Suppose you have a 40bi bankroll for $1/$2NL, you buy in for $200 and triple it up. Do you all of a sudden "only" have a BR of $7800/$600 = 13bi instead of 40?

It seems like from a risk of ruin standpoint, it doesn't seem like it matters if you run the $200 up to $400, $1000 or $2000, you still have 39 bi to fall back on.

Would you ever get to a point where you felt "pressured" to actually get up from the table?

Does the discussion change for a shortstacker, i.e. if a person who consistently buys in for $60 has 40bi of $60 in his bankroll and triples up a buyin, should the shortstacker feel like he's practicing bad BRM if he doesn't cash out and get up?

Hope the questions made sense.

This is correct. If anything, you can choose to view tripling up as now having a 42 buyin roll, if only temporarily. The only thing you should take into consideration is the game conditions at the table. That's hard to do for some people so if you feel nervous about losing a bunch of money you should probably leave but keep effective stacks in mind. If everybody else only has 100 BBs, so do you. Shortstacking as a strategy relies on ratholing, it's part of the reason shortstackers are disliked.

Another thing you're not really considering is if you have 40BI and you buy in for 1 BI, and then run it up to 39BI on the table, sure, you have 1/2 your roll on the table, but it's unlikely the other stacks at the table have anything close to this. If everyone else has ~100 BB, that's effectively what you have in play at the moment.

If you have 10 apples, take one of those in your hand and then somebody hands you two more apples. How many apples do you have, 3, 9, 10 or 12?

Leave the table if you want to, no-one is stopping you. If you are comfy with 100bb play but get nervous with 300bb, lock it up.

if the rest of the table is deep the standard deviation will increase (i.e. you win win/lose more per hand), but yeh 39 other bi is more than enough assuming a decent winrate.

To establish some context, the reason I ask is because lately I've playing the shortstack strategy at $1/$2 tables, but then staying at the table after doubling or tripling up to practice deepstack play. A person whose advice I have come to trust says that it's a bad idea because I'm not rolled for deepstack play. He says I should cash out ASAP after tripling up and wait until I've built a proper bankroll for deepstack play before trying it.

I don't understand what the problem is - if I have a BR of 40 short-stack buyins, why does it matter if I stay at the table after a double- or triple-up? If I get my stack in the middle and lose I still have 39 short-stack buyins behind. And if I do eventually decide to transition to deepstack play permanently, I can't understand how the experience could be anything but valuable.

What's wrong with my plan? Is it just not as profitable as ratholing?

Think of it this way: If you have more at the table than you would sit down with voluntarily, you should consider getting up. If you would not sit down with 300BB on a 4000BB roll, then you should prefer to not play with that amount. It doesn't matter that you got to a 300BB stack by winning it. However, you have to weigh against the opportunity cost of not playing. Quitting for the day has a pretty big opportunity cost and is probably not worth it, unless you were going to leave soon anyway or you live somewhere like Vegas where another room is a walk away.

Also, you shouldn't think only in terms of buy-ins when considering BRM, because Variance scales sub-linearly with stack size. Playing 5|T with 100BBs is significantly more variance than 2|5 with 200BBs, despite the amount of money in play being the same. You could reasonably buy-in to an uncapped 1|2 game for 500BB, which happens to be 10% of your roll, but it would be very risky as a strategy to buy-in for 50BB at 10% of your roll.

It is different if you are at the table with opponents who are good at deep-stack and you are pretty inexperienced. If you feel your EV is significantly lower after gaining a large stack you should probably leave regardless of opportunity cost.

Excellent post. Well-worded and makes sense. And I experienced some of this last night - I bought in for $50, got to see a free flop from my first BB, flopped two pair and tripled up, then shortly thereafter a maniac went all in pre with 99, I called him with KK and doubled THAT up. So all of a sudden I'm sitting there with about $300!

I played for about 4 hours with the $300 stack - it went up and down and ended right about the same. But there were definitely spots where it would have been correct to raise or 3-bet pre but I just called because I was afraid of building a big pot and being in position to make mistakes or get sucked out on. I even folded JJ pre once when a maniac open-raised to $60 and a villain called.

Part of the reason I stayed as long as I did is everyone played so straightforward, and was showing their hand at showdown when they didn't have to almost every other hand - they were calling with weak hands and never bluffing. After about 3 hours people started actually bluffing the river with trash, and I was like, all right time to get up!

If you intend from this point forward to BI for $600, then yes you have 13BI. But you don't; win or lose you will still BI for $200. So your chances of going busted is NOT increased if you continue to play with a solid win so far.

Know this: when you are winning, statistically its because either the opponents are weak or because your strengths match well against their weaknesses (such as you sitting before the guy who bets most of the time). Also, the opponents will "fear" you more and tend to play more straight forward. These are reasons to stay when winning.

You may not want to play deep-stacked because you feel ..err.. fear your judgement in big pots is suspect; notably when you are betting your solid pair, and on the end a draw gets there and someone bets big into you and you have no idea what to do. "Fear" is the key word in that sentence. If you feel the fear then YOU should get up; it matters not what a non-fearful person "should" do.

You may not want to play deep-stacked also when you tend not to play speculative hands; but rather hands that do well in TPTK heads up situations.

If you get ahead and find yourself deep-stacked and don't feel fear, then you should be willing to "speculate" more pre-flop; Axs, suited connectors, and pairs. I think you should also tend to raise larger pre-flop. If you are normally a nit, this would be good practice.

-Louie

I don't think much of using "Buy In" as a measure of Bank Roll Management. $8000 for a 1/2nl game should be plenty, so long as you are winning.