Bankroll Strategy: Is this too agressive???

[locks1018]

I was searching the internet for an effective bankroll strategy for sng's. I ran across a post at fulltilt's forums and I wanted to get some FTPers opinions on this strategy before I considered doing it myself. The post reads as follows:


A while ago, I was trying to make a bankroll management strategy for SNGs. A lot of the information out there is pretty much flat out wrong on it. Over about a year of playing upwards of 5000 SNGs, I've found that the worst swings I've encountered were about 35 x buyins. This assumes you're around a 15-25% ROI player. At the $200 SNG level, generally a 12% ROI is pretty solid.

For this post, when I say 10xbuyin, it means that you would buy into a SNG that costs (your bankroll) / 10, rounded down. If you have $550, you play a $55. If you have $549, you play a $33. If you are using the "30xbuyin" strategy, and you have $660, you play a $33. If you have $659, you play a $22.

If you take a look at this and start with $500 in your account, you'll see that a "10xbuyin" strategy is actually fairly safe. Many people advocate a 30xbuyin strategy, which in my opinion, is "too safe". You're probably just wasting time, making a couple bucks an hour when you could be making more. If you think about it, if you have 500 and buy into a $33 (always include the rake in your calculations), you'll have 467. Let's assume you were to lose every single SNG you entered:

500 ->
467 ->
434 ->
401 ->
368 ->
335 (now we do $22s) ->
313
291
269
247
225
(and now we do $11s)
214
203
192
etc......

You can see that even though you only have "10 buyins" for your bankroll, if you scale down, even in the worst possible runs, you'll rarely go broke. Starting with $500, I calculated that you'd have to lose 39xbuyins in a row to go broke. Plus, if you ever win first place in a SNG, you move up 4xbuyins - it's pretty quick to get out of the hole.

The important thing here is that you SCALE DOWN when you lose. If you are going to 4 table the SNGs, this means that when you have $550, the first table you buy into is a $50+5, but then the next one (even if you haven't finished the first) is a $30+3, because you no longer have the money to play a $55.

Obviously there is a slight risk of ruin here (going broke with a 40xbuyin downswing). Like I said before, I've never gone more than 33x, but I work very hard at my "emotional control". Going 10 or 20 buyins down can certainly damage your game if you are not mentally prepared to play well afterward. If you suffer from this "funk" you need to take some time off and regroup, otherwise you are going to KILL your EV and most likely go broke, or on some 50-60 buyin downswing.

Adjust your buyin amount according to your personal risk of ruin by asking yourself some questions:

Can you afford to reload a starting roll ($500 for this case)? If you have a day job and $500 won't be too painful, assuming you're a winning player, you'll want to use 10xbuyin as your strategy. If you're a student just playing to try to make some beer money, without the real ability to reload often, you'll probably want to make it 15xbuyins or even 20, for something a little safer. Sure, your hourly rate will hurt a bit, but you'll be far more insulated from having to wait for next semester's financial aid to reload your account.

Are you a pro player, and can you not afford to reload *any* amount? Let's say you are talking about $200 SNGs (and $500 and $1000s live, even though they don't spread them here at Full Tilt right now). You'll want to mitigate it a bit more - your hourly will still be good at the 50/100 level, but you want to make it so you don't have to move down that often. I'd say that a 15xbuyin strategy should be sufficient, again, so long as you move down.

Let's say you're a recreational player who can afford to put in $50 bucks here and there (obviously preferring not to). If you deposit $50, the bankroll management here implies that you should be playing 5xbuyins (the $5+.50s), but since your "ruin" of going broke means relatively little (it's easy to reload), you can probably play the $10+1s and hope to ride the variance up so you can build a quick bankroll out of nothing.

Naturally, everything I've said depends on you being a winning player. The only way to really know is to keep accurate records! Your brain (and ego) will tell you otherwise, if you don't know. If you're a losing player, no bankroll will be big enough in the long run.

Any feedback is appreciated

[givememyleg]

Interesting.

The author has some good points/concepts in here. Here I am with a 1000+ BR playing 22sngs... hmm. This also assumes you can play $55s without the heads of a $5.5s player.

What does everyone else think about this? I use to think a good cushion for myself was 20x the buyin... and since I played 4 tables at once I felt comfortable with 50x the buyin. Does this mainly come down to where you feel comfortable/where you are skill wise?

[mcatdog]

There are so many problems with that article that I don't even know where to begin. I think the worst part of it is that if you actually follow this "strategy," you'll end up moving up or moving down just about every other day. Which is a terrible idea, because the 11' s do play differently from the 22's which play differently from the 55's. It takes time to get used to the opponents you face at different limits and I think the approach given here would make it very hard to have any kind of consistent success at poker.

[nickthefool]

I think this is a pretty good guide personally, and it's pretty much the strategy i used when i started out with my tiny bankroll (was under $10 when i started playing SnGs) at the 55c SnGs.

My strategy was a little more complicated, but i had limits that i would move up or down at, and i engineered it so that my risk of ruin was very small once i had moved up. I was fortunate to only have to move down once, and am close to being rolled for the $22s now.

It's probably not a great strategy if you multitable because as stated you would end up moving up and down a lot, but if you single table as i do then i really don't think you would end up moving down all that often if you concentrate on your game.

I'd personally say that the 10 buyin strategy is fine, probably moving to 15 buyins for the $55s and 20 buyins for above that, just because the expected roi will be lower and so you will not win as often.

In my opinion the people that use a 30 buyin or more strategy want to avoid moving down at all, which is also a valid strategy.

[Rockymv]

I think the approach given here would make it very hard to have any kind of consistent success at poker.

[shysti]

I posted this article a while back

[drmcboy]

I think it's fine, again with the emphasis on moving down when you need to. People that think they need to 'learn' to play the 50s usually never do. If you can't adjust to different styles (and yes, incredibly bad is a style, and you will see it at every level), you're going to struggle stacking the fish of the world.

the reason not to do this would be that it hurts YOU to move down. If you can handle it, go for it.

Having said all that, it's a bad idea for 80% plus of the people of the world, because it's HARD to lose 1/3 your roll in a day, and most will tilt while they try and get it back and bust. For most, having the roll makes you a (much) better player.