Originally Posted by Dazarath
About bankroll management:
The stakes you should be playing are a function of the following three things:
- Your "money" bankroll (AKA, what most people refer to as your bankroll)
- Your skill level
- Your "psychological" bankroll
The first two are pretty self-explanatory. The third one refers to the amount of money that you are comfortable playing for. As an example, imagine a player who has a $3,000 bankroll, and is strong enough to play 5/10. But if the swings at that limit cause him to lose sleep, he'd be much better off playing 3/6 or even 2/4, until he's comfortable with the larger swings.
I also think the mentality of, "hey, I'm willing to reload, so I can play on a short roll" is dangerous. By playing on a short roll, and always moving up stakes ASAP, you're setting yourself up to go bust, either due to a bad run, or because you move up until you're incapable of beating a certain set of stakes. For the more mathematically inclined, everytime you work your bankroll to a size where you have a reasonable risk of ruin, you're moving up and substantially increasing your RoR again, which is just a formula for BUSTO.
Bankroll management is a very important aspect (IMO) that many players ignore or overlook. Sure, it's fun to read about the people with tons of gambool, who run hot and work their way up fast. But it's a formula for disaster. For every success story you hear, there's 20 other players who went bust trying the same thing. Don't be afraid to move down if you feel that you can't handle the swings, or that you don't have the skill to beat the current stakes for a reasonable amount. There is no shame in playing lower to rebuild your confidence and your roll.
Table selection is huge, and I think many players underestimate how important it is. It is especially important for marginal winners, and even more important for marginal losers. Imagine a player whose winrate is somewhere around 0.00-0.25 BB/100 when he randomly opens tables and sits. I would wager that if he practiced very good table selection, his winrate would be more like 1 BB/100 (this is just from experience), and definitely at least 0.5 BB/100. That's a 2-4x increase in winrate. For a marginally losing player, it could mean the difference between -0.25 BB/100 and 0.25 BB/100, which is the difference between losing and actually making money.
Raze, thanks for making this post. I'm sure many new players will find a lot of useful information in there. The next time someone asks me to teach them poker, I will point them in the direction of this thread. It's also great to hear a success story from someone grinding free money into a sizable bankroll. After hearing stories of all the people who got lucky (no disrespect meant to them, I could probably be considered one), it's refreshing to learn that hard work still pays off in poker.
