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being a bankroll nit is questionable building a roll, but important once you have one.
Applies in investing too,
Concentration builds wealth, diversification preserves it.
Also risk of ruin matters more when the roll is larger
Yea, which is why i would advise working a full-time job and putting in 20 hours a week playing poker on a 10-20 buy-in roll. This post is more for long-term pros with short bankrolls. I have seen too many of my professional solid friends going broke and needing to get jobs because they didn't have enough of a roll.
Most of this sounds like an argument for keeping your day job until you can afford to play full time.
I’m married w 2 kids, so need about $80k/year to cover expenses, and would want 1 year life roll in addition to poker roll. For me to play full time, they would mean $80k expenses + $25k-$35k buy-ins to go full time. But I have a job, play 10 hours a week and am fine w $15-$20k roll.
Young person may only need 6 months life roll at $40k/year, plus $6k in buy ins to play $1/$3 for total of $46k, but very few 20 somethings have $46k sitting around.
That same 20 year old can work full time, play $300 buy ins till they spin up $10k and play $500 buy ins, then spin up $15-$20k and play $1k buy ins. Then when they have $50k - $100k, quit the job and go full time.
They’ll move up much faster that way. Also, the best paying jobs want you from 9-5. The best poker is nights and weekends. With no kids, you can easily do both.
I really wonder about a lot of your post. Some of the numbers and statements don’t make sense for live games:
I hear alot of people recommend 20 or 40 buy in rolls for professionals without any other source of income. I have been playing pro for 9 years now and attribute most of my success to being a bankroll nit.
What state are you in? What are your normal stakes, buyins, etc.?
See below for explanation why i guess you’re playing really low stakes, or really bad games (most likely, imho), or you’re not very good.
I will use stats that i think are pretty achievable for most pros, so 13bb/100 and 110 standard deviation.
Dude, 10bb/hr is what a decent pro will make. That’s 30-40bb/100 depending on your hands per hour rate. I know some plo pros who make 15bb/hr very consistently over 1000s of hours.
110 sd seems to be a little on the high side. I’ve seen a lot of numbers in the 80-100 range for mid-stakes pros who aren’t in Texas. Are you playing deep stack or something?
Yes even i fairly "tough" live games winrates can be up to 20bb/100 but those are the absolute crushers, and on their A games all the time.
Omg, no no no. Crushers are popping off for 20bb per hour, so that’s in the 60-80bb/100 win rate range.
20bb/100 is a mouth breather mid-stakes “pro” or someone playing in very tough higher stakes games.
Reality is when you need to put in volume, you are working on low sleep and bad emotions certain days, especially with kids and a family.
All of this is just lots of bad life choices, imho. It might be your reality, but maybe poker isn’t the best option if it is.
I will be keeping things simple so liferoll and bankroll just combined, and lets say it is 100 buy ins
Hmmm… ok for keeping things simple, but this math can skew heavily one way or another depending on stakes.
If you have just a few bad years in a row, it is entirely possible for your bankroll to be cut by 50 buyins over two years, while still being a winning player. If you had a 40 buy in bankroll you are now broke and looking for a job.
All of the math you laid out that made this possible assumes a very low win rate. One probably should not be a pro if their win rate is so low.
Not good if your only job experience is poker.
Again, we are looking at bad life choices.
Alternate suggestions:
if your bankroll is less than $10k, get a job. Take aggressive shots with any extra money at the highest stakes you think you can beat. Train or take courses as necessary. If you’re a pro, you want to be beating 5/10 or higher for a healthy number, or maybe as low as 2/5 in a deep stack environment. The goal is to have a strong win rate in games in which rake is not a substantial tax on the win rate.
if you have no skills other than poker, learn to deal. If no one will give you a shot locally, then take 8 weeks or so and go deal at the wsop. You can take a course before the wsop in Vegas (or elsewhere), and they will basically hire you on the spot. You can live cheaply, and basically work as much as you want. Learn to deal all of the games. Deal cash when you can. Boom! You have experience, and you should be able to get a job in an area that has enough poker games to support a pro. Then you can go for the $10k bankroll. While this is a bit hand wavey and makes a few assumptions, it’s not unrealistic if you are a mediocre pro and want a better life for yourself.
Digressing, depending on your age, I also might consider the military. Not glamorous, and maybe not a life that most poker players want, but it’s a decent way to provide for a family for someone with mediocre poker skills, a proclivity for making bad life choices, and no other skills.
I am talking 2-5-10 games and 5-10-25 games with minimum 200 bb buyins as far as the numbers I gave. And i was counting the straddle as a bb so you can double that to 26-30bb/100 if you want. It would be the equivalent of about 4 to 5 straddles per hour, and i am not talking about a small sample size. If you noticed, i had a .2% downswing a few years back, which happens 1 out of every 500 years. That can skew the hourly if it wasn't calculated over 6k plus hours. I think you are underestimating variance in thinking someone can make 60-80bb/100. I have had a year where i made that much, but the room i play in i am one of the top guys, and nobody is making that much.
So you’re saying your winrate was 50 ish at 2/5/10 and 125 ish at 5/10/25. Assuming this is hard rock in Miami. Even if games are tough there are guys making more than 125 at 5/10/25 or they be playing 2/5/10
For 5+ year averages? Did those guys ever go on extremely unlikely downswings? I think you are talking to people who are in the middle of upswings or not being 100% honest.
Or maybe i need to move to miami
all the euro pros already did, games are terrible now
It doesn’t matter where. Someone in your game is making more than 5str/hr you just don’t know them I think. If you can only make 5 you’re highly incentivized to play a lower stake
HoW long have you been a pro? Meaning no other income.
Yes they win 80+ at 5/10 1500 cap and have been pros for awhile with a bunch of hours. If they made only like 60 they would be playing 5/5 where they could make 50 with much lower variance
Yes they’ve gone on downswings though idk about extremely likely. Is a 2000bb diwnswing that unlikely with those winrates? It’s only 14BI still and every pro has lost 4BI+ in a night.
If you noticed, i had a .2% downswing a few years back, which happens 1 out of every 500 years.
Odds are you weren't playing at the EV you think you were.
Bankroll management and the mathematics behind it are seldom discussed.
The best theorem behind this is the “Kelly Criterion”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion
Apparently, in the 1950s, Bell Labs hired a mathematician to work on obscure problems, and he just wrote papers on gambling 😂.
Anyway…
The problem with applying this Therom to poker is:
1.) we never know our actual advantage, and
2.) our advantage is highly variable (as you pointed out)
But… we can still apply some concepts, such as:
- If you risk half as much as the max, you still get 75% of the win rate.
-if you consistently overbet your bankroll, you WILL go broke, even if every individual game is +EV
- the variance involved in large field tournaments makes playing them for a living pretty insane (unless you have other sources of income)
Interested in what you are saying about reducing risk by half only reduces win rate by 25%.
Essentially you’re saying that removing mediocre pf holdings and passing up marginal river bluff spots will reduce variance by half but wr by 1/4?
And do you have any specific examples of this applied or the math behind it?
Nope.
I’m saying play your BEST, but risk a smaller percentage of your bankroll.
In the Wikipedia link I provided there is a graph showing the “optimal Kelly bet”.
This is the percentage of bankroll that you should risk to maximize your bankroll growth.
However… if you move to the left on the graph, you can see that, by going down in stakes by half, you’re still getting 3/4ths the growth
I’d rather take risks and fail than waste my life playing 1/3 and 2/5 for years, I believe in betting on oneself
I’ve always considered it a mistake to have your BR and life roll bundled together.
If I was going to go pro I would have the following three accounts before going pro:
1) Emergency savings account with at least 4 months of worth of money. Six months is even better. This doesn’t get touched.
2) My daily life account. This is the equivalent to most peoples checking account. Pay my bills, go out to eat, see movies, etc. Have at least 3 months worth of living expenses to start in this account.
3) Poker Bankroll.
I think what you are missing is that you can go an entire year without making money. Your example has only 9 months covered. So for 4 months, you would be cutting out of your bankroll. My example of 100 buyins would be a 20 buyin bankroll and 80 buy ins for expenses essentially. But for the purpose of explaining what is going on, it is easier to include them together.
So you would just increase your emergency fund or checking to 1 year expenses combined. He did say "at least" in both examples.
I would 100% never group everything into 1 "bankroll". Especially if I had no other source of income. Money is a tool in poker and in life, use different tools for different jobs.
Nothing nitty about it either way you look at it IMO. Be smart with your money people.
This is great advice in theory. But then there is the reality.
You never need a daily life account or emergency fund if you have enough in your bankroll.
You also are never going to not use your emergency fund or “3 months living expense” account, if you need it for a buy in.
You’re always going to take money out to make more money with if you’re a professional.
These things are just for your peace of mind, but functionally have no purpose UNLESS, you’re willing to distribute to those other accounts and just hard quit poker and go get a job as soon as designated poker bankroll runs out even if you have 10k more just sitting there for you get back in action with.
I mean, this is basically what everyone does with a business lol. Savings, bills, business lol
You know what? I totally agree with you. Most people who advise you to have more aggressive strategies are the ones who end up bankrupt. In poker, you need to be like the tortoise, not the hare. You have to be a marathon runner, not a 100-meter sprinter.
Most people who play poker lack consistency, discipline, self-control, and emotional control. That's why they can't handle climbing slowly.
It's true what someone told you, that with that management you might take longer to reach a 100k bankroll. But it's also true that those who rush very aggressively often do it for the adrenaline rush rather than bankroll management. They then reach high levels and are used to that stimulus and can't handle a prolonged downswing, which is why they end up busting.
A clear example is the famous Rampage and characters like Tom Dwan, who, no matter how talented they are, ended up burning their bankroll and getting into debt.
The same case in the world of sports, full of basketball players or American football players who, after they stop receiving millions in salaries, end up bankrupt.
tough ass game. the game runners are the real winners. i was crushing for 20bb/hour for most of 2023, then shit blew up in my face and LOST IT ALL in four months. unpredictable and sustained downswings don't give a shit about what your measured rates are. i couldn't imagine having my liferoll and bankroll mixed (being a pro) if all i did was play poker, terrifying thought. many highstakes superstars have sick endorsement deals, backers, and/or youtube channels. the important thing in life is to be healthy, love your life, and sleep soundly at night - professional poker can fuck with this on multiple fronts.
Makes sense if you’re a pro.
Recreational players don’t need a ‘bankroll’ and get hung up on this way too much.
Just need a slight clarification on what you mean exactly by "bankroll nit." I know what the two words mean individually, but what do you mean when you put them together?
Basicaly just being overly cautious to never go broke and need a job.
This advice above is ok for hold em but not recommended for Omaha or any higher variance game
“Buy in roll” is an oversimplistic metric.
There are multiple ways to structure, but your life roll is really the most important. The way to limit risk of ruin is to ensure you can a) cover your living expenses while b) ensuring you have money to buy in to your game.
So a player who plays a $300 buy in game is absolutely screwed with 40 buyins, because $12k isn’t nearly enough to cover 6 months of living expense, let alone ensure you have the buy ins to weather a downswing.
Someone buying in for $100k can be fine w 10 buy ins, 1 buy in provides 1-2 years of living expenses. If they lose 5 buy ins, they can always drop down lower and lower and lower in stakes…the 1/3 player can’t do this.
You also need to consider win rate. Let’s say you need $80k per year for expenses. If you are winning $20/hr at $500 BI game, and play $40/week, even if you started the year with $100: 40 BI ($20k) + 1 year of expenses ($80k), by the end of the year, even without a downswing, you will have spent $80k and only earned $40k, so you’ll end the year with $60k, which is no longer enough to support your living expenses for 1 year, let alone buy ins.
Based on the stakes and game you play (plo vs NLHE vs lhe) will also significantly impact your variance. Your play style also impacts variance.
Rather than relying on buyins, use equations like the ones implied above:
(Win rate * yearly hours played) - yearly expenses = annual income.
If this is 0 or less, do not pass go, you are not a pro poker player.
Then, assess your risk of ruin. This is a bit more complicated as it depends on the relationship between your win rate and variance. But if you’ve been playing long enough, you should know what kind of downswing to expect.
My biggest downswing over 15 years has been around $20k, playing mostly $1k buy in games. So I’m going to say that 20 buy ins (on top of 1 year living expense) is a decent cushion. If I drop $10k, I can move down to $500 BI. If I lose another $5k, I drop to $200 or $300 BI and start flipping burgers to build my roll back up.
40 would be ideal. And in reality I’m going to switch between stakes, sometimes taking shots, sometimes playing defense.
But most of the time when I hear folks talk about having 20 or 40 or 100 buy ins, they’re not considering all the factors like how much they need to earn to keep their bankroll stable, or different rates of variance and so on.
And lol at 20 BB / 100 in live poker. First of all, live play is measured in hours, not 100 hands.
It takes around 3 hours to get 100 hands. And in the live 1-2 5-card PLO game I play w a $5 bring-in, anyone with a pulse can easily earn $50/hr, which is 25 BB/hr or 75 BB / 100
if only I had discipline and be financially literate I'd be a pro....
13bb/100 is ridiculously low for live games, and you cannot live off it.
If you are playing in good games where you are in the top 5-10% of players, then you should be winning up to 40bb/100. If you aren’t, then the games are either not good, or you are not good.
The above applies to the lowest stakes 1/2 and 1/3.
When you get to 2/5 you can expect that WR to be a little lower, but not much.
At 5/10, you can expect that WR to be lower and possibly halved, so 20bb/100. However at this rate you are still making more money than you were at 40bb/100 at 1/2.
Taking shots early in your career is an absolute must. Otherwise you will never move up, just have to be responsible with the shot taking and leave your ego at the door. Move down when you have lost your shot taking ‘allowance’.
Also, if you are tired and/or emotionally drained, then you simply don’t play. If you have a winning B game then sure you can push it a little, but if you’re turning up to play your C game for the sake of volume then you will dust it off anyway. The whole point of having a bankroll and playing poker in the first place is that you get the freedom to play both when it suits you, and when you will be at your best and when the games are best.
Sometimes you will eat into your life roll as a result of low volume, but since when you do play you will be playing your best and in the best games, it will swing round quicker anyway
Bb/hr is for online players. Hourly earnings avg for live play. There is a variety of straddling going on in my live games so bb/hr just doesn’t make much sense
This is why poker players gotta keep expenses low til they get to pretty high stakes. However I think you’re overlooking you can always go down in stakes at a certain point and pros do all the time after say a big purchase. Your winrate will also be higher in those smaller games
I dont think anyone recommends 20-40 buy ins for pros without any other source of income. That number should absolutely be closer to 100 buy ins if you are a pro with no other incomes. Idk where you got your numbers from.
If you have a full time job, 20 should be enough. I'm even more aggressive and just go for 10, but I have a job that pays well so IDC.
But your first statement is just incorrect so I didnt bother reading the rest. Sorry
yes sir 🫡
What does 13bb/100 mean?
A few points to add.
Being a bankroll nit as a young professional is borderline irresponsible. 20-40 buy ins is plenty to move from the lowest stakes to the next step. The worst thing you can do is be stuck at 1-2 for 10 years because you’re barely making above what it cost to live and is going to take you forever to get 100k saved outside of your expenses to have 100 buy ins for 2/5.
Making 100 buy ins a year at your game is pretty reasonable expectation.
Thats 20-40k at 1-2/1-3 most of which will be eaten by living expenses. Assuming you live light on 25-30k and save 5k a year towards bankroll it’ll take you a decade to have 50k to be a bankroll nit at 2/5 even. Then another 5-10 years to get to 5/10. You’re going to be pushing the end of your career before you even start pushing into 10-20+
You pretty much have to be aggro at the start of your career…. If it doesn’t work… I mean…. Just getting a job for double the income while playing part time is going to be beat being the lowest stake grinder for 10 years.