Ok, just want to get a double check on this.

If my current BR management strategy is:

Move up when the roll contains 30 buyins for the next level.

Move down when the roll reaches 20 buyins for the current stake (40 buyins when moving down).

So, I never sit a game with less than 21 buyins and the move up number gives me a 10 buyin chunk to play with at the next level.

My problem is that my site has NL20 and NL50. I want to move up as soon as possible, currently at NL20.

Clearly, I don’t need to wait for 30 buyins at NL50, 1500 dollars. Here is what I think:

If I move up to NL50 when I reach 1300 dollars, this will give me 10 buyins of room to play NL50, and if I go down to 800, I have the standard 40 buyins for the lower stake.

Is this optimal, in your opinions? I think it is a little conservative, but I expect 10 BI swings to eventually happen as the players get better. So far, I have only one peak to valley of -10BI in a 43k sample on this site.

In theory, you should move up and down at the same number of buy-ins. If you have 3000BB, take a shot and lose 1BB, you should move back down if you've decided 30 buy-ins is the optimal point to move up. Of course in practice this excessively wastes time by constantly jumping up and down in stakes and having to start new tables, so find a balance. I think a 10 buy-in gap is way too much. Moving up at 30 buy-ins and back down at 29.5 buy-ins seems pretty reasonable if you're single tabling. 10-tabling or something maybe move back down at 27 buy-ins.

Deciding which point to move up/down depends on your edge and variance of the game you're playing. I'm not sure who told you 40 buy-ins was standard, but the correct amount is going to be different per the individual. Post stats including standard deviation and win-rate, and briefly describe your risk tolerance.

Part of the difficulty with poker is that stats change as you move up in stakes or even at the same stake over time. This means we should tend towards the conservative side with respect to what's theoretically optimal.

Thanks browni3141,

I wish I could have the stats, but all that is allowed is that the site tracks your number of hands (up to 100k) and offers individual hand histories, not downloadable you have to view them one by one. This is on Global, btw.

My risk tolerance is that I intend to move down whenever my roll falls to 20 buyins at a current stake, and 40 for the lower stake. This is just my preference, not a recommendation. My style of play puts a 100bb stack at risk several times a session. I want to always know I have plenty more stacks than what is in front of me.

The 10 buyin stop loss is just from the worst downswing I have had in the first 42k hands. I want to know that if this should happen soon after I move up I have a chance to stay at the higher stake. I don’t want to jump around any more than I have to.

I know I could just robot brm and have nearly zero chance of busto, but I am going through each stake to learn the skill level at each stake.

Sample size is lolsmall, but NL4 was 30bb, NL10 was 25bb per 100.

Wrt the jump to NL50, did I get that right if my intended tolerances are a given?

-Rob

If those are your win-rates after about 21k hands at each stake, then you are crushing even if you ran super hot over that sample (which I'm assuming you did). 30 buy-ins is probably a bit conservative, but it's good to be conservative when moving to a new stake until you've established yourself.

If you're going to move up at 30 buy-ins for the next stake and back down at 20, I think you're staying too long at the higher stake. There is very little opportunity cost to move back down at something like 27 buy-ins because you really shouldn't be losing 3 buy-ins that regularly with a win-rate like that and considering your worst downswing over 42k hands was 10 buy-ins. Most likely if you set your stop-loss at just 3 buy-ins you'll still just run it up and not hit the stop-loss.

Thanks, it sounds like my brm strategy is too conservative and costing me growth. I will consider a more aggressive approach, probably after another 20k hands or so.

your approach seems fine