So I put 20 dollars on Pokerstars today

[Bluegrassplayer]

Got it up to 100 then lost it.

Is this just expected to happen online? Should I cash out of my table whenever I get up to a certain amount to stop the suck outs from ruining my "bankroll"?

I don't really see a point of pointing in the recommended 20 buy ins seeing as how my debit card and poker stash are essentially the same thing.

[NFuego20]

Has nothing to do with online. If you're not properly rolled odds are the swings are going to take you above and below your starting point a certain amount before you stabilize in the positive direction, assuming you're even a winning player. Unless you're playing at $1 buy in tables, I wouldn't expect $20 to be sufficient to build a roll.

[Bluegrassplayer]

As I said my bankroll is much more than 20 buy ins

I'm just wondering if I need to prepare myself for huge variances online, the beats I took that took me down seem pretty unbelievable to me, atleast from how I'm used to playing live.

[NFuego20]

The online game is about 3-4 times faster than playing live first of all, so yeah this variance is normal. And if you're multitabling it's even faster. You could expect to see within one hour what you might see in 3 or 4 hours live. Perhaps in your one particular session the beats you took might be unusual, but over time after tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of hands, it all works out. You definitely need to be prepared to use more of your roll however. This month for me has involved getting up 12 buy ins and then dropping 5 buy ins over about 12k hands. It runs both ways.

[Bluegrassplayer]

Hmmm thats interesting, thanks for the response. I was playing one table at first, then got up to 50 dollars, then played two. I got both stacks up to about 50 dollars again then managed to lose them all to 4 horrible suck outs. So yeah with 2 tables I was seeing a lot more hands, which I guess means more suck outs, I just don't know how I'll deal with the variance if online play is really like this.

[NFuego20]

Over maybe 200,000 hands this past year, I've profited about 150 buy ins. Over that stretch, at least 10 times I have fallen in a hole of 10 buy ins, with the worst dropoff being 15 buy ins. So I lost $3,000 in one month and had to dig out of that hole. Yet if you can keep your head on straight you can still be plenty profitable in the longrun. That's the challenge though, not getting frustrated, tilting badly and chasing losses.

[Mike Kelley]

[ QUOTE ]
As I said my bankroll is much more than 20 buy ins

I'm just wondering if I need to prepare myself for huge variances online, the beats I took that took me down seem pretty unbelievable to me, atleast from how I'm used to playing live.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are an awesome gimmick account Bluegrass. Those usually go in BBV though.
If a thread gets locked that typically means you shouldn't post it in another strat forum.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

[too eazy]

bluegrass.

denial runs the industry.

that is all.

[MrBump]

[ QUOTE ]
Got it up to 100 then lost it.

Is this just expected to happen online? Should I cash out of my table whenever I get up to a certain amount to stop the suck outs from ruining my "bankroll"?

I don't really see a point of pointing in the recommended 20 buy ins seeing as how my debit card and poker stash are essentially the same thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

This makes no sense.

You claim to be a winning live player at $200 NL You say you practice good BR management, so your bankroll is at least $4000 right ?

So why do you credit your account with just $20 ? And if you understand / practice BR management why are you so surprised that you lost your bankroll when playing above your bankroll ?

[futuredoc85]

$1k is a decent BR for 1/2 live, anything >$2k is prob overkill. games are so soft and so passive that there is very little variance