Bankroll Size and Management

Being an accountant, this is an area of poker that I would do better than most. I have a keen eye for detail in monitoring my progress, while understand that I can use my bankroll as a tool to play only at a level of which I am capable.

I have granted myself an exception in the past, namely during the Aussie Millions where I have entered a Phase 2 satellite to the main event a couple of times at $250 a pop. I played well enough last year to win through to the Phase 3 and almost got through to the Main Event, falling 8 places short of the placings (from a field of 220).

I started keeping track of my "live" bankroll two years ago, while my "online" bankroll management has pretty much taken the form of one line in my spreadsheet. If you have read my early postings, you will have noted that up until now, I have always considered online play a bit of a joke and only really play when drunk. However, now I am playing both forms of the game properly and am maintaining a spreadsheet on my online progress as well.

However, I will focus this entry on my "live" bankroll, which I have managed to work up from $1,000 start point to a balance of approximately $2,700 today. Not too bad considering I have not played a cash game at the casino and most of my winnings have been through the various home games I have played with friends, or at cash games at the local cricket club. This also includes the buy-ins into a number of non-cashes in tournaments at the casino, so realistically I am doing quite well.

However, if I am to pursue poker in a semi-serious form over the next few months of my "break from the business world", while sticking to my bankroll management rules, I am going to have to invest a little more than the $2.7k I currently have.

Now borrowing the very tight specifications from Chris Ferguson's recent online $10k challenge to assist me, I will not want to enter a single table sit and go for anything more than 5% of my total bankroll, a multi-table for anything more than 2% of the bankroll, or any cash game where 10% of my bankroll is on the table in chips.

So reverse engineering these figures, I would estimate that the multi tables I will be taking part in at Crown will typically be around the $75-150 price. If I take the top price and divide by the 2%, I get a bankroll of $7,500. For a single table I don't think I would ever play anything other than a Phase 1 satellite, which are normally about $75 a pop. At 5% this is is only $1,500. Finally the cash game scenario would see me starting at the lowest $1/$2 levels. With 10 or so at a table and say maybe on average about $100 in front of each player, that is $1,000 in circulation at the table. So at 10% of the bankroll, that is about $10,000.

So with all that in mind, I figure to have a proper go at it I am going to need to add about $7,500 into my bankroll. Given I will get a net payout upwards of $30,000 from my current job, this is not too much of a stretch and if all goes badly I can afford to lose it all.

So I am pretty content with the finances of my shot at the big time. However, I will have to avoid the temptation of buying straight into some of the $1k+ buy in tournaments on the Crown horizon.