Join Date: Feb 2013
Posts: 11,125
A buy-in should be defined by the Player themselves and is typically used to define a Player's bankroll level.
Whatever you typically buy-in for when playing your 'normal' stakes would be considered your base amount. If you are playing 1/2 and only sitting down with $100 at a time, then that's a BI (for you).
Player's may define the cash they take to the casino for a session by the numbers of buy-ins they bring with them.
Player's may also be referencing the number of times they've been felted during a session .. thus 'buying in' X number of times. The tournament term is typically 'bullets' but since each Player may not start a cash game with the same amount it defaults to 'buy-in'.
If you actually do track a bankroll, then there are 'rules' associated with what stake you should be playing based on the number of buy-ins in your bankroll in order to survive variance.
BI are not an exact science since there are Players who will continually top-off or add-on to their stack (as in a MTS game), but typically in conversation with another Reg they will describe their day based on buy-ins rather than an exact amount. GL
