A little about my live poker experience, Started playing live immediately at 21 years old in $1/$2nl and $1$/$3nl and $2/$5nl. Played at those stakes for about 9 years going broke a handful of times even getting a job for 6 months. The last 3 years i’ve switched to primarily $5/$10nl. I have learned a great deal about what it takes to create and keep a proper BR and I would love to share with you what i’ve learned over the years. Going broke is not the worst thing in the world in fact I have gone broke numerous times (not in the last 4 years). In many ways it creates powerful awareness and gratitude for being able to play poker full time.
In order for us to for create a proper BR, we need to establish a few things.
- What is your hourly rate - This is important because we need to establish how much you should expect to swing on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.
- How big is your sample size- Don’t get too up or down about your hourly rate before the first couple hundred hours. Your true hourly rate in live poker will not start to take shape until at a minimum of 1000’s hours.
- What style of poker do you wish to play- If you wish to play on the looser side you would need to account for more variance. If you wish to play very straight forward tag you wouldn’t need to account for as much variance.
- What buy in is allowed in your regular game- The buy in usually varies between 100bb and 200bb for most live games. If you are you playing in 100bb games you should expect fewer swings.
- How do you handle emotional distress- Keep in mind that BR fluctuation comes with an emotional price. If you give your self a short BR you will experience wild emotional swings throughout each session until your BR reaches an amount you are comfortable playing with.
- Always be flexible and willing to drop down- For example if you are playing $2/$5nl and get down to a BR of $2500 (5 buy ins) really consider dropping down to $1/$3nl.
For your convenience i’ve estimated what I believe to be average win rates at each respective stake. These estimations are what I expect average winning players to win at long term in these games.
$1/$2nl average win rate $15hr-$20hr
$1/$3nl average win rate $20hr-$25hr
$2/$5nl average win rate $25hr-$40hr
A general rule for where our BR should be is between 10-20 buy ins. I would never recommend playing on a BR of less than 10 buy ins to start out. If you fall in the average category I would recommend 15-20 buy ins. If you are a very solid player and win above these rates you can generally operate on a smaller BR as low as 10buy ins.
Consideration:
In low stakes poker it is traditionally very difficult to excercise proper BR management. Imagine we are using 20buy in BR’s at each stake, thats $4,000 for $1/$2nl, $6,000 for $1/$3nl. In $2/$5nl and $10,000 buy in for $2/$5nl. Now imagine breaking even for one month and your monthly living expenses are $2,000 for everything. In $1/$2nl that is half your BR gone in expenses, in $1/$3nl thats 1/3rd of our BR, and at $2/$5nl that is 1/5th our BR. As you can see it the more we move up the less our living expenses affect our BR.
Consideration:
When playing the lowest stakes poker your lifestyle needs to be as small as possible. I’ve seen so many poker players at all levels go broke due to poor decisions off the poker table. This is especially dangerous at the lowest stakes. Moving up to $2/$5nl is a stake you should be able to expect a fairly comfortable lifestyle if you can raise your game to beat it in that $25-$40hr range. Try to find a good hybrid game to make the transition more smooth. Las Vegas has the wynn $1/$3nl with $500 buy in and Bellagio has $2/$5nl with $500 max buy.
Consideration:
Huge losing sessions are inexcusable and will destroy your BR very quickly.
One rule I use is that I never lose in one session than I can win back in one session. For example if my biggest win ever is $1400, I won’t lose more than that in any single session.
Consideration:
Ideally we never want to lose more than 10pct of our BR in one single session. We may be willing to risk more in amazing games however this is not an excuse to put our BR on the table.
Buy in:
I never recommend buying in for less than 100bbs for a few reasons.
- We limit the amount we can win
- Without proper experience, we put ourselves at risk when we start to run up our chip stack.
- We stunt our growth as a poker player.
- Playing short requires a totally different strategy and must be studied first before this strategy can be employed effectively.
We can consider buying in for more than 100bbs if the game is amazing or one really terrible player is playing deep stacked. However we need to consider this as well.
- Can we afford it- We should be more inclined to do this if our BR is 20 buy ins or greater.
- How have we been doing- If we are running well we should take this risk. If we are running poorly buy in for 100bbs only. We don’t want to risk shaking our confidence too much when things are not going well.
- How do you play deepstacked- If you are not confident don’t buy in deep. Get coaching first and work on your game before doing this.
I have always approached tournaments very carefully. Ask any tournament pro about the swings they experience and you may wonder why anyone plays them. However I do enjoy them and the allure of holding that winning lotto ticket is very attractive. If you plan on playing a couple of cheap dailys you could risk a small portion of your BR every now and then with minimal risk. I wouldn’t risk any more than 1/20th of your BR as a general rule on any tournament you buy directly into. That means if you if you have a BR of $4000 you wouldn’t play in any tournament over $200 buy in. If you chose to play in tournaments that exceed this 1/20th rule you could sell action to make up the difference. For example your BR is $4000 and you wish to play a $$400 buy in tournament you would need to sell half your action to stay at 1/20th. You can scale this model up and use it for any tournament. Lets say you want to play WSOP main event for $10,000 buy in. You would need a BR of $200,000 minimum in order to play it responsibly on your own. Selling 75% of our action you could play this tournament responsibly you would need a $50,000 BR. If you want to take “shots” in high value tournaments do it responsibly. Use this as a guide and don’t deviate too far from it.
I keep excellent records of my stats. I recommend using PokerJournal by Michael Golden or RunGood to keep track (for iOS). These apps are amazing for poker and have many easy to use filters to show you where you are winning and losing the most money. Once you get a good amount of data there really is no end to the way you can analyze it. Its very simple you just enter in your buy in and the game/location hit “start” and then when your done you just hit “done” and enter in the amount you finished with. These apps aren’t cheap but they are definitely worth it for any serious poker player. Its important to keep track of wins and loses simply in case uncle sam comes knocking, always want to be prepared. Beyond that we need to know if we are winning or losing and what games are the most profitable. I’ve had friends quit poker because they started tracking their results and saw that they were actually losing money when they thought they were a winning player. The numbers don’t lie!!
If you have leaks in your game, it is important for you to own them. Define them and then work to eliminate them. If you stay in games too long when you’re losing you are actually using the inverse logic of successful poker players. In poker you want to stay in games as long possible when you’re winning, and you want to play not as long when you’re losing. If you don’t follow this rule you will be playing the least amount of poker when you’re hourly rate is a high as it can be, and you will be playing your longest sessions when your hourly rate is at its lowest. Your experience of poker also changes negatively when you play long sessions from behind.
Read this guide and use it to practice responsible BR skills. Operate as closely to the guidelines as you can and you will find you BR will remain healthy and in tact.