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Part IA: All About Bankroll
It is of the utmost
importance that you have a realistic idea about how much money that
you need in your bankroll to play at the different bet and blind
levels which are available. If you are going to play with any
regularity-your bankroll is an amount of money that ideally would be
set aside from other money that you need to live, pay bills, etc....
Its important for different reasons that you don't sit down to the
poker table with your rent money.
First of all, playing with
money that you can't afford to lose is going to reduce the chances of
a winning outcome. In general, scarcity, and playing with the fear of
busting out, will have a seriously negative impact on your play. The
vast, vast majority of people who walk out away winners on a
particular night are properly staked when they sit down to play.
Their situation is: They can lose a percentage of what they have to
play without having to worry about it, and if they lose that, well
then tomorrow is another day. Abundance makes money, scarcity and
desperation loses it.
So then in terms of the actual ratio of
money that you need in your legitimate bankroll to the level of the
big blind that you are considering playing at, even experienced
players have different opinions. On the liberal end: some players
will say that that in a limited stakes game you need 200x the amount
of the big blind in your bankroll. If you are considering playing at
a 5/10 limit game for example, they would say that you need 200 x 10,
or 2,000$. On the conservative end, some players will say that you
need 3x that amount, or 600x times the big blind level. Using the
previous example they would say that you need 6,000$ just to play in a
5/10 limit game.
My own feeling is somewhere in the middle. If
you consider the fact that on a good day you can pretty easily win
800$ at a 5/10 limit table, if you only started with 2,000$, then
that's a 40% increase in your bankroll in one day. So if you plan to
last through the ups and downs it is probably better to avoid that
level of volatility in your overall bankroll. A 40% loss in one day
to your bankroll would be a massive hit.... Some of this will have to
do with your own tolerance for risk. But I think 200x the big blind
level would be the very minimum common sense level conceivable.
A sensible bankroll model might be to play a minimum ratio of 400x
the big blind, while allowing a maximum loss of 10% of your overall
bankroll in one day-so you can have 10 consecutive losing days before
you are wiped out, assuming that at no point you dropped down to a
lower blind level to protect yourself(which is something that you
should do if you are losing consistently at particular blind level).
If you do have 10 consecutive losing days, either you are having an
amazingly bad run of luck, or you need to take a step back and
seriously examine your own playing habits in order to find out where
the problem is. With this model, if you are playing correctly, it
should be very difficult to go broke.
The other issue that you
need to include in your bankroll model is: how much should you win
before you call it quits? Personally I like a trailing stop model
here. If you've ever traded stocks or the forex market, most likely
you have experience with trailing stops. If you establish a basic
goal for the day like a 10% gain in your overall bankroll, then that
goal can be your first stop point-you will quit once you drop down
below that level. After that, you can establish a trailing stop point
every additional 5%. So for example, if 2,000$ is your overall
bankroll, and you made 200$, then once you drop below 200$, maybe
after a losing hand your left with 187$ profit, you stop for the day.
But if you keep winning, and make another 5%, or 100$, for a total of
300$ profit, then 300$ becomes your new stop point, and so on. This
way you will not miss out on big profits if you happen to be on big
winning streak, and you will also be able to put away at least some
profit for the day, assuming that you've hit your first trailing-stop
point. Either way you need some type of guidelines that you can stick
to in order to know when to quit. Why?
The reason for this is
to embrace some kind of structure in your overall playing habits, in
order to make them positively habitual, as opposed to impulsive. How
much will I lose, and how much will I win if I keep playing are
basically unknown factors. Playing for too many hours in a single day
will eventually weaken your ability to make correct decisions-so
without a temporal stopping point eventually you are bound to give
back what you have won, or lose more than you already have. You go to
a job and then you come home. You wake up and you take a shower.
Poker should be that kind of habit, regular and business like.
There is no bankroll model that in itself can win you money-it
works in accordance with your skill set in order to produce profits
over time. Assuming the skills and self-mastery are there, then the
bankroll model will help you complete the winning package by insuring
that you limit your losses, take home the money when you win, avoid
impulsive playing, and play at blind levels that work to your own
advantage.
Playing under-staked, at a level of money which is
clearly too small for the blind level is just as bad as playing with
money that you can't afford to lose. Its like throwing it out the
window. Its as though there is a right side and a wrong side to the
game, and you want to do everything that you can to stay on the right
side of it, if you see what I mean. Just like life, right? :)
In order to win consistently at Texas Hold Em Poker,
you must be prepared to win, this entails:
- Mastering your own negative impulses in
difficult situations
- Being aligned with the game (poker is cruel in
many ways)
- Protecting and Respecting your Bankroll. Set
percentage loss and win limits and play at appropriate blind
levels.
Last for this section, I have
two recommendations. The first is
that you should keep a regular poker journal. Write down both
the things that you feel you've done right, and the things that you
feel you've done wrong after you finish playing for a session, or a
day. Highlight those situations where you felt the game of Texas
Hold Em was testing you, and then note how you responded. Over
time this will help create awareness for yourself and help you to
respond better during those tough times.
The second recommendation is to read a book called
Zen and the Art of Poker by Larry Phillips, which approaches the game
from a largely psychological perspective, and may help you to work
wonders in the area of self mastery.
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