PLO with no bankroll

[luckyjimm]

All this talk of bankroll made me wonder if I'm the only one who plays like this: I don't have a bankroll, I just deposit a buy-ins and see how I do with it. Low limits so we're talking 20 euros, or about $25. I join a six-handed 0.10/0.20 game on B2B and many, many times have spun up to 100 to 200 euros from my intial 20, hopping around tables and moving up to 0.25/0.50. At some point it'll go horribly wrong, for example I'll get a bad beat and tilt, or move to 0.50/1 and get stung. If I play consistently and keep to the small tables I can regularly beat the game for five, ten buy-ins in a session, but I never seem to build up a bankroll because I tilt or move up too high.

Don't most recreational players follow this approach? They make a deposit when they want to play, see how they do, make another deposit. Or is this just the definition of a losing player stroke compulsive gambler?

[glass_onion]

i've often wondered who the people were who I was winning money off of, or where the $ comes from. My thought was mostly NLHE moving to a new game, but perhaps it is from people like yourself.

Myself when I started out, was with maybe 5 buyins, so thats $500 at the $1 level. However, I stayed at the $1 level for the 5 months it took me to get $5k, only occasionally taking shots at $2.

I would say that PLO is a game that, if you are playing at 3 or less buyings you can be pretty certain you will eventually go broke. I consider myself a very fine player, and I went down 3 buyins last night on winning hands, and I'm a nutpeddler.

Just stick with 10/20 cent for a few mnths.

[RoundTower]

yes I think most recreational players, even some who play reasonably well, do just this. If you want to play more seriously you should have some kind of intention of cashing out.

[pavement]

I deposit $200 and run it up to around $1000. Then I take a shot and lose most/all of it in one night. This last time, I withdrew $1000 once I got to $1100 and have worked back up to $900, playing mostly the $25 game and some shortstack shots anywhere from the $50-$500 games. I may withdraw another grand, but at some point, I would like to regularly play higher stakes, such as $2/$4 and $5/$10. Maybe $10/$20 one day. Skill-wise, I am definitely not there yet, but I now realize that I won't give myself a fair shot once that day comes unless I have an adequate bankroll. Anyway, once I hit $1000 again (and no plan to withdraw), I will start playing mostly the $50 game.

[beset]

The concept of a working bankroll doesn't really apply to recreational players. If you have money you want to gamble with, just gamble with it. If you want to be semi-serious about it and simulate the bankroll development/moving up process that professional players go through then you can play pretend like many of us do or have in the past before going pro. Otherwise just gamble it up.

[Troll_Inc]

One thing you could do, which I've done in the past is to do buyins instead of a bankroll.

For example, I would buyin for $50 and when I get to $100, I cash out $50. If I busted out I rebuy for $50.

I found that for every 2 times I cashed out $50, I had to rebuy one time for $50. If you do this enough, you can do stats to know if you can "beat" a certain limit or game.

[tempogain]

[ QUOTE ]

Don't most recreational players follow this approach? They make a deposit when they want to play, see how they do, make another deposit. Or is this just the definition of a losing player stroke compulsive gambler?

[/ QUOTE ]

The recreational gambler by definition is not overly concerned about winning or losing so the bankroll becomes less or unimportant to him. The classic losing compulsive gambler uses this approach, but it doesn't make you a loser in itself.

If you are a good player, you may still win like this but how will you know? You can still make notes about wins and losses or use a tracker but I bet you don't and can't tell me how much you've won or lost this year for example. Without knowing your long-term results it's impossible to say whether you should be playing or not from a financial point of view.

Having a bankroll also instills a sense of control, and even if you do keep records from what you say it seems you could improve here. If moving up in levels quickly is going to impact your long-term results--the building of your bankroll in other words and the ball a gambler should always keep their eye on--then it is something you shouldn't be doing, thought at the time it may seem so through the fog of emotion that clouds our view. A bankroll is a tool for cutting through that fog and keeping focused on the goal of winning in the long term.

[luckyjimm]

I must have clocked 1,000 hours of online PLO over the last year. I can beat the 0.10/0.20 game. I'm good at reading players, betting patterns, knowing what hands to play, mixing it up, betting draws, picking off pots no-one's interested in, attuning to other people's play, bluffing where appropriate, etc, etc. 80% of the time I've put money in, I've won five, ten times my deposit. Yet eventually I've lost all the money I've put in. I'm interested why this is. 80% of the time when I'm playing well I beat it, and this isn't just about running good. But then 20% of the time I tilt, putting all my money I'd won previously onto a high table or getting angry after a bad beat and throwing my money around. You can be a winning player most of the time and still wind up broke if you have a tendency towards tilt and playing too high.

One night last week I played 15 hours straight, from 6pm to 9am. I did $190 to $350, then tilted down to $35, then back up to $320, then at about 8am lost the lot. So some sessions I play far, far too long, and tiredness and frustration sets in.

Or other times I go lose the money on cash tables. On Wednesday, I cashed out £200 sterling that I'd spun up from £40 on 0.10/0.20 and sat with all of it in a £1/£1 omaha game at the poker club where I play. I lost the lot on these two hands: Repotting preflop with KKQA double suited, making it £30 to go, called in two places. Maniac off-duty-dealer who only has £70 stack has called for nearly half of it holding J862 rainbow. First to act, I set him all-in on JJx flop with two of my suit. He hits 8 on turn for full house.

Half an hour later I have JQKA on 89T flop, two others in hand. I check-raise all-in for my last £80, worried because there's a flush draw but hoping for double/triple-up or bust. Turn comes T, river 5. Maniacal dealer shows pocket 55 and says he also had a very low flush draw. I leave club cursing the heavens, but also seeing I was far too impatient for this cash game and it was too big - my stack size was fine for the game, but I had no rebuys.

I put in $37 last night and worked it up to $115 back on the 0.10/0.20. I see some truly horrible play there - I had someone raise the pot on the river, turning a tiny pot into two buy-ins, with the queen high flush when I had the nut. Or they don't realise they have to use two cards. Or they call for all their money with up-and down under-straight draws. Or they bet two pair all the way as if it were a set (maybe this one is arguable when your opponent is drawing, but usually it's a loser).

In terms of my game, I have to be much more careful out of position, and also remember that river bluffs don't work against good opponents who'll call with second, third, fourth best hands. But mostly I think this is about psychology rather than my ability to play Omaha. It's almost like when I get up to $150 or $300 from a $30 deposit, I feel uncomfortable and want to play it all on one table. So the obvious solution is to cash out, cash out, and keep on returning to the 0.10/0.20 and working it up again. I'm like a sieve with money, but I don't need to be.

[luckyjimm]

Am up to e178 from e29 deposited yesterday, having played three sessions totalling three hours. I'm constantly running up like this, then quickly racing down. I want to know how to keep going up. I guess the answer is to stick to the tables where you initially won, i.e. 0.10/0.20 and (if you have to) 0.25/0.50.

[cmyr]

[ QUOTE ]
I must have clocked 1,000 hours of online PLO over the last year. I can beat the 0.10/0.20 game. I'm good at reading players, betting patterns, knowing what hands to play, mixing it up, betting draws, picking off pots no-one's interested in, attuning to other people's play, bluffing where appropriate, etc, etc. 80% of the time I've put money in, I've won five, ten times my deposit. Yet eventually I've lost all the money I've put in.

[/ QUOTE ]


When I look at my own results compared with the results of similarly skilled players (even players significantly better at poker then myself) the one difference that really stands out is that I manage my money well. If you want to be a winning player, knowing when you're steaming and when you need to go for a walk is critically important. When I read other people's stories of going busto, and when I have friends go broke, it generally involves something like "I lost two big pots where I was an 80% favourite and it turned my winning day into a big loser, so I opened up a few 5/10 tables and started short stacking them to get it back, but I kept on getting cold decked and I hate playing short so I bought full, and I was doing great until this one hand..." and then something involving the 25/50 game and $100 a hand party black jack.

I like winning money and I don't really like losing money, but neither really affects me. I finished the other day stuck $1200 (which is only 6 buyins now, but feels like a good bit of money) and I still managed to sleep like a baby. at somepoint in the next month or two I'm going to drop $2000 in a session; 10-15bi downswings happen.

I have 60bi for my main game right now; I'm back in school so i'm not playing as much as I was. My current goal is to get 3 months living expenses into a savings account, since that'll make me even less concerned about the variance that's inherit in the game. After that I'll start thinking about bankroll growth again, and hopefully start moving up by the end of the month; but if it doesn't happen I'm not too worried.


I like beset's line about simulating the development of a professional player. If you want to stop going broke, work at the small limits, don't cash out, and don't play any game you don't have at /least/ 20 bi for. TheRempel made a good post a few months ago about his theoretical level-progession system, which you might be able to dig up.

If you only have 5-10 buyins for your current level at any one time, at anything other then the donkiest micro games, you are going to go broke at some point.


this may or may not have been in any way useful.