Ferguson's Bankroll theory counterintuitive?

[Shandrax]

Fergusson's system reminds me of Kelly betting. He seems to think that he (only) has a 5% advantage, so he is willing to wager 5% of his bankroll.

[gergery]

he felt he was a winner at the highest levels. he was playing lower limits because he didn't have the bankroll (in this artificial experiment world). as soon as he could afford to play a given limit whereby he did not have more than 5% of his bankroll in play he would move up.

-g

[White Meat]

It really depends on who you ask. You seem to be being into Barry Greenstein's theory about when to play and when to quit. Ferguson's point is geared toward those without large bankrolls to absorb short term deviations at the tables.

I'll use an example:

I play a regular 1/2 NL game with 100 buy-in, without what most would consider enough of a dedicated bankroll to the short term. At the time it was only 1200. In this specific game, I had pumped my stack up to about 650. At this point, the game was still good, I was playing well..but I Ferguson would say it was more than time to quit. I had 30% + of what would be my bankroll on the table. About 20 min after thinking about quitting, I flopped a full house with TT, on a board of T66, trapped a player with KK for all his chips and the river was a K. He was about 550 deep and I was left with my initial buy-in of 100.

Yes I took a pretty bad beat on the river, but regardless of the reason, I had lost a huge portion of bankroll. Ferguson's idea would stop you from ever losing such a large amount of a bankroll on a random short term suckout.

Maybe if you think of it in a situation like this, it may make more sense.

[ QUOTE ]
It really depends on who you ask. You seem to be being into Barry Greenstein's theory about when to play and when to quit. Ferguson's point is geared toward those without large bankrolls to absorb short term deviations at the tables.

I'll use an example:

I play a regular 1/2 NL game with 100 buy-in, without what most would consider enough of a dedicated bankroll to the short term. At the time it was only 1200. In this specific game, I had pumped my stack up to about 650. At this point, the game was still good, I was playing well..but I Ferguson would say it was more than time to quit. I had 30% + of what would be my bankroll on the table. About 20 min after thinking about quitting, I flopped a full house with TT, on a board of T66, trapped a player with KK for all his chips and the river was a K. He was about 550 deep and I was left with my initial buy-in of 100.

Yes I took a pretty bad beat on the river, but regardless of the reason, I had lost a huge portion of bankroll. Ferguson's idea would stop you from ever losing such a large amount of a bankroll on a random short term suckout.

Maybe if you think of it in a situation like this, it may make more sense.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you sacrificed EV for lower variance. Doesn't make much sense at all, actually.

[RedBean]

Think of it these terms:

If you sit at 1/2 100 max buyin with $100, which is 5% of your bankroll of $2000.....

And you are running hot and pump it up to $500...

Now, even though you are right in the middle of a good session, let's hit the pause button.

Your bankroll is now $2400, and you are sitting with $500 on the table, or approx 21% of your bankroll.

Fergusons system guarentees at no given time can he lose more than 10% of his bankroll on one given hand.

[GlassJoe]

[ QUOTE ]
Think of it these terms:

If you sit at 1/2 100 max buyin with $100, which is 5% of your bankroll of $2000.....

And you are running hot and pump it up to $500...

Now, even though you are right in the middle of a good session, let's hit the pause button.

Your bankroll is now $2400, and you are sitting with $500 on the table, or approx 21% of your bankroll.

Fergusons system guarentees at no given time can he lose more than 10% of his bankroll on one given hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but with Chris' method, you'd have to stop at $210 because now your BR is up to $2110 and you've got 10% of your BR at the table. So you just lost out on $290 because you shut it down perhaps prematurely.

And if you lose that first buy-in, does this theory allow you to rebuy (I guess for just $95 since that's now 5% of your $1900 BR)? I guess I can understand cutting it off at 20% of your BR, so if you get your $100 buy-in up to $500 and now have a $2400 BR, 21% of your BR (as in your example), I think that may make more sense. But 10% when buying in for 5% seems a bit too restrictive just at first blush.

[Precision1C]

If you believe that you are a significant +EV winner at poker it is all about playing as high as you can with a minimum risk of ruin(ROR). Chris believes that with his edge a 20X bankroll is optimum for him giving him the highest limit possible with a low risk of ruin. For someone not as expert this number might get much bigger to be optimum. Since many of these abstract ROR problems assume that if you bustout you get to sit on a heating grate in the winter the dollar amounts seem quite small compared to the bankroll. From the perspective of a normal person just imagine how much you would be willing to lose, long term, before getting completely disgusted with poker and quitting and using that as your bankroll for the 5% calculation. Using that as a base figure you will probably find that your % number is much smaller than Chris', on the order of 50X or 100X+.
The ROR is one reason that many really good players go broke, they keep pushing the limit and hit a really bad stretch and go busted. It is hard to call it day when you are playing well and double up your 5% stake but in order to minimize ROR that is what you have to do. It doesn't matter what your highest BR number is, what does matter is that you can make a living for 30+ years without going busted once. If your an action freak this isn't real exciting but they would say that the optimum would be to have your last check bounce after you die. For actuaries the long run can go on for many years and being able to live with no money worries makes up for a lot.

Call me Anti-hero.

[NicGreek]

A few things i have been thinking about is, if he plays a 1-2NL game does he buy in for a full online buyin? $200 or does he buy in for less? like a $100.

And if he is multitabling is it the total sum of the tables he plays that should amount to 5% of the br or just 5% of current for x times ?

Anyone has a good guess on this?

Thanks

[Precision1C]

I would think Chris would try to maximize his skill edge whenever possible and arrange to only move up if he could buy in near maximum. The only real guess is when he would jump up to the next level. Assuming blinds increase at about double a level my guess would be that Chris would move up when he could buy in for about 90% of the max and move down if he fell below that amount. This way he wouldn't have to double up his BR every time to move up. This is just a wild ass guess since Chris already knows he is a winning player at these low levels so he might of elected to take shots at higher games earlier to save time.

[BluffTHIS!]

Nic,

From what I have read here and elsewhere, what Chris did was not to put more than 5% of his roll in action on any one table. Thus if he were 4-tabling, 20% of his roll would be in action in total. The point is, that on any 1 hand, he could only lose so much (5% of his roll or almost 10% if he doubled up and hadn't left yet). And buying in for 100 on a 200 max nl table is *almost* the same as buying in for the max on a 100nl table, since though that buyin is short, it is not so short that the blinds are eating the stack up while waiting for hands to play, with the result that doubling up wouldn't give a profit much past the blind costs.