Hey everyone,

I've been playing micro stakes poker for some time now and i considered myself to be an average-slightly above average player. Started making a small profit on 888 aswell as on Stars, but I struggle with staying at the same buy-in level. My BRM isnt all that great. Either i make some money and immediatly ship it to my bankaccount in fear of losing it, or i lose, get frustrated and try to win it back at lower stakes. So I was wondering if any of you have also experienced this problem and how you've managed to solve it, or wheter it's a case of pure discipline.

Also, what would you guys consider a healthy starting bankroll for a player like myself who prefers playing MTTs with a buy-in of 5-6$ max? I'm thinking of starting over again with a fresh bankroll but I'm not sure how much it should be.

Would love to hear from you guys, cheers in advance!

usually your BR is 100bb at the stakes you play.

No, you have to be disciplined and BRM is the most important aspect of the game, this will stop you becoming a degen with no self control.

Hey Mate,

from my opinion in changes on the person and style of play.
Some TAGS play as little as 25BB a buy in.. but honestly it isnt enough.
I dare say you should head between 50-100 BB's. Especially if you are loose.

i have 250 BR and play 2/5 with 5$ buy in. Im a tight player this works. i cant wait to move up!

good luck.

I'm very conservative with my BR. I play $1-25 buy-in tournaments (with the occasional shots at bigger buy-ins on the weekends when the fields are softer) and I have well above 10K to play with. I don't play tournament stakes that I don't have at least 200 buy-ins for. If you're a good player with a limited BR and you're not playing a ton of tables, you can prolly cut those requirements in half and occasionally take shots at some of the softer tournaments on Saturdays and Sundays that are really good value (some of the bigs, Sunday Storm, Mini Million, stuff like that) and still be fine, but generally I would never go below 100 buy-ins in low stakes tournaments (when there are 100s and sometimes 1000s of players in the pool, the swings are gonna be real, regardless of your skill-level). If you want to play $5 abi tourneys, I wouldn't play with less than $500 at the minimum. I myself wouldn't play those stakes without a bankroll of 1K, but like I said, I'm a BR-nit. People are different and some can prolly get by at those stakes with a lot looser BR-requirements and still play comfortably.

I would also highly recommend playing a lot of satellites into events, even the events that are within your BR-requirements. When I play on Sundays, I typically play between 30-50 satellites, and they are ridiculously good value. They typically cost around 1/10th of the amount of the tourney buy-in, and even though most of the sats are turbos, if you know what you're doing, they are fairly easy to beat. Especially the Deepstack Turbos into the regular events (stuff like the bigs and the weekend regulars) and the Mega-satellites with a non-turbo structure are very soft. Even with my BR, I play satellites into $2-10 events all the time for $0,20-1, and I'll continue to do it regardless of the size of my BR.

1) Deposit an amount of money that you're comfortable losing and never deposit more than you can afford to lose. Never. This way, you won't fear losing the money that you win and you won't chase the money that you've lost. If this means that you have to start out by playing 25 cent SNGs, then that's the way it is (there is no shame in starting out at lower stakes than you feel your skill-level is right for if you don't have a big BR to start out with). If you play tournament poker with fear of losing your buy-in, you''ve almost lost before you start playing. It's much better to build up your bankroll slowly without taking too many risks, and it honestly feels better grinding a roll up than just binking a tourney where you had 10% of your roll at stake (and it feels terrible when you take a shot at a tourney that you know you shouldn't be playing and you constantly see spots that you end up not taking advantage of because you're scared of going broke).

2) Even if you do well and bink a big score, don't move up in stakes until you're a consistent winner at the stakes that you're already playing over a decent sample. This will not only help you not lose the money that you've won right away by playing stakes that you're essentially not rolled or ready for, but it will also help you avoid losing confidence once you face tougher opponents.

3) Never play when you're frustrated. It's rule #1. Nothing good can come from it. You'll make bad decision, and even when you get lucky, it doesn't feel nearly as good as the times that you end up losing more feels bad. If you can't control yourself when you're on tilt, use the responsible gaming restrictions on Stars and take a break. I've had Sundays where I started out in the morning feeling great and registrering for a ton of tourneys, as I usually do, but ended up unregistrering all of them after a couple of hours because I get frustrated and know I shouldn't be playing. Then I'll end up doing something else all day or I'll take a couple of hours away from the computer and I'll play later that night. I think I've saved a lot of money doing that instead of just continuing to plow through when I run/play bad.

4) Keep track of win/losses (either using software or just by using excel or whatever) and constantly review your game. If you want to move up in stakes over time, this is a necessity in order to understand where your leaks are and when/how you're making money. Use this forum to post hands and ask questions about times when you're frustrated and how you deal with it/should deal with it instead of dealing with the frustration at the tables all by yourself. Watch other good players play tournaments sometimes (not only televised events, but also just sweating people online without them knowing and without being able to see the holecards). You learn a lot by watching better players play, and trying to put people on hands when you're not in the game yourself is both a fun and rewarding exercise.

5) Enjoy playing. If it feels like hard work and no fun, it's not a good way to earn money/spend your time.

Good luck

Nice post Dr

Go to "Tools" and you have there Responsible Gaming where you can restrict yourself from playing for a period of time, restrict cash play, sit & go and tournaments buy-in on Poker Stars client.
For eg. if you have $200 you can restrict yourself from playing higher than $2 tournaments. Blocking cash helped me evade a lot of bingo promotions from ps. Believe me this is a great tool for controlling yourself.

In rest follow what DrLifeIsGood said.