I found to learn a musical instrument that bebop was the best form to master an instrument. Somehow space of the instrument is only found from this idiom. I am discovering from what I have encountered that if I am to find space in poker Tommy Angelo is the Charlie Parker of poker.

http://www.tommyangelo.com/articles/enough_is_not_enough.htm

This is absolutely true. It’s like the roulette wheel – just because black came up for the last 4 spins in a row does not mean that the next spin is more likely to be red. The wheel has no memory. Similarly, the cards have no memory either. Just because you get hit with a cold deck, that does not mean that you will run good sometime soon. You could just get hit with another cold deck again.

Shelby>”Possibly they will be better off in the end and I am still limiting my long term earnings by being too worried about my bankroll.”

I don’t think so. I think you are doing the right thing.

Let’s suppose we have a large group of people, all playing “too big” for their bankrolls. What happens?

Some get lucky, they run well and win, and rapidly increase their bankrolls. Others (and this will be “most” of them because of the rake) will go bust. The successful ones are the ones you hear about. They love to publish their success stories for all to hear. The ones who go bust tend to keep quiet, and you don’t hear about them so much.

Variance is the thing that makes it so very difficult to live solely off poker with no other source of income. Professional traders have the same sort of problem; trading for a living also requires that you deal with large variance. In both cases you have a really difficult problem if your bankroll (or your “account size” in the case of trading) isn’t large enough. Variance will eat you up eventually.

In no limit, some of the advice that I take myself is to:

A) Avoid big bluffs

B) Avoid big calls, such as with bottom set with 4 flush cards and/or 4 open straight cards on the board.

C) Buy in small. I mean seriously- who ever set the standard at 100 BB’s anyway? It’s an arbitrary number that does more players harm than good.

D) Avoid large push confrontations with overcards and straight/ and or flush combinations, as well as flush draws with small pairs. Or you can even fold them if is someone is setting too high of a price.

E) Pass on likely/possible coin-flips. For example, in a 1-2 game, if someone limps and you raise AK and the limper goes all in for $100, you can pass in this spot, even though in my experience this person tends to have exactly QQ or JJ, FYI.

F) Fold weak draws like low flushes.

G) Play super tight.

Although there are more, this should be more than enough food for thought. Theoretical bankroll requirements usually don’t take these things into consideration. They are pretty much just assuming “business as usual” in your normal game.

In sum, simply make an attempt to avoid all slightly +EV situations, move down if you have to, and then you can stretch that tiny bankroll down to infinity .

Certainly a poker player needs to be disciplined, but I still think Ed’s right to object to calling this bankroll. Not only do most people asking about bankroll not know their own winrate; they typically don’t even know whether they’re long-term winning players in the first place!

I think training budget is a helpful concept. If you tear up 2c-5c NL and feel like $200 is a good point to move up to 5c-10c, even if you’re not sure you’re good enough to beat it, then great. But don’t call it bankroll; it really has little to do with that concept, and the correlation to the “risk of ruin” number is an accidental one.

I think that, until you get a better feel for your winrate and variance, you’re better off taking a shorter term approach. Instead of asking, “how much money do I need to keep playing at this limit forever,” ask yourself, “What do I need to make sure I stay in action for this week/month until I either get a new infusion of cash or can drop down and lower my exposure?” That’s a number most players can estimate reasonably well (if they’re honest about it).

Then, if you eventually become a 6-tabling NL1000 pro, you will have a much better feel for your winrate and variance and you can come up with a bankroll number that actually means something for you.