The appropriate bankroll

Hi Deine,

this is a rather philosophical discussion and depends on many circumstances.

Do you play just for fun? Is this your "play"-money i.e. hobby? - Good news, whatever works for you will be fine. Playing with 100 Buyins will lilkely take the joy, playing with 10 will risk your ruin too quick.

Do you play with the intention to start your professional career on a low limit that you already beat? Go with 50 or more, because then you should not go broke.

Is it already your "attack"-limit on your daily grind as a professional poker player? Maybe.... maybe 100 BI are not even enough.

Of course - it also depends on the game type you play. Some have more, some have high variance...

Greetings,
SvenBe

Doyle Brunson said something like "You must want to win, but not care if you lose"
So your bankroll should be large enough so you're not playing with "scared money", but like SvenBe says, if the roll is too large, you won't care enough and it will hurt your play.

Thank you, very interesting view.

I play for hobby in low stakes.
Ihave been playing 5 years and my worst downsizing was about 17 buy in.

I really wonder how a pro could loss up to 30 buy ins, even if they are very aggressive player

Originally posted by Deine
I really wonder how a pro could loss up to 30 buy ins, even if they are very aggressive player

Check out the variance calculator:
https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

It graphically shows the results over 20 simulations of 100,000 hands — all with the same base win rate.
It is a real eye-opener.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by Deine
I really wonder how a pro could loss up to 30 buy ins, even if they are very aggressive player

Check out the variance calculator:
https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

It graphically shows the results over 20 simulations of 100,000 hands — all with the same base win rate.
It is a real eye-opener.

Very much this. I think you'll be surprised at quite how big a bankroll is required to completely eliminate a risk of ruin to a 95% confidence interval.

It doesn't mean that you should adopt the necessary bankroll to do this (as this would be a massive barrier to playing if so), but it's good to be aware of the figures when considering decisions such as moving up or down in limits, taking shots, etc.

I think the vast majority of players would be shocked by the output of the primedope simulations. Having a basic understanding of them will change your approach to how you think about the scale and duration of potential downswings.

Originally posted by Riffman117
Very much this. I think you'll be surprised at quite how big a bankroll is required to completely eliminate a risk of ruin to a 95% confidence interval.

It would be interesting to do a computer simulation to see how big that bankroll would need to be.

I went to Reno in 1981 as a nerdy 27-yr old and the plan was to play blackjack.
I had studied the game somewhat and was pretty c̶o̶n̶f̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ cocky.

The strategy I planned to use was "If you lose, double your bet".[1]
There are two catches — first, there is a maximum limit on the table. If you're starting a $2, the most you can bet is $200
If you lose 7 times in succession, your required bet is above the limit on the 8th hand.
Secondly, we only had $1200 with us,[2] so even if we lost 6 in a row, it would have eaten up almost half our available money.
Third — (I can't count) — if after a string of 5 losses, you win on the 6th hand, you have risked $64 to win two.

Too make a long story short (too late ) at one point I had lost 4 in a row and was a bundle of nerves as I played the 5th hand. I won it, but I stopped playing that way.

Some time later I ran a computer simulation to see just how often a player would lose playing this way. I can't remember actual numbers, but it was a lot.

[1] This strategy is called "Martingale"
[2] That was all the money my wife and I had at the time.