Bankroll Management Plan

[jay_shark]

Where do I begin ?

A few things you need to do :

1) What is your risk tolerance ?

2) What is your estimated win rate? It's better to err on the conservative side than to over estimate your win rate .

3)What is your standard deviation for the games you play in . Your s.d should be less in full rings and should gradually increase with fewer players .

B= -s.d^2/(2*winrate)*lnr

r is your risk tolerance
s.d = standard deviation
winrate may be expressed as BB/100 hands and to be consistent , your s.d should be expressed the same way .

As an example , if you play NL100 , then your win rate may be 7bb/100 and your s.d may be 80bb/100 .

If you're content with a 1% risk of going broke , then you need a bankroll of :

B= 2105 bb's or $2105 .

If you're playing in the 0.25/0.5 game , you may need only half of that or $1052 .

[jmitchell42]

however, i would love to see a chart like the one you posted. not one with bankroll requirements, but one with when you should move up and down at what level (generally speaking, i know it has to do with how you play).
does anyone have a link to one of those or have one themselves for both limit and NL?

[pzhon]

It is very common to suggest having a fixed number of buy-ins for a level. This is very simple, but too simple to be right.

Using a fixed number of buy-ins is pretending that all levels are equally difficult, that your win rate will be the same when you are playing for pennies as it is when you are playing with hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The achievable win rates in very low stakes games are much higher than the achievable win rates in tough games. This is also true for the actual win rates of the winning players playing in those games. Decent but not expert players can win at NL $10 at rates which are not close to sustainable by the best players at NL $400. This means that you don't need to have nearly as many buy-ins to play NL $10 as at NL $400 with the same level of safety. If you are so conservative that you want to have 20 buy-ins at NL $10, then you should require something like 80 buy-ins at NL $400.

Bankroll management isn't about minimizing risk. If you want to minimize risk, quit poker, or never move up. Bankroll management is about finding good opportunities with acceptable risks. Just as moving up too quickly can be a mistake, moving up too slowly is a mistake, too, if your goal is to win money (although the consequences are not as spectacular).

Setting bankroll requirements that are too high can be bad in many ways. The obvious one is that you may stay for too long in low stakes games when you could be winning more money, learning more, and having more fun in higher stakes games. You'll tend to get bored and break your bankroll resolutions if they are too conservative. They can also misleadingly suggest that large downswings are common for solid players, while they are actually useful indicators that you need to work on your play, particularly in soft games.

A marginal winner needs many more buy-ins than a solid winner to be as safe. A losing player will lose any amount eventually. You need both a bankroll and skills to be safe. The bankroll does not give you the skills. That an expert would be quite safe with 15 buy-ins at some level does not mean you will be. Insead of setting a monetary threshold for moving up, you might want to set requirements both for your bankroll and your sustained win rate at the lower level.

[TheChad]

"The achievable win rates in very low stakes games are much higher than the achievable win rates in tough games. This is also true for the actual win rates of the winning players playing in those games. Decent but not expert players can win at NL $10 at rates which are not close to sustainable by the best players at NL $400. This means that you don't need to have nearly as many buy-ins to play NL $10 as at NL $400 with the same level of safety. If you are so conservative that you want to have 20 buy-ins at NL $10, then you should require something like 80 buy-ins at NL $400."

Wise words here. The other thing that I decided to mention is that when you hit 1/2ish and higher, you run into players that like to play what is called "deepstack" poker. Essentially, it is playing small blinds in relation to a very large stack. I'm not sure what the line is, but typically in my home game, we play 300-500 big blinds deep.

[mce86]

[ QUOTE ]
Guys,

I am only starting out and after playing several months with absolutely no clue regarding to bankroll management but capable of consistently being a winning player at the 0.5 - 1$ level , I will now deposit 50$ on UB.
I devised the following bankroll management plan , based on 50 no limit buyins for attaining a certain level and dropping down a level when i'm 30% of the minimum bankroll of the level.
What do you think ?



No Limit Cash Games-----Move down at-----Move up at
0.1$ - 0.25$------------------------------- 25$
0.25$ - 0.5$--------------18.75$------------50$
0.5$ - 1$------------------37.5$-----------100$
1$ - 2$----------------------75$-----------200$
2$ - 4$---------------------150$-----------300$
3$ - 6$---------------------225$---------- 500$
5$ - 10$--------------------375$----------1000$
10$ - 20$-------------------750$----------2000$
20$ - 40$------------------1500$--------- 2500$
25$ - 50$------------------1875$----------3000$
30$ - 60$------------------2250$----------5000$
50$ - 100$-----------------3750$---------10000$
100$ - 200$----------------7500$---------20000$
500$ - 1000$--------------37500$--------100000$

[/ QUOTE ]
Multiply your move up level by 10 at the very least, with 20 being more ideal!