So I have a problem that poker players dream about, I’m not sure what to do with my money. I finally have my grubby little paws on some money to head back to the poker room with. The question now is when do I head back down, and do I wait to accumulate more money before I go there? I’m in an interesting spot financially with quite a few things having changed over the past few months and several more things still up in the air. The bottom line is this, do I wait to build a real bankroll by grinding out my paychecks at work and then return full force, or do I try to take some shots with a smaller roll with the notion that I will continue to replenish it until I have a full bankroll.

Let’s get down to some nuts and bolts. I’m talking about 1/2NL live and buy in usually means 100BBs to me, so in this case $200. I just recently finished “Professional No Limit Holdem Vol 1” and they talk quite a bit about times when it might be advantageous to lower your buy in amount. Not only that but I had a great conversation on Twitter with unemployable1 where I was chewed out for having lost my bankroll in July. After a little back and forth the extreme was suggested, namely buy in for the minimum, which would be 30BBs, to artificially increase the number of buy ins you have to play with. I think given my situation lowering my normal buy in might be a good idea, but I think short stacking might be going just a little overboard. More on that part later though, right now let’s run with buy in being 100BBs and move on from there.

Now let’s talk about what a bankroll means to me. I’ve always had in my head 20 buy ins was a solid number for live poker at a particular stakes. I’ve heard pros go back and forth on whether that number should be higher or lower and all seem to have valid reasons why. Short answer here seems to be like many answers in poker, “It depends.” Personally I think 20-30 is a good starting point, if you are waiting around to 40+ buy ins before you move up in stakes you’re probably going to be there a while. Now I think padding the roll is fine if you’re now going to also dip into that money for MTT events or taking some shots at the next level up in stakes. The problem I have is the logic someone has for grinding 1/2NL with an $8K BR and never looking to move up until $16K. If you are a competent player, realistically you’re just not in that much danger of going broke. The extra padding at 40 buy ins is suffering from an “opportunity cost” because that money is just going to sit there and never be touched. You could find a much better use for at least 10 of those buy ins (MTTs, taking shots, putting the money into savings or other investments) and it’s costing you real dollars to leave that money stagnant. Now you definitely need money set off to the side, but you can drastically reduce your opportunity cost by keeping the number at a reasonable level.

Ok, enough math talk. Here’s the bottom line, I need to decide what to do with the money I now have to play with. I only have $400 at present, hardly a bankroll by any means. Even if I were to short stack I’d still only have just under 7 buy ins, and it’s only 2 full buy ins. One the one hand, I can sit out for the month. That will allow me to maybe pick up some extra cash on the weekends and wait until I can put another paycheck aside for poker in October. At that point I would have close to $1,000 and a few more options to work with. On the other hand, $1K still isn’t a ton and if I were to get back into the grind and grow that $400 into something a little more major by the time I can put another paycheck aside and bring myself closer to some more serious BR numbers. And then there is our good old friend variance. With such a small roll I could be done before I even get going, case in point 10 buy ins gone during the month of July. Or I could run hot and be back to where I was earlier this summer. That devious little statistic just isn’t something I can count on one way or another, but it’s there none the less.

Right now, I’m leaning towards going back to the casinos in a couple of weeks, buying in for 50BBs ($100) and trying things out. That gives me some room to maneuver if I do go broke, I’d basically still be short stacking just with a slightly larger stack, and I can get practice in. Read all the books and forum posts you want, to get better in this game you’ve got to play. If things go wrong, I just start again in October. If things go a little better, then maybe I can get myself a decent roll by the time the year closes out. Summer is over and I didn’t make it to my target numbers, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t before the year is out.

Well, it’s been a little while longer than I thought it would be getting back to my keyboard after the Mega Stack. To be completely honest, I’m a little frustrated with my situation as it currently stands. Being a poker player without a bankroll is just…well embarrassing. I had high hopes at the end of June, having rebuilt from scratch up to 10 buy ins at 1/2, nothing huge but things were looking up. Then, July hits and the other variance show drops. I maintain after dwelling on those sessions and those hands that I really didn’t play poorly until the final session of the month, and I only lost about a buy in during that day’s excursion down variance lane. Most of the damage was done in the first two weekends with a couple of big pots that didn’t end well and one massive set over set hand that I got caught up on the wrong end of. Regardless of all that, the question now that’s been running through my head is, “What now?”

I started to answer that question the day after I was eliminated from the $600 Mega Stack event at Foxwoods. I spent a day in Millbury, MA at the Barnes and Noble picking up books and blowing off some steam with a nice big bread bowl full of Cream of Chicken soup from the Panera Bread in the complex. I started trolling through the poker section like I have done on and off for the past 5 years. Though the selection has gotten smaller over the years with the influx of sites like Deuces Cracked and Card Runners there are still plenty of solid options to pick from. Most of the authors I wasn’t familiar with so I texted a buddy of mine, Rob, and asked what he suggested. The rule of thumb he sent back was, “Avoid TV pros, and stick with 2+2 books.” With that in mind I picked up 4 or 5 books and started thumbing through them.

That trip to Barnes and Noble made me realize how much I really do enjoy this game. To put it mildly, I hate reading. I have almost never picked up a book for pure enjoyment, there has always been a reason I was there thumbing through the pages of novel or textbook. I’m not someone who finds books to be a great source of entertainment, and yet I was seeking out books as one of the best options I had to improve my game away from the felt. For the first time in a little while, I had that, “You’ll be fine kid” type of feeling. The road is a bit rockier now than I was thinking it would be, but I’ll get through and land on my feet like I’ve been prone to do in my 23 years on this earth. Let’s not get overly dramatic here either, I realize that picking up a book isn’t exactly the biggest sacrifice I could make or have made to pursue this dream, nor am I suggesting that I should be lauded for it. But rather than sulk about a loss, I just picked myself up and kept moving as best I could, and I felt pretty good about that afterwards.

After thumbing through the first 5-15 pages of a few books I decided on two. I bought “Professional No Limit Holdem Vol 1” and “The Theory of Poker.” At time of writing, I’ve gotten about 70% through PNLHE and once I finish that I’ll move on. A lot of the material in there is stuff I’ve known about and strategies I’ve implemented in my own game already, not surprising since I’ve been active in the forum community for a while and this book is copyright 2007. Never the less, there is plenty in there to sink my teeth into and it’s been a solid read to this point. Before I left Barnes and Noble that day I did make one final pass at another section. I went over to the math section to look for a probability book. I thought it would be wise to get a refresher on some beginner and intermediate probability theory to help sharpen up my math at the tables. What I stumbled upon while over there was an Idiot’s Guide book, not for probability but for game theory. Game theory is a subject I’ve heard a lot about in terms of real world application but never really studied it in college. I picked up the book read the introduction page which could be best summed up in one sentence, “Game theory is the study of maximizing choices.” Seemed good enough for me so I piled it onto the cashier’s counter with the other pages of knowledge I was looking to walk out the door with.

I’ve talked about this idea with friends in the past, “Something is better than nothing.” I’d rather at least try to improve my game while I wait for my next free paycheck to head down to the casino with than just idle my days away watching YouTube videos and drinking. I’m in a less than ideal spot for sure, but doing nothing is only going to make things feel more oppressive and put more pressure on me when I do get my opportunities to play. I’ve got to just keep working and keep my mind sharp. I’ll eventually get money to head back to the casinos with and then the journey to rebuild will begin anew. In the meantime the “what now” demon is what I need to deal with.

This could be one of the more frustrating tournaments I’ve played in in a very long time. The structure was PHENOMENAL and the field was on balance pretty soft. I spent the better part of the last 10 days rereading sections of the Harrington on Holdem books as well as forum posts regarding live MTTs. I went into the event on Saturday with a clear head, ready to sit down and really do some damage. I played like it too. I was paying very close attention to everything the table was doing, trying to figure out what the other players the goofing around with or if they had some serious hands. All of this came with one small detail, I had absolutely the worst run of cards I’ve had in a long time.

I don’t want to get too into it because personally it irks me when people whine about not getting hands, especially during a session. At least here, in this forum I am away from the table and can blow off some steam. There are tons of players that I’ve played with who just love to tell the same jokes, “I haven’t seen a hand for 2 hours.” Another favorite of mine would be, “I’d settle for a two cards above a 7.” Some people are just trying to joke around, some actually mean it, and frankly every one of them needs to calm down a bit. Now that I have stood on my soapbox a bit, let’s get to some poker.

Like I said in the intro the structure for this tournament was phenomenal. We started with 25,000 chips and blinds at 25/50. The levels went up so gradually that going into level 8 a 25,000 starting stack was still good enough for an M of around 15. The blinds also go longer the later into the MTT things went. Thirty minute levels were the norm for the first 8 levels, they bumped up to 40min levels until level 17, and then 50 minute levels for the rest of the way. There were really no levels skipped either, and this structure really was the sole reason I was able to last as long as I did.

Early on with stacks as hellaciously deep as they were things in the early going were more about trying to see cheap flops with smaller hands. I had one big pair that won a simple pot after I 3-bet pre and from there on I saw a lot of middling hands. Thanks to the structure, and the table for not raising and reraising too much in the early going I was able to see a few flops with suited connectors, one gappers, small PPs, and really give myself a chance to hit some big hands. Unfortunately nothing hit, and when I saw nothing I mean one of the coldest runs of cards I’ve ever had. I had whole levels back to back where I didn’t play a hand. I was able to build a stack up to around 35K and finally felt like I had some mojo going, it would then be another 2 levels before I played another hand and I watched my stack just bleed down to 21K before I even had a good opportunity to steal.

If I have one major complaint or weakness in my game it’s that I tend to tighten up a bit. It’s an old habit from back in the days when Phil Hellmuth’s book, “Play Poker Like the Pros” was all the reading material I had on the game. Usually I can point back and say there were a couple of spots where I could have gotten my money in sooner and not bled down so badly but I can’t pinpoint a single one. So many hands I had a big cards with a little card, K2, A3, J4, Q2, those types of hands littered my session and there was just nothing I could do with them. Couple that with the fact that there were a few calling stations to my left and the table’s aggression picked up considerably right around this time, there really weren’t even many opportunities to get a steal in. Three hands basically defined my session. In the first hand I shoved A2s in the CO when it folded to me, BB woke up with KK, board ran 22T, x, A and I doubled through him. The second was after I moved to a new table, blinds were 1K/2K/300 and the button opens for 11K, SB folds, I look down at 98dd, I thought the bet was just an overbet from an inexperienced player rather than a sign of strength, I shipped for 24.5K more and our villain tank folded. Finally just a short while after dinner break I get KK UTG+2, MP wakes up with AA, gg my MTT.

All in all, it sucks to lose but I feel like I played my guts out, stayed patient, found the best spots I could, and did everything I could with them. If my KK turned out to be good then I think I can really start to play and try to build a stack with just over 90K at 1200/2400/300. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. Now all I can do is make my peace with the loss and move on to the next event, whenever that is.