Poker Discussion
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CarbonPoker · Full Tilt · Cake Poker · PokerStars · Ultimate Bet · Players Only · Bodog
Hi,
I've been playing a lot of 6 handed $25 NL on Party Poker to try to
build a bankroll. I'm a pretty serious and studious player, and
am trying to work on my game and eventually move to higher games.
I seem to be consistently beating the $25, but I only play about 1-2
hours per day during the week so it's slow goings. I began to
think about trying a new strategy for awhile to try to build a little
quicker, slightly based on the Party Poker step sit n gos. I
wanted to know if anyone has tried this or has any opinions:
(All 2-tabling 6 handed NL games)
Start a session playing $25 NL.
If you double up past $50 on a table, quit that one table and buyin to a $50 NL table.
If you manage to double up on the $50 table, quit and buyin to a $100 NL table.
If you manage to double up on the $100 table, quit and buyin to a $200 NL table.
etc.
If at any point during the session you drop below half of the max
buyin, quit and drop down to the level below. I would rebuy
to always have the max buyin at the table, but would use
PokerTracker to see when I drop to a certain level. If you
bust out at any point, start over at the $25 NL level.
It seems like a pretty safe way to possibly turn $25 into $200 or so in
a session, where even a bustout at $200 NL would only make you down $25
for the overall session. I would start every session at the
bottom level and just try to work it up as high as I felt comfortable
playing. It also seems like it would be good practice in
adjusting my game to the level of the game I'm playing, and will give
me more experience playing in slightly higher games. Since I
think I could win now at limits up to $200 or $400 NL, it also seems
like a way to "take a shot" at a higher game once and awhile in a
situation where I were likely to have been playing well. I'd
appreciate anyone's comments/suggestions.
Evan
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I tried something a little less structured a few months ago, and I was
very successful, but if you don't have that discipline it can be
costly. What I did was sit down at one of the 100 tables and
grind it out for a while. When I had earned a little profit, I
took that to a higher table. It was limit-jumping, but with a set
amount, sort of like a freeroll. So I would take 200 or so to the
higher cash table and see what happened. I ended up trippling up
there over about 3 hours - huge for my BR considering how long that
would have taken at the lower limits. But, once you have one
winning session up there, you wont want to leave and you will play
there all of the time, and the BR won't be able to sustain the beats
that are part of the variance.
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I ahve a friend that does that. Though he has had a lot of ups and downs. He really can't get off a table when he has made a decent profit. But if you think you can stick to you plan it coul dwork. Just can't get to cocky.
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Yah, it seems like the biggest possible problem with that would be
knowing when quit. I hate of playing with a stop loss/ceiling
strategy, but it seems like that might not be a bad idea once you get
to a certain point. I have played higher limits consistently
before, and didn't have too much a problem dropping down when I had to
cash out to pay for fucking med school applications. Guess it
will help with the discipline as well. Thanks for the input.
Evan
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its very hard ot go back down. this is how i built my first few bankrolls and got myself hooked on the big games. difference was i just did 35% of max buy-in and played TAG with a 10 buy-in bankroll ofr that.
5000bankroll to play 400 buy in at 5/10nl example. Worked great for me though *shrug*
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So I guess I should just set an absolute mininmum bankroll that I will
need before moving up my "base" game (from $25NL to $50NL for example)?
I'm at about $400 right now, so should I wait till I get it up to $1000
before I even think about moving up?
Evan
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Yes there is an absolute min. that you should consider before moving
up. You can use the search function for threads on that, but the
search function here is janky....sorry guys. I'd say $1000 is
good enough for the 50 tables, but thats just me. If you are
comfortable at that level with that BR it should be okay, and you sound
like you keep track of your money fairly well. Just be sure to
ride out the tough days/weeks at the lower tables.
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Adam
(Costa Rica)
11,330
Posts.
Joined
12-21-2004.
12-12-2005 8:54 PM
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In reply to
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well.....you just probably shouldn't be thinking about it as a race up to the higher limits. It sounds to me like you're moving up for the wrong reasons. A good reason to move up is that you feel totally comfortable playing at the next level, financially, and that you've been consistently beating the level you've been playing. A bad reason is because you want to make more money.
This doesn't seem to me like a way to actually build bankroll--it seems like a way to possibly make a big hit in a day if you get extremely lucky and double up several times. Most of the times you play like this, you'll go broke. It's really the difference between a long-term mindset and a short-term mindset. The short-term player wants to win today and will set up a system that will allow them a chance to to turn a little into a lot in a day. The long-term player wants to win every day and get better along the way. If you want to be a really profitable player, you should stick to the long-term plan.
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In theory your plan could work but I think VERY few people have the discipline to make it work. To top it off, different styles of play are required to win at even the $25 max buy in tables vs the $200 buy in tables and strat is different yet again at the $400 max buy in tables on UB for instance. The different styles of play make it difficult to move up and win at the new levels on a consistent basis. It would be a much better idea to stick to your base level until you have at least 25 max buy ins for the level above you. Also I would only be moving up in levels when you feel like you are CRUSHING the game at the level you are currently at. 10bb/100 hands or better is CRUSHING. If you use PT it can calculate this for you. Adam has it right above here. It is a good short term strategy, but I would not recommend it for all the objections listed by Adam and for the undisciplined for Readzies reason. I have worked my way up through the NL ranks from the penny tables and know my way works for the long term. This way I cannot recommend as a long term strategy because it has too many pitfalls.
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This is a great way to lose your bankroll $25 at a time.
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yep if i can jsut chime back in here one time ill offer you my views (sorry all but a bit of history must be posted, if you dont want my background then dont read it)
The first few bankrolls i made i played 10 buy-ins at 40-50% max buy-in. Id play .5/1 with 40 bucks with a 400 bankroll etc. I did this all the way up to 10/20nl in 2 weeks where i quickly busted my 8000 bankroll in one bad session. (rebouhgt for 800 again, then 2000, then 2000 etc) Was a tough run of cards. Anyhow after all that work i banked about 500.
second bankroll i did the same thing using my 500. started back at .5/1 with 50 buy-ins. got up to 10/20nl with 8k again. lost it again. this time it only took 1 week as i was rolling pretty well. Banked 1000 this time though and saw a big flaw with my theory.
I needed to bank money as i went, or else id sjut eventually get uncluky and lose based on my discipline. I started with a banking method at certain levels of bankroll funds as opposed to stakes.
when i reached 1000 i banked 250, when i reached 2000 i banked 500. etc. So i was able to get back up to my high games but this time when i busted at 5/10nl i had about 2000 banked. So i started again with 500 and did it a 4th time. This time i got to 5/10nl but i decided ot change.
instead i grinded here till i had 15,000 and then i stayed here and did max-buy-ins. This was around my 19th birthday and a turning stone on my poker career, i grinded to 20k, then went to 10/20nl. I lost 2 buy-ins and was starting to panic. I banked 10,000 before i could lose it and looked at my final 6k.. i had a choice to make. I noticed the 25/50 game was extra crazy so i decided to try playing with 2500 buy-ins. needless to say i went 13 straight sessions without losing and won over 35,000 in 2 weeks at that table. I cashed out the 40,000 for school and kept about 10,000 online to keep playing.
Anyhow since then i continued playing with fairly weak BR management but alot better then when i first started, i grinded my account back up to 25,000 playing 5/10 and 10/20 and then lost it all at 50/100nl and 100/200 limit over a week.
Now after all that has been said and done my biggest growth in poker came on the rebuild. I took some advice from the players on this board and some real life grinder friends i know. They pointed out that its crucial that i stop this bust rebuild tactic although it was working good for me. Heck i was tired of it, its hard on you to have so much then nothing then get it back easily to lose again.
So i started with 2,000 and started 2 tabling .5/1nl. i worked up to 3000 then moved to 1/2nl. i worked up to 6,000 then went to 2/4nl i worked that to 12,000 then i went to 5/10nl with 700 buy-ins. (the reason i did this was i was playing 10 handed TAG as opposed to 6 handed LAG)
anyhow i just now worked that upo to 15,000 and am now grinding 5/10nl with max-buy-ins and still starting each day at 2/4nl to warm up. Or if things og well i wont even play 5/10 that day. (thisis only after 70 hours of playing! grinding isnt as bad as it seems, been highly profitable at these lower stakes like 2/4nl)
Anyhow the point is ive been there and done it all. I 100% prefer the grind now and staying in a more safer zone. Although iam no where near safe playing at 15 buy-ins i do have an immense better understanding of my flaws and my behaviour in regards to tilting.
I hope this HUGe post helps, just want to say that maybe you might enjoy running up the stakes but its really gonna only slow you down in the long run. If i had of grinded since day 1 iam 200% sure i would have more profit then the road i took in regrds to stake jumping from .5/1 to 10/20nl in like 2 weeks
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Mike Caro has written on this approach a couple of times, and how bad it is. He calls it "playing your bankroll like a tournament" and strongly discourages it for several reasons.
Other people are right that to make any money playing this way would take a tremendous amount of discipline, far more than you need in normal-old ring game play (IMO). It's a matter of what percentage of the time will you leave your higher buy-in table with enough money to consider your day a success. Let's say you play this way 50 times...I'd say that 40 of them, you're going to get busted at one of your higher levels, because you haven't spent enough time up there to keep from getting trapped and busted. So you've lost 40 x $25 = $1000. That means that in your other 10 sessions, you have to have the success to move up to the $200 buy-in table, and the discipline to quit if/when you lose half your stake in that game. If you think that's being way too critical of what can and will happen most sessions, maybe I am. But the key to good bankroll management is a critical eye on how you play and treat your money.
Personally, I also don't like the plan because you aren't spending enough time at one level, any level, to really understand and master the approach to that specific game. Like a couple of people have said, the skills to beat a $25 buy-in game are VERY different than a $200 buy-in game. If you bounce around between the two of them, you won't learn how to play at either of them. The gimmick hurts you instead of helps.
Rather than spending a bunch of time figuring out how to pull this one off, why not dedicate yourself to being the best $25 buy-in player you can be? I built much of my bankroll that way, as have many others. You'll be able to build to $50, $100, $200, etc., games soon enough, with the experience and skillset to compete in them better.
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Suggest reading Fox article on Basic Bankroll Management. If your looking for a strategy to move up in levels then use his sliding "ceiling"-"floor" model.
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Thanks for all the replies. I wanted to clarify that it is in no
way my intention to go from $25 NL to the $2000 NL as quick as
possible. In fact, I really don't think I want to play that high
at all. I am just looking to grind my way up to maybe $400, and
thought this strategy might be profitable if done with enough
discipline. I was only thinking of trying it to see if maybe I
could use it to get up to $1000 so I could play $50 NL, and then just
build normally from there. I'm currently two tabling $25, for
23.16 BB/100 Hands, so I definitely feel comfortable with moving up one
level. Also, I've been playing for 2 years, so I'm really not
trying to get rich quick. I'm just switching over to NL from
limit and sit n gos, so I'm still learning NL cash game bank
management. Thanks for all the help. I gotta say, one of
the reasons I've improved my game is this website. Great to see
so many opinions and good insight.
Evan
P.S. Thanks Readzie, I think I'm going to try and take your apporach:
"So i started with 2,000 and
started 2 tabling .5/1nl. i worked up to 3000 then moved to 1/2nl. i
worked up to 6,000 then went to 2/4nl i worked that to 12,000 then i
went to 5/10nl with 700 buy-ins."
I also like the idea of warming up at lower limits and then switching over.
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