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Hi All
Im based in the UK and I work an average earnings job. I love poker and want to progress but am having a seriously hard time seperating my life roll from my bank roll. I’m married and we just bought a new house together and have relocated to a new area and both of us have taken a small paycut, and our cost of living has stayed the same.
I can put aside maybe £100 a month to build a bankroll. Currently I am flat broke (£0) in my poker bankroll after a few failed bankroll challenges on stars (online poker sucks).
Luckily around my area there are plenty of casinos and the standard of play live is shockingly bad, and the guarantees are good in tournaments. Like, I mean, so bad it shouldn’t happen, kind of bad. Imagine the worst possible plays, and the player pool I am in does it, day in day out. Final tabling or cashing in these tournaments is relatively straightforward, and you can get there with a middling stack if you just stay out of trouble.
The major problem for me at the moment is that there is always something that comes up on a month by month basis that needs me to dip into my bankroll to the point where now I don’t even bother saving because it’s such a common occurrence.
Has anyone got any tips on how I can start saving for a bankroll. I have a lot of spare time on my hands (I only work 37.5 hrs a week) in evenings to study and I have a copy of Matthew Jandas Theoretical GTO book (not a bedtime read, jesus christ) but have found that to be of little help towards BR management and how to play in my player pool.
In terms of my overall strategy, I play quite a passive, value bet orientated style unless I sense major weakness at the table. Yes, it’s exploitable, and yes, it’s not going to get me the most chips, but I justify it because the player pool at my level, in a live tournament doesn’t have a fold button. It’s such a strange situation, because nobody folds, you can get max value a certain % of the time, but most of the time, you end up in totally weird spots because you can get check raised on a board of 9326 rainbow when you hold AA and actually be correct in folding almost all the time because nobody is check raising as a semi bluff or as a total bluff on dry boards.
What I like to call the “low floor”, which is the expectation that you will be called in at least 2 or 3 spots pre flop if you raise, and the fairly reliable fact that c-betting will not generate any fold equity post flop if your opponents have any piece of it, or any kind of whiff of a draw, is what is really limiting me. I find that it removes a lot of the “straight forwardness” of playing your hand and having to consider 3 or 4 opponents ranges post flop is a nightmare. ]
I also struggle to adapt post flop and find myself very introverted, and insulated in my thinking. I always seem to think “I missed now what” or “well that hits his range so hard and c-betting is out of the question so I guess I just check fold”.
Sorry about the wall of text but have yet to find a proper forum within which to discuss my problems as reddit.com/r/poker is so toxic it’s just not useful and 2+2 is a little elite for my level.
Many thanks in advance
Matt
I may be the minority here, but I think amateurs think way too much about bankroll management. Pros talk about bankrolls and bankroll management because they need money to live on and money to play poker. For amateurs, we have money to live on – our jobs. Any extra cash can become our bankroll. You can always set money aside and play from that, but when life happens you’re going to break into your bankroll.
In your case, given that you just bought a house and have all sorts of extra monthly expenses, you can’t expect to keep a bankroll. If you had $1000 set aside (I know it’s pounds, but my keyboard doesn’t have that key, so bare with me), and your car breaks down and you can’t get to work, you’re not going to not fix your car to keep your bankroll. It sucks that you have these obligations and can’t play, but that’s life.
What I would do in your situation is figure out how many buy-ins you are comfortable losing in one session and don’t play until then. I wouldn’t want to save up a buy-in, go play, get coolered in 15 minutes and have to leave. I generally have 2-3 buy-ins on me because stuff happens and I don’t want to leave a good table because of one unlucky hand.
As far as strategy, just keep it simple. Tighten up your pre-flop range, bet and get value from your strong hands, and rarely (if ever) bluff. Beware of big bets and big raises by other players, as they usually aren’t bluffing and trying to bluff catch usually isn’t profitable here.
Best resource I’ve found (besides reviewing hands with players on sites like this) is Bart Hansen’s Crush Live Poker, especially his call-in videos on YouTube. His site has a subscription option, but the YouTube videos are free.
I’ve dabbled a bit into GTO, but I largely disregard it as I don’t feel it applies to the lower level games. I think that when you try to think really advanced against basic players, you get too many steps ahead of them and kind of level yourself into thinking they are making more advanced plays than they really are. Most low level players don’t think about blockers and bluff frequency, let alone the more advanced things about poker. I just think it’s better to try and play exploitative rather than making the “optimal” play. You just make more money at the low stakes that way.
First, congratulations on getting a new house!
I agree with John on the over emphasis on bankroll management. As an amature player (a non full time professional) you have outside income to supplement your life expenses. Your situation is rather common even beyond poker players. Most people don’t have much extra money floating around, the average American household couldn’t come up with ~$500 in a week if they had an emergency expense without having to borrow money. I am going to give you a bit of life financial advise (I am not a licensed professional, that is my disclaimer).
Step 1) Reduce your cost of living slightly if you can. I know it is painful but there are usually a few small ways to help out. Don’t eat out, plan out meals so you don’t waste too much food. Have coffee at home instead of Starbucks. It’s boring but saving just 15 pounds a week ends up being nearly 800 a year.
Step 2) Make sure you have an emergency fund set up. You and your spouse will have an emergency. Nobody can tell when but it will happen but it will. Having 500-600 pounds saved up will go a long way to providing peace of mind.
Step 3) Understand for now there is no separation between liferoll and bankroll. Right now Poker is your hobby. It’s one that you save 100 pounds a month for but that 100 pounds comes DIRECTLY from your normal job and means you didn’t spend it on dinner with your spouse or movies or other luxuries. If you could suddenly acquire 2000-3000 pounds then you could think about having a dedicated poker bankroll (I am assuming most games are .50/1 or 1/2 live or 25-50 pound tournaments). Since that is years of savings for you it won’t happen any time soon.
Since Poker inherently contains randomness not having a cushion to absorb the variations means you will frequently go broke. So you can’t worry about going broke because with the way you are set up it will happen very frequently.
As for strategy, do what John said. If what you say is true then having almost 0 bluffs is actually “GTO”. The true meaning of having a GTO strategy is not “one which is unexploitable” but rather the most optimum strategy for the current game. If you play in a game where nobody folds then bluffing is always going to be negative EV. COnversely if you play in a game where people shove preflop with 100% of hands then calling with the top 50% of you range (assuming heads up) is the correct move.
The usual version of GTO which is bandied about applies if both people are attempting to play GTO strategies which almost never applies to lower stakes. The first strategy change I would make is increase bet sizing pre-flop. If 4 people frequently call to a 5BB raise over no limps with hands like any Ace and any suited cards then I would look to tighten my range and bet 7BB, and if that didn’t work try 8BB and keep going until people fold. Getting more people out preflop drastically increases the chances of you winning.
I’m from Austria and I play at Kind of the same table like you Matt. It’s normally a table full of eastern european and turkish older man, who fires off half of ther monthly income on the 5. of each month with top pair and a 7 as kicker.
I agree with David about the strategy and the aduption, but this strategy is exploitive and not GTO, in my understanding.
By exploitive I mean you have to use the leaks of your opponents to your Advantage. And you dont have to be balanced here, because they dont give a shit and dont think a second about your Hand our your range, they just see there own real Hand.My strategy for such tables is:
1. raise your upper range, raise very big with your pocket pairs, you always get one hero caller (open to 10x w AA it doesnt really matter for them)
2. limp a lot behind IP with suited connectors and play them passively till you hit a Monster.
4. Try to categorize your opponnents to find their leaks, and push them as hard as you can.For me that works out perfectly and I’m making around 10-12 BB/h in 1/2 and 2/5
There seems to be a ton of traffic here. Anyway…
The solution to your problems are going to be dependent on a few things.
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Why you’re playing.
Whether or not you’re at the stakes you plan on being at for a while.
Whether or not you’re trying to be a tournament guy or a cash player.
How your partner feels about poker, and whether or not that matters to you.So…
Why are you playing? Are you planning on becoming a pro, semi-pro, or do you just want to have some fun as a rec? All of these are fine, but it’s important that you know what your goals are here. If you’re taking a rec line, then no worries, just take what you can afford and that’s that. If you’re leaning towards the other two, you’re going to need a bankroll. I don’t know what stakes you play, but the advice you’re going to get online is going to be something like 20+BI for cash, and significantly more for tournaments. What your exact number of BI’s are, is dependent on you. You need enough that the money doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean you can donk it up, but you need to be in a position where you can make correct decisions without regard to the money involved. It’s much harder to call an AI, even when you’re ahead, if your rent’s in front of you.
Are you playing the stakes you see yourself playing for a while? Or are you planning on taking shots at higher stakes? The answer to this changes the bankroll requirement. At a basic level, it’s going to be the same, but how you allocate it and take your shots will be affected. I use the 10 BI shot method. Take a current roll for 1/2: $6k (Here in Vegas the 1/2 is a $300 BI game). I grind that until it reaches $16k. Then I take a 10BI shot at 2/5 ($1k BI). Lose those and move back down. Rinse and repeat until 2/5 becomes the new 1/2… That’s for an aspiring pro (and I wish someone would have advised me of this when I started). A semi-pro would need half or less of that. Especially if there is another stream of money coming in. I’ve seen others say that you should play x% at the new stake and x% at the old… I think that’s terrible advice. I much prefer the 10BI shot-taking approach.
Tournaments or Cash? I can’t give you much tournament advice, but what I can tell you is that the variance train in tournaments is exponentially worse than in cash games. I personally know guys that play small stakes ($250-$500) tournaments out here and they’ll go 30-50 without a major cash. Those are good players too. It’s not like they aren’t making it, but it’s difficult to hit those long stretches without incoming money. The ones that aren’t disciplined about off the felt (lol) spending end up going broke. Seriously, some of the ESPN superstars are broke.
That’s not to say that cash is necessarily easier. Most people don’t understand what “grinding” actually means, so they play loose and fast for a few hours a week and call it good. The problem arises when variance kicks them in the proverbial teeth. For example, my volume has been low so far this week but since the 1st, I’m at 20.5 hours with $660 in gross profit. By the end of the 7th and into the morning of the 8th I should be somewhere over 50 hours. That’s a little lower than I would like, but I should be able to pick it up substantially when my wife leaves in a few months. If someone wants me to clarify those numbers, let me know. I feel if I do so now, it’s a bit off topic.
Does your partner think this is a good way to spend your time? If it isn’t, muck the cards or muck the partner. They can’t live together, one will inevitably eat the other. If you’ve managed to catch a unicorn, who supports you in this endeavor, then more power to you. Most will find an abundance of support when they’re winning, and a stack of blank job applications when they aren’t. It’s important to consider your partner and how much you value your relationship when making decisions like this. Some people need intimate relationships, or at least that’s what I’m told.
Finally, if you’re dead set on saving some scratch for poker… Stop spending it. That seems unfair. How could I know your issues/why you spent the money? You may be right. What I do know, though, is that if you continue to take from the poker fund that which is not for poker… You’ll just continue making periodical posts in poker forums about this exact subject. There isn’t a magic formula. Pick a comfortable amount, and when you set it aside, treat it like you used it to pay the rent. Besides that, if you’ve truly found Atlantis, and the games are as soft as you proclaim, you should be able to stock the bankroll and pay the bills that surprise you.
Cheers,
~Havick
Edit: Don’t go full GTO at the lower limits. When facing opponents that are open-mouth breathers… You’re going to go broke with GTO. Fact. Save that stuff for the higher live limits or online.
I couldn’t agree more with alot of the advice these guys are giving. And absolutely echo your thoughts on reddit and 2+2. But I would also add that the passion to play and learn is really what it’s all about. I’ve been an avid watcher of live at the bike, most poker vloggers(Brad and Andrew are the best)and luckily there’s so much content out there you can always study and put into the work while you wanting to have the financial freedom to play more in the future. This is a good thread and some great advice for any level player to follow.
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