NLTRN: rather individual bankroll question

[hra146]

hey there,

Im in a tricky situation right now. I left home a month ago waiting for college to begin, playing poker for a living. Due to a lack of discipline and other stuff I pretty much screwed up my first month and after paying rent and having enough to live off Im left with a bankroll of about 300$ for the next month to start.

Im absolutely sick of cashgame multitabling and I really enjoy HU sngs a lot. Ive played about 70 matches till now showing a roi of about 15. Eventhough I feel I have an edge over most opponents there is definitely still a hole in my game and Id consider myself to be "above average". But not great, or a crushing winning player.

Ive played the 11s at various sites with reasonable success but Im beginning to feel a little downside recently.

I dont know anything specific about bankrollmanagement for HU TRNs so Im kinda lost of where I should start now. I heard somewhere that a 40 buyins should be sufficient, but I have no idea whether that is reasonable or not.

Now, given that I cannot possibly replenish my bankroll, meaning zero is zero I should probably take a different path than many others anyway.

There are obviously the 11$ BI games and the 6$s at stars (as turbos, which i have mostly played so far) and there are even 2$ BI games at FT, no turbos however.

Including this month, I have now 34 days until the next rent is due and I need approx. another 500$ in my bank account.

Whats your suggestion about where to start and when to move up?

Im not sure if I should be playing the 11s right now, or if I should immidiately start at the 6s, going safe.

What would you consider to be the least amount I need to take shots at the 11s, and what amount would you recommend to have to play the 6s safely?

Id be really thankful if you had some rough guidelines so I (we) could work out kind of a plan for me to work on in these 34 days.


id be thankful for any advice, estimations or just personal stories information and anything about variance and bankroll for HUSNgs.

greets , hra

[Kharlog]

Playing for a living with $300 bankroll will be _REALLY_ tough. You have to spend enormous amounts of hours playing poker. 30-40 buy ins should be enough playing for a living those micro stakes but after $100s I think 50+ BIs are necessary. Move up when you reach 40 BIs for next level and move down if you drop to 30 BIs.

[hra146]

its not gonna be all that tough imo. I only need a 500$, and I think I should be able to make these.

Even if I got stuck at the 6$ sngs at a 10% ROI (for whatever reason) Id only need 140 hrs.

If things REALLY wont work out I can still do cashgames, so it should be allright.

[stillnotking]

[ QUOTE ]
hey there,

Im in a tricky situation right now. I left home a month ago waiting for college to begin, playing poker for a living. Due to a lack of discipline and other stuff I pretty much screwed up my first month and after paying rent and having enough to live off Im left with a bankroll of about 300$ for the next month to start.

Im absolutely sick of cashgame multitabling and I really enjoy HU sngs a lot. Ive played about 70 matches till now showing a roi of about 15. Eventhough I feel I have an edge over most opponents there is definitely still a hole in my game and Id consider myself to be "above average". But not great, or a crushing winning player.

Ive played the 11s at various sites with reasonable success but Im beginning to feel a little downside recently.

I dont know anything specific about bankrollmanagement for HU TRNs so Im kinda lost of where I should start now. I heard somewhere that a 40 buyins should be sufficient, but I have no idea whether that is reasonable or not.

Now, given that I cannot possibly replenish my bankroll, meaning zero is zero I should probably take a different path than many others anyway.

There are obviously the 11$ BI games and the 6$s at stars (as turbos, which i have mostly played so far) and there are even 2$ BI games at FT, no turbos however.

Including this month, I have now 34 days until the next rent is due and I need approx. another 500$ in my bank account.

Whats your suggestion about where to start and when to move up?

Im not sure if I should be playing the 11s right now, or if I should immidiately start at the 6s, going safe.

What would you consider to be the least amount I need to take shots at the 11s, and what amount would you recommend to have to play the 6s safely?

Id be really thankful if you had some rough guidelines so I (we) could work out kind of a plan for me to work on in these 34 days.


id be thankful for any advice, estimations or just personal stories information and anything about variance and bankroll for HUSNgs.

greets , hra

[/ QUOTE ]

40 buyins is more than sufficient as a HUSNG bankroll if you are a solid winning player, meaning at least 7-10% ROI (roughly 56-58% winrate); your sample size is not big enough to know if your winrate is actually that good or not, but it probably is. However, you are not going to make a living at the $11s, realistically. If you just need $500 in a month and you are disciplined, you can probably get it, but HUSNGs simply take too much concentration to grind them 8 or 10 hours a day for extended periods of time. If you want to support a meager lifestyle as a low-stakes grinder (why?), go with the $11 STSNGs or $0.50/$1 cash games.

[hra146]

well, i know that my samplesize isnt meaningful, but i just wanted to give an idea of what i had done so far.

being a lowstakes grinder is what i have to right now cause my mother made me leave and my father lives abroad. I could theoretically get a job, but Id rather try it this way first.
Hopefully I WONT be stuck at the 11s after 34 days of husng experience and maybe I will move to cashgames again. however, for now my roll is nowhere near anything reasonable for .50/1 and I simply cannot take the stress at nl10 or nl25 anymore.

Given that you do (apparently) only need 40 buyins for a hulevel I expect to advance rather quickly to higher stakes.

at the 11s, playing with a 10% roi I dont need anything like an 8 hour grinding day to make my living.

for now i just enjoy husngs and its the only thing i can do without throwing up (or getting a job), so I just wanted to know about br management

thx for the helpful replies so far , i really appreciate it

[TNixon]

30-50 buyins really is too conservative, I think. For HU cash, that may very well be true, but the variance in HUSNGs is so small that it doesn't make sense.

The roll you need is 100% dependent on your winrate. Any level you have a 58%-60% (or better) winrate at, you should be able to play comfortably with as little as 10 buyins, as long as you're willing to aggressively step up and down.

If you wait for much more than that before stepping up, you end up costing yourself *huge* amounts of long-term profit.

Also, long-term results are best if you're always playing the highest limit you can, based on how many buyins you're comfortable with. There are some pretty hefty statistical disadvantages by waiting to move up until you have enough to play a number of them in a row.

Here's a thread with more discussion on the issue: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...part=1&vc=1

[ChicagoRy]

Honestly I would get a part time job to pay 400 dollars+ of this rent until you can get up to the 33s or 55s with a solid winrate. If you play 30 hours a week HU and start talking to other people on this forum about hands, post your questions and read your HHs you should be at the 33s in 2-3 months tops. From there you can easily grind out 40 hrs a week if you're only playing poker and make enough to build your roll and pay your rent.

Starting with 300 bucks and needing to make 500 each month is very tough. I started with 150 in January, granted I did not play nearly as much as you're talking about but I doubled my roll by March 1st, tripled that by April first and since then I've tripled it again.

Basically until you get to the point of having 1500-2k dollars in your bankroll playing at the very minimum 33s, I would get some steady income you can depend on. The worst case scenario for you here is a bad downswing and not being able to pay your rent. Then you can't even build your roll because you have no place to live.

Work at least 20 hrs a week and grind like hell the rest of the time and in a few months you'll be very happy that you had a little bit of consistent income to allow you to build your roll.

Another thing is, I know several players HU and otherwise who have done what you're doing with bigger bankrolls playing higher limits that have failed. They were certainly better players than you and I and a lot of others but they just had to cash out too much for living expenses and they ended up going broke. One of these people seems to have gotten his situation straightened out but it is still early for him, the other is not looking good.

Make what you will of that, if you want to talk about some options you have you can PM me and we can talk on AIM about this.

[mbillie1]

ChicagoRy is right here... playing with a short bankroll is bad news unless you are an EXTREMELY good player and can keep your cool through variance, etc.

[dboy23]

dont get discouraged. I was in this exact spot last month. I had $138 in PS and rent due in 30 days. I played a ton using a 20BI BR rule, also moving down when needed. A month later I have $1500 after taking out $400 for rent and things.

[Kharlog]

Playing for a living with less than 40BIs is quite risky imo. If you can't go broke then playing with 20BIs or less is just very tough. I will tilt if I lose like 25% of my bankroll and that tilt will last long. Of course it's personal and losing 25% of your $300 bankroll doesn't fell as terrible as losing 25% of a $10k bankroll. That's just my experience. If you feel mentally stable with aggressive bankroll management then it could be good for you. Otherwise, stick to conservative bankroll management.