for sure that you beat the games?

buy books and play a lot of PLAY MONEY poker to get your fundamentals down. Take play money play seriously, if you cant beat play money you won't beat $1/2

It doesn't matter how many hours he plays. His RoR will always be huge, even playing once a week, if he only has 10BI and is trying to play for income. The chances of a -4 to -5 BI result at the end of a year's play at 1 session per week may be significant if you are a beginner and not all that sure about you're w/r, or if you are even +EV in the game.

If you are going to play 1x per week, and have the disposable income, just play. You'll need some run good not to go busto, even if you keep 100% of your profit in your bankroll.

Nonononono.

Play money is not the way to go.

Where can you play play money and learn?

Play money is awful. Your opponents won't take it seriously and will shove any hand. Its unrealistic and detremental to your game.

Buy books

Read threads on here

Play as small of stakes as possible

Honestly putting 50 bucks online and playing micro stakes is much better than play money. Your opponents will be taking it seriously and if you beat the micros you will beat live. It also has the added benefit of being able to see tons of meaningful hands for cheap.

How many Buy-Ins up or down would be a good indication of a normal swing?

Seems like I"ve been getting my $ all in as 50-50 or better but have hit like 2 in 10.

So would a downswing of 10 BI be considered just running bad?

Cliffs: runbad can be worse and last longer than you might think.

Idk what you mean by that

10 BI downswing could be you just have huge leaks and are a losing player

But it could also be that you are running bad

I've skimmed that thread in the past, and as a semi-stats literate person, I feel like questions about statistical significance as applied to live poker are almost always weird and a little pointless.

When a random poster asks, how likely is it that I'm just running bad if I've lost 10 buyins in say 3-4 straight session... I say, we don't ****ing know. You've played maybe 800 hands total. That's not a sample, that's a fart. In the grand universal scheme of poker, it is literally a fart.

That being said, anybody who loses 10 buyins consecutively or nearly so at 1/2nl is very likely full of leaks. That's not statistics, that's just the fact that 1/2nl is so chock full of opportunities to squeeze out profit from our opponents' many leaks that it should be near impossible to lose that many buyins that quickly without an upswing.

EDIT: Also, if your go-to method for beating a 1/2 game is to get into 50-50 coinflip after coinflip, then you are doing it Very VERY Wrong. You have no one to blame for putting yourself into those spots if you can't find better than 50-50s vs average 1/2 opponents.

I don't think that's really true. I just went on a $4-5k downswing at 1/3 where I lost like 12 out of 14 days and I'm quite certain I'm a winning player.

Like you said, we're not talking about many hands. Over 100 hours, you're only seeing 2500 hands. Its not that unlikely for someone to go 2500 hands without making a real value hand or getting paid off when they actually do. And if you can't make hands, its pretty hard to win at 1/2 and 1/3

Not all that unusual. Probabilities and stuff. About 5% of sequences of ten 50/50 flips will result in 2 or fewer successes.

Ive had 1 10buyin downswing over the last 1000 hours.

It really shouldnt happen that often. And If you have a 20buyin downswing then you almost assuredly have major leaks or tilt

The truth is - there is no amount of buy-ins up or down that are considered a "normal swing." Cards sometimes favor you. Sometimes they don't.

But I couldn't agree more with other that say if you're getting all your money in as 50/50 or better, you're playing bad. On many occasions, I have jammed on the flop and turn (favored by 75% to win) - only to fold the river because I was (and knew that I was) beat.

If you have no room in your game for betting/folding or check/folding - then you will see bigger up and down swings. (You're also probably buying in too short.) IMO, poker is more a game of finesse where you're betting to cause your opponent to make mistakes - but you have to be willing to go with your reads and fold when it's obvious when you're beat - otherwise his poor play causes you to make mistakes.

BTW - what is your typical buy-in? Where I play, a typical buy-in for 1/2 ranges from 300 to 600. So losing 6k would be an indicator that you're playing bad. But if you're buying in for 50-100. You're probably experiencing some variance combined with bad play.

Go to this website and plug in some numbers: http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

Replace BB with $ and 100 with hr. For number of hands just multiply the number of hours you want to simulate by 100. Results should be pretty eye opening.

To figure out whether you have leaks or just running bad, why dont you post a couple of big hands that you lost your BIs on? We can give you our opinions.

No, I am playing ABC poker, very straightforward. No bluffs, limp calling pairs 9 and under.

Basically raising or 3 betting with the top 6-7 hands, AA,KK...

Trying to see the flop and getting my $ in good. Tonight shoved all in with 2 pair and got an open ender call me, 66% for me...of course he hits.

Also getting paid off when I hit sets and bet big, guys with TPTK or worse seem to call.

Could just be a very small sample size. I play 2-3 hours/session. probably 3-4x a week.

Ok the past few ALL-In's:

Hero: Villian: Flop

AK off vs 10/10 lost
Q8 vs Q/10 Q/10/x 2
KK vs 99 All-in pre flop. 9 hits
QJ vs AA 108x