Found a juicy 20/40 Half kill game and I was wondering A. What do you buy in for in 20/40? Is a rack too small? And B. What's an appropriate bankroll to play with. I have a full-time job so I don't need something too crazy.

Typically I like to buy two racks, but if the game is fishy and everyone only buys in for one rack then do that and just rebuy when you get down to half a rack.

Bank roll, for a rec player, I'd want at least 5k at least before taking a shot. Maybe more like 6k.

I sat down Friday night at the secondary table. It was 5 handed and they were all playing with around 1.5k. A couple of the rich guys had 3-5k in front. I bought in for a rack. Won a couple hands, got up to 1.3k. Lost a huge hand with pocket jacks then left up +350 after maybe 3 hours.There is a lot of money to be won in this game but I'm severely underrolled.

Just play with whatever you can afford to lose. If you have a full time job, set aside 500-1000 per paycheck to go play if it's something that interests you. The swings can be massive though, especially in a good action game. Good luck.

Yup. The swing I had last night would've been -$2000 if it were at 20/40. However, if the games are tighter the variance shouldn't be as bad as the loose and wild 8/16 games I've been playing. I think...

What you buy in for is whatever - just don’t run out of chips. I’d buy into the game you described for 3-4 racks but ymmv.

Someone can do the RoR calcs but I wouldn’t play that game with less than a $10k bankroll, more like $15k probably.

Page 219 of WITHG. Probability (going broke) = exp[(-2* bankroll * winrate)/variance]. He wrote this in terms of per 100 hands but if you put winrate and variance in terms of their hourly then I think it's fine.

Stox says typical standard deviation is 10 per 100 hands. I see 15 per hour referenced often. An hour is 30 hands if lucky so makes sense hourly variance is higher. Being OP and I are people who ask questions on forums rather than the ones who answer them let's assume a .5 BB/hr winrate (or worse).

With 100 big bets RoR is 64%. 150 BB is 50%. 300 is 26%. So if we're only slight winners the chance of going busto with 300 BB is quite high.

My financial advisor keeps telling me to hold more liquid cash. I guess I should listen to him and build a big bankroll

This has been discussed so many times I almost feel like if you need to ask, you're probably going broke either from lack of experience, bankroll, or both. The good news is you have a job, so are unlikely to ever go broke. The bad news is you have a job, so are more likely to bleed a slow death if you can't cut it. Here's a simple answer (because for a proper answer you'll need a large enough sample size to determine within a reasonable degree of certainty what your true win rate and standard deviation are):


The old adage used to be 300 big bets for a solid winning player. But with the addition of a 1/2 kill, along with better players, and even bad players playing more aggressively, I suspect this is no longer true and you'll likely need more than this if you aren't planning to move down in stakes. It's also worth noting this assumes you ADD wins to your bankroll and don't keep withdrawing them. If you start every session with 300 big bets you can expect to go broke once in ~1000 times or so due to variance even if you do beat the games. The best thing you can do to decrease variance and your chances of going broke is to increase win rate.

Lastly, if you're a losing player no bankroll will be sufficient. This goes without saying, but because you have another source of full time income you can start with whatever you like and always replenish. But like I said above, there's a danger here in not only deceiving yourself and losing money overall, but also in wasting a whole lot of your time. My advice is to keep good records. Standard deviation converges well before win rate. Within 1000 hours or so, you should have a reasonable idea of what the outer bounds for bankroll requirements should be.

Good luck!

Welcome to the forum. Always glad to have a new poster on board.



The term bankroll assumes that you start with $X and never replenish. It is a tool for pros and people playing in games where they can't replace losses. We rec gamblers have a gaming budget.

To me, the question is around buyins and how much a month you can budget for poker. If you don't care about adding more later, 3 buyins is probably sufficient. What is that? 75BB? Hit the table. Play. If you lose in a session, top it off. Your chances of losing a 75BB roll as a 0.75BB/HR player with a SD of 12BB/HR is a little less than 50%. So half the time, you get to infinity before you reload. Half the time you have to add on. Can you afford a 20/40 game? The buyin is like a grand or so.

Terms: BB= big bet. BR = bankroll, WR = win rate, in big bets per hour, SD is standard deviation in big bets per hour -- I used 12, which is pretty high for a tight-ish live player.

As always, this stuff assumes that you're a decent favorite in the game. 3/4 of a bet an hour is pretty good in modern games with high rake and villains who raise once in a while. The first answer to "how many $ do I need" is "how sure are you a winner".

I appreciate the feedback. I think I would win roughly 50% of the time. The moment I sat down I knew I didn't belong with all the rich people surrounding me. But I also instantly knew that this is a game where as long as I'm patient and play pretty TAG I will be profitable. One rack was definitely not enough to buy in for and I should have taken my almost one grand profit when I had it but I got greedy.

Limit hold'em is full of swings. Even crushing winners probably don't win a lot more than 50% of their sessions, but I'm not sure what a session win % stat would be because most people don't pay attention to that. You can manufacture that stat as a losing player -- just never quit when down until you have lost a ton of $ (chase losses) and quit immediately when up (lock up wins). This is a terrible way to play poker, but it will give a huge winning session %. A stop win is a bad thing. In that kill game, you might have been up 18-20BB? You might have won 2 big pots? That's just variance. If the game is good and you were playing well, why quit.

If you look at your high water mark in a session as "the money I've earned" and then any loss below that as "getting greedy", you're just in for mental torment. The amount of money you have in front of you hand to hand is just variance. Here's how a well rolled player sees it. You play some hours, your stack goes up and down. You quit for reasons related to having played long enough, the game not being good, or (rarely) you not being mentally right. If you're underfunded for the game, this seems even worse. That's another reason to have a roll you won playing poker, as it helps weather the swings mentally. Your OP seemed kind of a casual "I can afford to play this game, how much might I need". This post makes me think I read that wrong. Comfortably rolled as a non-pro for this game would be 400-500BB.

This stuff is magnified in a big kill game where people might play especially LAG once the 3rd blind go in and the stakes go up. Around here, we have a 30/60 game with a 50/100 kill. In a good game, it is $200 to see a flop once the kill is on. People defend their kill, and some defend their kill button. When the game is good, your session results are controlled by a few turns of the card. Did you hit the flush? Did top pair hold up? Did that guy try to bluff in a 4 way pot and my overpair held up, or did he bet and show me quads?

As usual DougL is crushing this thread.

I will just point out that 300BB is $10-15k for 20/40 so boom.

All the points just brought up about wintate, bankroll replenishment, stop losses / wins etc are the waaaay more useful to think through the question conceptually though.

+1


Knowing who you are and how the amount of money impacts your day to day should guide you. If you don't care about a few hundred on the odd weekend, one answer. If seeing someone buy in for 3 racks makes you think they're wealthy and it would be really hurtful for you to lose those three racks, different answer. Bankrolls protect you from hurtful negative outcomes. For a pro, those include homelessness.