[antisocialgrace]

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'The point is that if you are a basic winning player, playing against the same opposition, then it can be calculated, before you start playing, that you are very unlikely to go busto if you have 20BI.'

I recall that Brian Townsend (far better than a basic winning player) went on a 20BI downswing at Crypto £80/160 (dumping $320,000) when working his way up.

I had a 28 buy-in downswing in my first 6 months of playing, and have had a 15 BI downswing as recently as May, and I pretty much fit the 'basic winning player' category exactly. The issue of course is that after a downswing of, say 8BI's, which is trivially likely at some point, your A game is often pretty much gone and tilting off another few BI's is pretty easy. Then if you only had 20BI's to start you're in busto range.


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This is a fairly common misunderstanding.

The math that shows that you are very unlikely to go bust with a 20BI bankroll assumes that you are starting with 20BI and playing that limit to infinity, never withdrawing and never moving up. It doesn't mean that you are very unlikely to have a 20BI downswing, it means that you are unlikely to have a 20BI downswing straight away. If you are a winning player, the chances are that by the time you have your 20BI downswing, you will have more than 20BI in your account.

For reference, if you have a 20BI bankroll and withdraw down to 20BI at the end of every day when you make money, your chance of going busto at some stage is almost 100%.

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That doesn't sound right. As long as you're not withdrawing below 20 buyins I would think you'd be fine (a good player). I suppose over a lifetime even a good player playing very high volume could hit that kind of variance, but it seems unlikely.