Want to start a 1/3 bankroll.

[Austin]

As the title says I am wanting to start playing 1/3 (because it is the smallest game in town) but I’m not sure where to start. What is a typical buy in for a 1/3 game and how much should i keep in my bankroll? I’m thinking a $100 buy in would be a good place to start. But i don’t know. Anyone have any advice for the novice trying to make a buck?
Thanks for the discussion in advance!

[David Wibel]

Austin, there are a number of questions you need to answer here. Also, understanding what people mean by bankroll and what you mean is important. Most people refer to a bankroll as the total money they have set aside for playing poker. They can add to it or subtract from it as needed based on other life activities. What a bankroll can refer to is the amount of money they have for poker and will never be using it for anything other than poker. I’ll answer your specific questions and give you some food for thought.

Q: “What is a typical buy in for a 1/3 game?”
A: This varies person to person. Conventional wisdom is to by in for 100 BB, so for a 1/3 game that is $300. This gives a person opportunity to make some bluffs, see flops and C-bet a couple of times and still have a decent number of chips left. With only $100 you will be in shove or fold situations pretty frequently potentially losing your $100 in less than an hour.

Q: “how much should i keep in my bankroll?”
A: Entirely dependant on you and your goals. I put away $1700 to start my bankroll, playing mostly 1/2. For a 1/2 bankroll that is a bit on the small side. To not really have to worry about going broke I would prefer something closer to $3.5k to $4000.

I’m not sure how experienced you are with live poker so the next few questions you have have answered but just in case you haven’t considered them. What are your goals? How much are you comfortable losing in one night, in one week, one month and one year? What is the worst outcome you can imagine if you lose all of your poker money? How much study do you do when not at the table?

And for my final opinion for folks entering poker, start with Limit poker if you can. If you casino offers 2/4 or 3/6 limit than $100 give you a lot of playability. Use that to learn with a much lower potential downside.

[Chuck M]

Yeah David gave a good advice👍

I consider a buy-in for a game being 100bb. You can buyin shorter or deeper, but 100bb is a good average.
When I started playing poker, I read in books and forums people suggesting 30 buy-ins.

So, theorically, buying into a 1/3 game with $300, having a bankroll of 30 times that would be $9000.

But in fact, it may vary. Depends on you, your skills, your risk tolerance, the field, online vs live is different, cash games vs tournaments is also different. Also, this is a rule of thumb for winning players. A loosing player, even with 50k, if he looses on the long run, he’ll bust his whole 50k.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play if you don’t have that bankroll. You can set your roll to 15-20 buyins (or 50+ if you plan to go pro). Or you can buy-in to $150 or $200, you can even find a friend willing to back you for a certain amount.

I think having that much of a bankroll would be ideal. But I personally don’t follow those rules, lol.

I play 1/2, and I only have one or two buy-ins set aside (pretty risky, we can say I just have no roll at all). But I consider poker as a leisure, i try to set money aside from my salary for leisures and, i dunno, I’ll go play once a month. If I lose, i gotta wait untill I got enough money for another buy-in. If I win, I keep my winnings into my poker “bankroll” If I break-even, that’s kind of a freeroll to go play the following week and hope for a winning session. That’s not optimal tho. I consider myself to have a certain experience playing poker, (10ish years). But with little experience, that could cause me to play scared. I should maybe wait 6 months or more, to set money aside and wait till I got a few K’s to go back and play more comfortably.

The key is having a stable income, and set yourself an amount of money you can inject into a bankroll every week/paycheck/month

Gl, have fun at the tables!

Also, try to take notes/remember key hands. So even on a losing session, you’ll “gain” material for analysis/study (and you can share here)

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