BRM Nittiness

[zxqv8]

Simple question:

Am I being too nitty with my roll if I don't want to move to 10nl until i have 25 buyins?

I've been frustratingly stuck around $200 in my roll for almost 2 weeks now at 5nl (small sample, but if I wasn't running so terrible, I'd be moved up by now), and I have a friend nagging in my ear that I should just move up. Of course, he refuses to accept any concept of BRM so I don't want to listen to him, but I thought I might get some opinions from people here. Ya know, people who actually care about BRM.

[Fnord]

Is $200 a lot of money to you?

[zxqv8]

It's all I have to play poker with. Period.

[daven]

It's all I have to play poker with. Period.

then be conservative with your roll.

I recommend that you take a shot once you get to $230, but move back down if you drop to $190, no matter what. Repeat until you're established at 10nl.
Good luck.

[zxqv8]

Thanks for the replies.

I encourage anyone and everyone to reply, so I can tell my friend what's right for him is NOT necessarily right for me.

[Sheetah]

20 buyins is considered 'thin' for today's standards. Although for lower stakes this^^^ is just about right. Just keep doing what you do and be assured you're on the right track.

[bigslikk]

If you made a plan, stick with the plan. That's not to say you can't change it. Move up when you're confident that both you and your roll are ready. Not because of impatience, and definitely not because some random tells you to. I'd venture that 95% of advice is given not for the receiver, but for the giver.

[d0zer]

My plan is basically to move up when I'm at 22 BIs for the next level & move down again at 20.

I very rarely have a -2 BI session anymore, so it's unlikely that my roll will get decimated in any night, and dropping back down a level is easy enough the next night. I've tried the whole "tilt up a few levels after a shitty session" thing. I wouldn't recommend it. Just move down.

Start writing down your BR swing/session, and see what your average swing is like. As long as you don't change your play moving up, your swings shouldn't differ all that much. If your game has tons of holes, just keep working on that & don't make yer BR suffer

From 25NL to 50NL I dropped 3 times before it stuck. I just moved to 100NL for a bit now and I'm up 7BIs my first try.

Variance has a lot to do with how well you'll stick, but so does how well you can keep your 'a' game when the numbers get bigger... I definitely choked at 50NL my first few times...

[Sheetah]

... move up when I'm at 22 BIs for the next level & move down again at 20 ... From 25NL to 50NL I dropped 3 times before it stuck...

There's a HUGE problem with this and you're likely not aware of this, neither was I until I came to a shocking realization by pure accident.

Let me tell you my story:
Some time ago I logged in to Stars and found long forgotten $80. Since I had separate (main) BR elsewhere an idea came: 'gee lets have some fun and insta turn this 80 into 1k'. So I devised a '4BIs' plan - play NL10 with $80 till it hits $100 (4 BIs for NL25) -> play NL25 till $200 (if I lose 2BIs, in this case drop to $50, move back down) -> play NL50 till $400 ( if I drop to $100, move back down) -> play NL100 till 1k. At first I caught some nice heater, but somewhere at ~$300 swings started so I was moving up and down in stakes like crazy. After I dropped back to starting $80 I was eventually sick and gave up with enough FPPs to claim a 'profit' of one T-shirt from FPP store.

This is when things started to get interesting - I loaded data from PT (correctly showing: breakeven) into Poker Grapher just to see how it looks, carefully set starting date/site/sn and ... graph showed - THREE BUY-INS PROFIT! Ummm ... probably mistake with date or sn ... nope everything is correct ... exactly the same number of HHs as in PT ... WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS GRAPH !?? After closer inspection - ahhhh, the graph is in BB units not $$$. And of course $$$ graph showed as it really was. It took me some time to figure out why such a difference between the two graphs when it finally hit me (felt like a hammer) ...

... Let me illustrate: imagine that you take for ex. 3 BI shot at NL100 and you lose and have to drop down to NL50. You are break even, right? BUT, those $300 were made at NL50 which is 6 buyins. Even though you didn't win anything, technically you are 3 buyins up. Blinds are blinds, stacks are stacks, everything is proportional no matter how much $ BB really is. And BIG BLIND/STACK PROPORTION is the only thing that matters. $$$ are irrelevant! Having to drop down is a disaster!!! And this is yet another example of what bad BR management can do to an otherwise ok player.

d0zer, I suggest you revise your strategy in the light of my experience. While 10BI downers are pretty rare, 2BI ones are common. There's a reason why standard 20BI plan says you drop down only when you reach 10BI for present i.e. 20BI for lower level. If you look at it from a different angle then 2BI shots are exactly the same as playing extremely underrolled with 'real life reserves'.

[aka_red]

i dont plan on moving up till 100nl till i hit 3k [3obi], make sure im really ready and to also has a cushion so losing 2bi right off the bat will not be discouraging and making me move back down

[daven]

i dont plan on moving up till 100nl till i hit 3k [3obi],

my plan is similar, but $5.5k is the magic number = bankroll uber-nit!
hopefully moving up in may...

[d0zer]

d0zer, I suggest you revise your strategy in the light of my experience. While 10BI downers are pretty rare, 2BI ones are common. There's a reason why standard 20BI plan says you drop down only when you reach 10BI for present i.e. 20BI for lower level. If you look at it from a different angle then 2BI shots are exactly the same as playing extremely underrolled with 'real life reserves'.

I think you've misinterpreted me... I move up when I have 22 BIs for the NEXT level, as in 44 BIs for the current level, which is considerably more conservative than your 4 BI maniac plan. I used to roll with the 4 BI maniac plan and had similar results to you

So I take a stab up a level, worse case I drop 2 BIs at level n+1 and still have 40BIs for level n. Hardly crippling. Far from a 'disaster'.

[Sheetah]

I didn't mean to say you're gambling underrolled or something - far from that. My only point was that moving down too soon costs money.

Let's see your example:

...From 25NL to 50NL I dropped 3 times...

Measured in big blinds you are 600 BBs or 6 full stacks up. If you didn't move down back to NL25 after 2BI downer 3 times, you would have earned $200 more. Of course this assumes that NL50 players are as fishy as their NL25 counterparts which is not necessarily true but that doesn't change the point.

[d0zer]

I didn't mean to say you're gambling underrolled or something - far from that. My only point was that moving down too soon costs money.

Let's see your example:

...From 25NL to 50NL I dropped 3 times...

Measured in big blinds you are 600 BBs or 6 full stacks up. If you didn't move down back to NL25 after 2BI downer 3 times, you would have earned $200 more. Of course this assumes that NL50 players are as fishy as their NL25 counterparts which is not necessarily true but that doesn't change the point.

Your advice is to NOT move down cause you can make more at the higher limits?

Well, yeah, but with that logic you might as well play maniac-roll styles :P

Edit: ...or are you saying I should have a bigger window on my up/down point. I don't think that matters so much in the long run. Both have their advantages & disadvantages. It probably makes more sense just to keep track of one number as a limit

[Monty3038]

Your comfort level is very important to your game. If YOU are not comfortable moving up you will be playing with scared money and play worse.

[Sheetah]

...or are you saying I should have a bigger window on my up/down point...

EXACTLY!

[d0zer]

...or are you saying I should have a bigger window on my up/down point...

EXACTLY!

But that has the disadvantage of making you spend longer at a lower level when you've got to drop after busting.

So say I move up to 100NL at 2400 & drop down at 2000. Now if I hit a -4 BI streak, I've gotta build 8 buyins at 50NL before taking another stab, spending twice as much time at a halved hourly winrate than if I only had to rebuild another 4 BIs at 50NL.

It's got the advantage of giving you more time to play the higher limit before dropping down, but if you're a winning player, a winning session should be more likely than a losing one, and you shouldn't have to spend too much time in the 'moving up window' period anyway, regardless of how you structure it. If you hit a cooler at the higher level you're screwed either way, but arguably slightly more with a bigger window...

To be honest, I don't think it matters that much either way -- I'm inclined to just set one number where over it = move up, and below it = move down.

Monty's point is far more important than nickeling and dimeing move up windows

[Sheetah]

It matters ALOT. Our standard poker BR model is built on Kelly Criterion (google it) which recommends number of BIs given winrate and standard deviation. Kelly mathematically proved that you MAXIMIZE YOUR $$$ WON if you move up at predetermined number of BIs (in our case usually 20 or 25 BIs) i.e. move down when aforementioned BR gets cut in half. Deviating from this model lowers yor profit - as simple as that. And taking 2BI (extremely thin) shots and having to drop 3 times means 6BIs are wasted and yes, this will seriously affect you in the long run. I don't know how to explain this better.

[AlphaKennyBody]

It matters ALOT. Our standard poker BR model is built on Kelly Criterion (google it) which recommends number of BIs given winrate and standard deviation. Kelly mathematically proved that you MAXIMIZE YOUR $$$ WON if you move up at predetermined number of BIs (in our case usually 20 or 25 BIs) i.e. move down when aforementioned BR gets cut in half. Deviating from this model lowers yor profit - as simple as that. And taking 2BI (extremely thin) shots and having to drop 3 times means 6BIs are wasted and yes, this will seriously affect you in the long run. I don't know how to explain this better.

I think it's really about the psychological factor. When you move up, that's double the buyin of the previous stakes. So say you get stacked three times...normally it's 3 buyins for your previous level, but now it's like going on a 6 buyin downswing compared to the stakes you're normally used to. For people who aren't used to that, it can really take its toll. And add variance and perhaps a learning curve for the next level into the mix, and there's a bigger chance of something like that happening.

[d0zer]

It matters ALOT. Our standard poker BR model is built on Kelly Criterion (google it) which recommends number of BIs given winrate and standard deviation. Kelly mathematically proved that you MAXIMIZE YOUR $$$ WON if you move up at predetermined number of BIs (in our case usually 20 or 25 BIs) i.e. move down when aforementioned BR gets cut in half. Deviating from this model lowers yor profit - as simple as that. And taking 2BI (extremely thin) shots and having to drop 3 times means 6BIs are wasted and yes, this will seriously affect you in the long run. I don't know how to explain this better.

I'm laggy enough to get on board with that I suppose...

[silu73]

When I grinded the micro stakes I always used the 30x BI rule. Now at midstakes 400NL+ I want at least 50x BI's.