Bankroll question

Yads · #1 02-15-2006, 06:47 PM

Hey guys I'm betting hockey for this season and seem to be doing fairly well at it, just making $5 bets. Next season I want to start betting larger. I have a medium sized bankroll for poker. What are the risks of treating my poker bankroll as a general (+EV) gambling bankroll?

eternalnewbie · #2 02-15-2006, 07:07 PM

Assuming that you're a winning sportsbettor (i'm not saying you're lying, just that you probably haven't bet enough to be able to say that with any type of certainty), then the biggest cost is probably going to be the opportunity cost of the money. Just like winning poker players, winning sports bettors can have losing streaks. Any time that you don't have that money to play poker, you are incurring opportunity costs.

If your poker roll is much larger than 300BB (or 450 or whatever the consensus is nowadays) and you are not using all of your money, then this effect is blunted.

Others on this forum may feel differently, but I think that it is much easier right now to make money playing poker. In other words, I think I can get a much larger return right now playing poker. Therefore in strictly rational terms I can't imagine that it would be a good idea to use the money for sports betting.

Not that that ever stopped me . . .

Waterproof · #3 02-15-2006, 09:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
What are the risks of treating my poker bankroll as a general (+EV) gambling bankroll?

[/ QUOTE ]
Chasing.

I would start a sports betting bankroll and keep the money seperate. I think it'll help with money management and assessing your plays.

There is plenty of money to be made in sports.

WarDekar · #4 02-16-2006, 02:37 AM

I agree with you, to a degree, that there is more money to be made in poker. HOWEVER, once you have a BR of 5 figures or more, you can make a hell of a lot more through sports than poker, unless of course you are a top class poker player. But even if you're making money playing some of the higher limit games, there's a certain point (somewhere in the 5 figure BR range, I'm sure) where it becomes much more beneficial to devote your BR to sports.

GrahamW · #5 02-16-2006, 01:26 PM

I agree with you WarDekar, and I'd like to quote a really good post tech made regarding sportsbetting vs poker -

IMO, poker games are so soft right now at low-middle limits that there are not many easier ways of making money (and I'm not even that good). The problem comes in that it is increasingly harder to make larger amounts of money, because most players eventually reach a level at which they cannot win.

On the other hand, sports betting scales much easier because you can basically bet 1000 per game almost as easily as you can bet 10 per game (sometimes more difficult to get a good line, but generally not too bad).