Thursday 18 January 2007

Bankroll and Attitude and HOME

I am as you all know a micro limit player, I play micro limits for 2 reasons.

1. The people who play there are not very good so I can make a lot of money for very little risk
2. I do not get emotional over it as it is well within affordability when I lose.

This brings us onto the subject of bankroll and attitude.
You hear all the time "what bankroll should I have?" and the normal answers for limit seem to be 300BB.
I personally do not play that way I run a huge bankroll which I won and do not rush to move up. Why you ask?.
I am happy where I am and play well there, I have a lot to learn and will learn it before I move up.
I make on average 9BB/100 hands and considering an expert at a higher level would expect to make 3BB/100 I would need to risk 3 times as much to make the same money at a higher level against better players.

So that's the rub, to improve shouldn't I move up, am I fooling myself into thinking I am good simply because the standards around me are so low.

That is possible.

However I would need to earn a lot at poker to replace my job as I am well paid. I do however love poker and want to play, but I want it to be fun, not life and death, so I play well below my limits.
I play the occasional tournament with my winnings and cash in $1000 from my bankroll on a regular basis.
The opposite is true for some people, if they play below a stake that gives them emotion they become donkeys, they don't care they are betting for quarters so they play like it is play money, that however is not me, having been a croupier I have seen how losing a little a day adds up to a lot and understand that winning a little a day adds up to a lot.

So what am I getting at?
The key is BANKROLL and ATTITUDE.

Yes you need to know how to play, you should read SSHE you should learn and play well, but the key is to have the right ATTITUDE and that only comes when you have a zen like quality to your game.
You cannot achieve this if you are playing at the wrong level or are not understanding variance, you achieve this when you feel at home.
So get a bankroll, don't cash it in, don't rush up the ladder of limits, crush the limit you are at GET ROLLED from it. With this you build a home somewhere you understand, somewhere you can retreat to when things go bad.
That is you can only move up when the limit you are at feels like home, feels like you cannot lose in the long run.
Feels like when you do lose you can win it back.

This gives you reassurance that you can move on as home will always be there, you can try fresh pastures because if the grass isn't green it is at home and you can come back. Make roots settle in, know the players there know who you can beat know who you can't but know you are home.
Then when you travel to new pastures you can take risks you can have the attitude that this will become my home or I will go back home.
I know a lot of players would disagree with this and would love to hear there opinions.
Peter

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent article Peter. Too many people overlook the importance of good money management and rush into poker risking too much money that they don't have. They get themselves into trouble. I haven't devoted any serious amount of time to poker yet but when I do, I will be just like you - play conservatively at low limits with an adequate bankroll so I won't have to worry.

One thing I have always wondered about though regarding micro levels is the rake involved. Specifically, at the levels you play at:

1) what is the average pot size?
2) what is the average rake?

From reading web sites, it seems to me that 5% of every pot is raked. That really seems like a lot. It's incredible that anyone can win at all if there is really that much rake. Unless I'm missing something, the losing players must really be losing a lot to support that rake and also support winning players at the same time.

Anonymous said...

well the avg. potsize is just guessing right now about 3 $ i think at 0.15/0.30 $ ? is that right ?

the rake is not always 5 % on microtables they take max. fixed rake, which is 15 or 25 cents or so at 0.15/0.30 tables, no matter if the pot is 8 $ or 36 $ which is the max pot at this level i think .... im just not sure if the numbers are correct but its just like that .... also on the tables with pots of thousands of dollars, the rake is about 5 or 10 $ even if the pot is 5000 $ large

btw. im talking about pokerroom ! dont know about the other sites, but should be close

Peter said...

Hi jjs

average pot size is not the big deal at the really micro limits as you only really take risks when the pots are large. I have seen me win $20 pots in the 15/30c game.

and most pots I rake in ar e about $6.

The rake on the other hand is 15c max so I don't notice it.

Also get a rakeback deal befor eplaying seriously I make an extra $100 from this a month plus $25 in bonus, not a lot but useful for nothing.

Peter

Anonymous said...

i dont remember if i have asked you yet about those rakweback deals, i have browsed several pokersites, but never found anything like this or i just have a wrong understanding of rakeback deal, is it that you can collect points from rounds you played and paid part of the rake, so you get points, and if you got lets say 1000 points you can exchange them for real $$$ .... thats the kind of bonussystem i know, but is it that way or do you mean something else ?

Peter said...

Hi razor

if you hold fire on this I am going to write an article an provide links this weekend

Peter

Anonymous said...

OK let me try a different approach.

Peter you say "15c max" per hand. So since thats "max" let's assume that the average rake is actually 10c.

Now we need to know how many raked hands per hour are played. Suppose you play about 50 hands/hr total, of which 20 are raked.

So that's 20 x 10c = $2.00 per hour, or in other words, 3.3 big bets per hour.

So, you have to win 3.3 BB/hr just to break even?

Even if you get some rakeback, still you have to win somewhere around 2.5 BB/hr to break even.

Do you think my numbers are about right? It seems like a lot to me...

Anonymous said...

Ooops I can't do arithmetic...

At 15c/30c level, $2.00 is 6.7 big bets, not 3.3.

So you need to win 6.7 BB/hr, or maybe 4 BB/hr with rakeback?

That's twice as bad as I orignally thought!

Peter said...

Your maths is good your assumptions are well off though.

you are assuming that each time you are in thr pot someone takes 15c of you.

Each time you win a pot the house takes 15c from the pot.

These assumptions are different.

below are my results for 15c this month.

8764 hands
profit: $312.51
BB/100 : 11.89
rake : 136.80

i will get 30% of that rake back at the end of the month with my rakeback deal and make another 25 from the reload bonus which I use my rakeback to reload with.

As you can see the rake hardly factors into the equation at this level.

also note that a win of 3BB/100 say is calculated after rake not before rake

Anonymous said...

OK things are not as bad as I thought but let's calculate some more (I am going to round off to whole dollars)

Your total profit = winnings + rakeback + reload

rakeback = $137 x 0.3 = $41
reload = $25

total profit = $313 + $41 + $25 = $379

rake % = rake/(profit + rake) x 100 = $137/($379 + 137) x 100 = 26.6%

So really the rake is a very significant portion of the total. If they had no rake (and therefore no rakeback), your winnings would be 26% higher than they are! That's not exactly insignificant...

Peter said...

No argument that you would win more with no rake but the assumption you are making here is that i would have won all that rake.
the 137 is the rake taken from al the hands i was in.

I didn't win all of them

having checked my won$wsf was 25.09% and some of them will have been split pots
Peter

Peter said...

ps this has been a very good month.

bb/100 of 11.89 is an increase of about 3bb on my usual percentagbes

Anonymous said...

I thought "rackback" meant they were giving BACK to you a percentage of the rake they took from you, i.e. all $137 was rake taken from you.

At flopturnriver I found this in their description of pokertracker stats:

"Total Rake: Tracks the total rake paid in hands the player has won. Note that this value is often inaccurate because it deducts the entire rake from each player in a split pot (rather than only attributing a fraction equal to the fraction of the winnings)."

This indicates to me that the whole $137 is rake you paid. Then they give back 30% of your own money to you. It would have to be this way, otherwise the casino would go broke.

OK so it doesn't take split pots into account correctly, but I think the number of those is relatively small and doesn't affect the final result much.

So I think my previous numbers hold, i.e. at these levels a player has to make about $137 per month, or about $90/month with rakeback, just to break even. Which would explain why most players lose!

Peter said...

You are probably right, however I believe a good player should not fearbthe rake especially if the competition is not good.

Peter

Peter said...

especially f they are playing well within there skill level and bankroll.

Peter said...

well totqalyy stacked of on a draw but learnt a few things

better luck next time

Peter

Dominic said...

I also think the micro games are a great way for player to cut their teeth so to speak.

Yes the players are terrible but you still have to have a solid style of play to eek out a profit.

Here's a great poker training resourse which is aimed at helping micro stake no limit players.

Watch Free Poker Training Videos

It's free so should help these guys start building a roll.

Follow My $50-$5000 Bankroll Building Challenge

zenetik said...

Nice posts, too bad no recent activity.. Good luck anyway
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