Poker Bankroll Management – Bankroll Maintaining (5 of 5)

Once you’ve built your bankroll to a point where you cannot replace it, you must exercise money management skills. It’s at this point that many players get caught up in the idea of going ‘PRO’, and instead end up going broke!

When you’re online poker bankroll reaches the point that eclipses most savings accounts and retirement funds you need to start exercising great discipline and caution. Suppose your bankroll has grown from $500 to $10,000, and you’ve been playing with 20 buy-ins: There is a huge difference between dropping 5 buy-ins –$125 with a $500 bankroll—and dropping 5 buy-ins with a $10k bankroll –$2,500! When your bankroll reaches a point that heavy losses cannot be replaced so easily, and sting so much more, you need to be extra careful. If you’re going to be serious about poker, you’ll also have to be serious about money management.

Maintaining a bankroll is an exercise in caution, you never want to risk a large portion of your bankroll in any game, unlike your early attempts at building a bankroll, you don’t take ’shots’ unless you have reached a conservative bankroll number –there is no more putting 10% of your entire poker bankroll on the table: EVER! In fact, it would be unwise to ever put more than 5% of your money in play at any time, and a better number to shoot for is around 2%.

When you were building your bankroll from scratch a big loss wasn’t much of an issue; if you managed to work your way up to $400 and dropped half of it, it wouldn’t be devastating: frustrating, but not devastating. On the other hand, if you now possess a $10k bankroll, and lost $5,000 it would be a very big deal! Losing half your bankroll at this point is devastating; not only in terms of the amount of money, but the time and effort you put in to win that money will wreak havoc on your mind-set.

On the flip side of the coin, you also do not want to play way over?rolled. If you have a $50,000 roll and you play in a $100 game, the losses won’t sting enough, and most people will play less than optimally in that situation.

It’s at this point that you should set a floor, and a ceiling limit:

A floor is the amount of your bankroll you will lose before you drop in limits: If you have 50 buy-ins you may set a floor limit of 30 buy-ins, at this point, even though you still have a healthy bankroll, you may want to move down in limits. As I said, with a substantial poker bankroll the losses are more mentally draining.

A ceiling is a threshold you must pass in order to cash-out or move up in limits. So, if you like to maintain a 50 buy-in bankroll you may want set a ceiling of 55 buy-ins, so every-time your bankroll reaches  55 buy-ins you can cash-out or perhaps take a shot at the next limit.

Passive bankroll building:

There are other ways for poker players to work on their bankroll away from the poker tables, and sometimes these methods are critical to a poker player’s success: Such as, using tracking software, like Holdem manager, to pinpoint weaknesses in your game; or reading and learning from other experienced poker players at online poker forums.

Author: Alex Galin

Website: http://www.rakebackinn.com – Sign Up Today – for the Best Online Poker Rakeback Deals!

Popularity: 68% [?]

Poker Bankroll Management – Building a bankroll from scratch

One of the trickiest things for any online poker player, regardless of their ability, to do is build a bankroll from next to nothing, and this is precisely where 95% of online poker players begin their poker careers. Many new online poker players simply deposit an insignificant amount of money, and play way over the head, to the point that a single bad-beat often ends their experiment as a poker player.

When poker players go this route they are completely ignoring variance, even if they are really strong poker players they are leaving their fate in the hands of lady luck, and instead of playing enough hands of online poker to take variance out of the equation, they are instead leaving themselves at variance’s mercy.

To actually build a bankroll from scratch you must adhere to the following three-step process:

Phase 1 - Choosing a site. You want to choose a site that offers at least one level below the stakes you intend to start out playing, the more levels below the better. Also you want to make sure you are receiving a deposit bonus or rake-back. Receiving a good deposit bonus and more importantly a good rakeback deal –deposit bonuses are a one-time occurrence, rakeback deals are for life—will allow you to buld your bankroll even faster when you are winning, and offset some of your losses during down-swings. Rakeback is truly the gift that keeps on giving!

Phase 2 – How much to risk. This is where you need to exercise good discipline, and not take random shots at higher stakes games, or try to learn a new game: These are things you can do once you have built a professional bankroll that can more than cover any random losses you might suffer.

Whatever your initial bankroll was –in number of buy-ins—you always want to be near that number. That means if you started with a 20 buy-in bankroll, and your bankroll takes a hit and falls to 12 buy-ins, you should drop down in limits until you recoup some of those losses. Don’t keep hammering your head into the wall.

Dropping down is crucial, because as long as you can always drop down in limits you will never go broke!

Phase 3 ? Moving up in limits. This is where you will be taking a few shots at higher stakes tables –the next stakes up, not 10x higher—when you spot a weak lineup or a really big donkey, by risking a single full buy-in (which should be about double what you would normally risk in an online poker game). If you win during one of these excursions to the higher stake games you’ll be able to pad your bankroll with a big win –allowing you to move up faster. And if you take a hit, it’s ok, as long as you don’t drop more than that 1 buy-in in the game –you can overcome losing a buy-in (which would be 2 buy-ins at your normal stakes), but overcoming a multiple buy-in downswing will be difficult, financially and mentally. So, if you do lose when you take a shot you’ll be able to proceed at your normal stakes, or even to the next level down if you have to.

You can continue on in this fashion until your bankroll gets to a point where you have built yourself up to a safe bankroll, and if you lose it, you cannot easily replace the money. And it’s at this point –when you have built a sizeable online poker bankroll– you’ll want to read part 5 of this series.

Author: Alex Galin

Website: http://www.rakebackinn.com – Sign Up Today – for the Best Online Poker Rakeback Deals!

Popularity: 73% [?]

Poker Bankroll Management – Bankroll Considerations

Although extremely important, variance is not the only factor that must be considered when trying to determine precisely how large a bankroll you will need. Everything from the type of online poker game you play in, to your style of play, to your ego will play a role in how large your poker bankroll will need to be.

The following chart shows the agreed upon bankroll requirements for playing with a professional bankroll. Recreational players who simply play for fun with extra money, and can reload at any time don’t have the need to create a bankroll.

Limit Hold’ Em buy-in = 25 Big Bets: No Limit Hold’ Em buy-in = 100 Big Blinds

A risky bankroll is one that I really only recommend when you begin playing. If your bankroll is in the risky category you are in a building phase, and shouldn’t be moving up in limits or cashing out until your bankroll reaches a point where it is safe.

When you have a safe bankroll you now have options: you can cash out some of your winnings –I don’t recommend cashing out so much money that your bankroll is once again in the risky phase—or you could decide to make a run at some higher limit online poker games.

With a conservative bankroll you have truly become a professional poker player: You have very little chance of going broke, and have a good reserve of funds to negate any stress that may come from losses or a cold-streak of cards.

However, this chart is much like everything else in poker: A guideline. There are numerous other considerations that will play a role in how large of a bankroll you will need to succeed in online poker.

Here are a few of the considerations that will allow you to play with a smaller, risky, bankroll:

1. Numerous limits below your current stakes, coupled with a willingness to drop in limits when things are going sour.
2. Playing in full ring games.
3. Playing split pot games like Omaha 8 and Stud 8.
4. A tight style of play.
5. Good self-control.
6. The capability of replacing a portion of your bankroll from an outside source.
7. A good rakeback deal.
8. A large margin between your skill, and the skill of most of your opponents

Here are some considerations that will necessitate that you to play with a larger, more conservative, bankroll:

1. Playing short-handed, especially heads-up
2. Employing a looser style
3. Pushing small edges and making risky plays
4. A small margin between your skill, and your opponents’ skill
5. Unwilling to drop to lower limit games
6. Poor emotional control
7. No way to replace losses
8. Large amount of expenses

If you find yourself falling more into the first list than you are likely to have a smaller amount of variance in your game, and can therefore play with a smaller bankroll: On the other hand, if you associate yourself more with the 2^nd list than you will likely need a larger bankroll.

Author: Alex Galin

Website: http://www.rakebackinn.com – Sign Up Today – for the Best Online Poker Rakeback Deals!

Popularity: 90% [?]

Poker Bankroll Management – Variance and Standard Deviations (2 of 5)

Variance, according to Wikipedia is: In probability theory and statistics, the variance of a random variable or distribution is the expected, or mean, value of the square of the deviation of that variable from its expected value or mean.

I know most people are probably saying, “WHAT???” or “Come again?” But I will explain why you need to know this technical jargon, and its importance at the poker tables. The answer is quite simple; as a poker player, formulating your bankroll requirements hinges on your understanding of variance, and standard deviation.

Variance: In poker variance is the distribution of your results over a set period of time –sessions, hours, weeks, hands, or years. Variance will also show your swings, both good and bad. The less of an edge you have, the higher the variance: The higher your edge the closer the results will be to your average. By taking the extreme high and low mark you will get your variance.

The most basic example of variance is the coin flip: If you were to flip a coin 20 times the odds say you will get 10 heads and 10 tails. However, this is the average over a large sample size, over the course of any 20 flips you could get any number of results: The actual odds of getting precisely 10 heads and 10 tails is only 17.6%! However, it’s possible to have 20 heads or 20 tails in a row!

Standard Deviation: Standard deviation is a way to measure the likelihood of possible outcomes based on certain data. Standard deviation measures how widespread your results can be considering what your average results are. The standard deviation is the simply the square root of your variance: If your variance is 100, your standard deviation is 10.

Suppose you play $.50/$1 NLHE: If you were to chart your win-rate over 10 online poker sessions of 300 hands –where you won a total of $330– from best to worst it would look something like this:

poker variance

Your average win is $33.00 per session, but your wins and losses are all over the place, in fact your variance is $300 (a low mark of -$100 and a high mark of $200). Based on your results, over the course of 10 sessions you could win as much as $200 or lose up to $100. Obviously, 10 sessions isn’t a large sample size, but suppose each bar of the graph represented 100 sessions. Now suppose you want to know your chances of maintaining your $11/100 win-rate with a 95% accuracy.

With these numbers your win rate could fluctuate between $15/100 and $8/100 over any 100 sessions, but over 1,000 sessions will be between $10 and $12/100, and over 5,000 sessions will be between $10.50 and $11.50/100.

Basically, the higher your variance, and standard deviation, the higher your bankroll requirements will be. This is why many players will give up some smaller edges, or play in a less risky game that offers less profit, in order to cut down on their variance. For more on what types of games, styles, and other factors play into variance continue on to Part 3 of this series.

Author: Alex Galin

Website: http://www.rakebackinn.com – Sign Up Today – for the Best Online Poker Rakeback Deals!

Popularity: 100% [?]