How to Lose 45% of Your Bankroll in 2 Minutes - The Jesus Challenge, Day 18

Two weeks into my little personal challenge, things were going just swell. I had built my $2 up to over $36. I thought, Hey why not try a higher level? I'll play it super tight and if things don't go well I'll come back down to these 2 cent tables. I think you know where this is going. I took $5 to a table and waited for a good hand....and waited...and waited....finally I got dealt pocket sixes - the kind of hand I like to play. (If you want to know why I like these hands, read Small and Medium Pocket Pairs).  Someone raised ahead of me so I called and the flop could not have been better: Kd 6c Jd. I bet the pot and the other gut re-raised. I re-re-raised. He's all-in. I call. He turns over pocket aces. Ha! The fool! With only two outs he's up the creek! The turn is another king. And the river is an ace.

Well that sucks.

So. I go down to the level I belong at, right? Um, no. I go up another level, bringing $10 with me. I am determined to win that $5 back!

The very first hand I'm dealt QQ and some idiot makes a monster raise in front of me. Perfect! I re-raise. He goes all-in. I call. He shows....AA. Oh, damn. No miracle saves my from my foolishness, and my bankroll goes from $36 to $21 in two hands.

So. I go down to the bottom level again, and that's where I've been for the last four days, grinding it out. I'm happy to say I've got my bankroll back to $37. It's taken me about seven hours of poker over those four days - and I've had to play about 1,600 hands of poker to win back what I lost in only 2.

The question is - will I ever learn?

Don't Play at Too High a Level! - The Jesus Challenge, Day 12

A week into the "Jesus Challenge", I had built my original $2 up to just over $18, and in only three more days had nearly lost it all.

What happened? It was the usual story - I started out very disciplined, only playing 2 cent big blind ring games. For five days I kept to this level and was a consistent winner, growing my bankroll to over $12 in six days. In fact, winning was so easy that I didn't see the harm in stepping up to the 5 cent game. This seemed like a good move at first - day 7 saw me grow to over $19 before finishing near $18 - but I gave it all back the next day and finished my first week at $12.05.

I took the weekend off and started Monday with the intention of sticking to the 2 cent game, but I got off to a bad start and then, stupidly, moved back up to the higher level to try to quickly win back what I lost. A bad bankroll decision, followed by over-aggressive play and, in my own defense, some rather crappy luck, saw my losses spin out of control. I was in a complete nose-dive but somehow found the will to walk away before I lost it all. I had only $3.33 left.

It's really hard not to throw your whole bankroll away after losing 5/6th's of it in a single day. The downward momentum is just so great, and your attitude becomes so defeatist. I tried to tell my self that $3.33 was still more than the $2 I started with, but I still felt like a stupid donkey who deserved to lose. The one thing that kept me from crashing completely was the thought of having to write a blog about what an idiot I am.

So.

So, the next day I started grinding it out at the 2 cent tables, playing super-tight and folding a lot of hands that I called with the day before. That day I built the bankroll back up over $6.00

The next day a miracle happened. I played three tables (all 2cent BB's) simultaneously. My reasoning was that multi-tabling would keep me from losing my patience and playing too loose. It worked. After about 2 1/2 hours my bankroll had grown to an impressive $30.04.

So. Here I am, very lucky to tell you how my Jesus Challenge didn't end an embarrassing two weeks from the start. And I hope I can find the discipline to keep grinding at the 2cent level.

Wish me luck.

The Roll is Over

The beginning of the end was when I blew up my on-line bankroll.

Next, I played in a home game (for the first time at my house) and being a generous host I refused to take any of my guest's money. My wife is far more rude. We played three quick tournament style games and the missus won two and came in second in the third. It would be unbecoming for me to complain of the outrageous bad beats and plain bad luck I suffered that night. That would be unseemly. But even when you lose in a home game you usually have a lot of fun. This time the comedy was supplied by the men - fairly experienced players - who seemed to always be the first to be knocked out while the women in attendance did the best. My friend Eric salvaged some of the male pride by winning the last tourney. I won't mention the manner in which he knocked me out of that game. I am a better man than to talk about that.

The last nail in the coffin was when I visited the casino a few days ago. I took half of my small bankroll and lost just about all of it.

Winning streaks and losing streaks are part of poker. The trick is not to loose everything whenever things go south. Yes my bankroll is half of what it was a week ago, but it is infinitely larger than the nothing it was two months ago. I will just have to buckle down and rebuild.

(cue the Chumbawumba)

My On-Line Down Fall

Friends, I come before you a shameful man. I have sinned in the eyes of the Poker Gods and I have ignored my our good advice and the council of my bankroll manager (my wife). I allowed the excitement, the rush, to overrule my common sense and it has led to the devastation of my on line bankroll. Here is the sad story.

Just two weeks ago I signed up with 888 poker and received $8 for doing so. I started out with the intention of just playing the 2 cent tables and building the bankroll. And that is just what I did for the first week, building it up to $24. Then I started straying up to the 5 cent tables, and while the results were inconsistent, I still was winning. Two days ago my on-line balance was $57.

Then yesterday I went nuts. I took $30 - a majority of my bankroll- to a table where the big blind was 30 cents .I played very well, and got a bit lucky. After two hours at this table I had turned that $30 into $99. My on line bankroll was now $126. But did I stop? Did I quit while I was ahead? Yes I did! I stopped. I turned the computer off. I took a shower. I swore to myself I was not going to play poker for the rest of the day. I fed the dogs. Then turned the computer back on. Took $120 to a table where the big blind was $1. And I lost it all in five minutes.

Stupid. Dumb. Idiotic.

Please people. Do as I say, not as I do.

I swear, if it takes me ten years I will build this $6 into $126.

Back to the 2 cent tables!

I'm a Bankroll Moron

Hello. My name is Tyler and I can't play poker within my bankroll limits.

A few weeks ago I discovered how to turn a large amount of play money into a small amount of real money. I then slowly built that small amount until I had quadrupled it. Then I took that entire amount to a table and lost it all. I turned some play money into real money again and this time I was much more disciplined, turning $2 into $35 in about a week. Then I took the entire amount to a table and lost it all. Repeat this pattern two more times and you begin to get the picture.

No matter what stakes you play for and no matter how good you are, if you can't control your impulse to gamble then you will lose your entire bankroll. Playing poker above your bankroll limits is taking an unnecessary risk. It is gambling. It happens to micro-stakes players like me, and it happens to high-stakes players who can't control their impulses.

I'm coming clean about my bankroll management failures in hopes I can break this pattern.

Bankroll Management: Part 2

Note the "Part 2" in the title? That means go read Part 1.

Okay, you may now have an intellectual appreciation of the importance of bankroll management, however this is too important a topic to leave it at that. So today I'm going to tell you a personal story of bad bankroll management and its disastrous results. This is a story I have not even told my wife because it shames me so much, but I really want you to understand why I think bankroll management is the crucial element that separates the financial winners from the frequently broke.

How I lost $400 on a single hand trying to impress Jesus.

I started playing poker for money on the internet with an initial deposit of only $100. I played well at first and probably had more than my share of luck as well. After a few weeks my bankroll had grown to about $450, and I was a little too confident in my poker skills.

One day my dad, who was living with us, came to me and said. "Hey, I'm playing poker on-line and I see your hero is playing." I went down to his suite to see what he was talking about, and sure enough, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson was playing on the poker site I used. Now I would not say Ferguson was "my hero", but he is certainly a player I admire. He was the winner of the World Series of Poker main event in 2000, a feat that was chronicled in the great book, Positively Fifth Street by James McManus. Now, here he was in all his animated avatar glory. Well, actually his avatar looked more like a cross between Waylon Jennings and an Orthodox Jew, but still, it was Chris Ferguson. I was surprised to see an empty seat at the table, usually when a poker celebrity like Jesus sits down at a table there is a long line of wanna-be's waiting for the chance to take a shot at him, but here an empty chair sat. Invitingly. I checked the limit, and it was much, much higher than I had ever played - in fact the minimum amount I could bring to the table was $400 - almost my entire bankroll. But when will you ever have a chance to play poker with Chris Ferguson again? So I sat down, clicked on the empty seat, and took almost all of my bankroll with me.

I was determined to play my very best. I remember wanting to impress Chris with my skill. Why did I want to do that? Well, it's a fairly common reaction when one come in contact with recognized master. Bobby Baldwin calls it "fancy play syndrome": regularly good poker players suddenly try all sorts of "creative" moves in an attempt to impress the famous poker pro. So there I sat, way over my limit, determined to show Jesus my brilliance.

Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. I was playing tight, waiting for the right cards. It wasn't long before I found myself in middle position with pocket Jacks. One guy limped in ahead of me. I had played enough to know how tricky JJ is and how it was also very probable that no one had a better hand than me at this point. I made a large bet, hoping to maybe get one caller and then take it from there. I got my one caller - the guy on my immediate left- and everyone else folded. The flop came down - J A 6 (I don't remember the suits). I flopped trip Jacks! My heart started beating in my throat. I put out a bet of half the pot, and the guy re-raised me! Now, sure he might have pocket aces, but that was a remote possibility. More likely he had AK or AQ or AJ. He hit top pair with a good kicker and was not giving up the pot. I moved all my chips into the pot. He called and turned over....two aces.

I suddenly felt like throwing up. I can't remember what came on the turn and the river, but they were not jacks. All my chips went to the guy on my left as I stared, dumb-founded at the screen. My dad, who was watching television, called over to me. "So, how's it going?"

So what was my mistake? Believe me, I have played this hand over and over in my mind and I think if happened again I probably would play it much the same way. If you are to timid to go all-in when you flop trips, then you are probably playing too tight to be a winner. No, my mistake had nothing to do with the hand. Sometimes you can do everything right, and still lose. My big boneheaded move was to take almost all my bankroll to the table.

So, that lesson cost me $400, and I'm giving it to you for free.

I wish I could say I never played over my limit again, but that would be a lie. Time and time again I built up my bankroll by playing well and practicing good bankroll management, only to blow it in a few hours at a much higher limit. For me, there is something about internet poker that is too intoxicating - I have to keep moving up to higher limits even though my bankroll can not support it. Finally, I had to just give up on putting money into internet poker sites altogether. I find it much easier to practice bankroll management at the real live poker tables, where moving up to higher limits is not an impulsive move I could make with the click of a mouse.

The rules of bankroll management are simple, but they are also very difficult to adhere to.

Master bankroll management and you will have the discipline to learn everything else you will need to be successful.

Bankroll Management: Part 1

"The first rule about making money is not losing money"- Warren Buffett.

Bankroll management is maybe the least talked about aspects of the game but is just as important as any thing else you have control over. Many players who consistently win at poker find themselves broke from time to time because they can't manage their bankroll properly.

A bankroll is that amount of money that finances your poker activities. You bankroll does not include money you need for rent, food or anything else. It is a very good idea to keep your bankroll separate from the rest of your money. It will make it much easier to track your winnings and losses. If you lose your bankroll, well that sucks, but you can not play poker with money you need for rent, food or anything else. This is not a suggestion, this is the way it has to be, okay? If you can't deal with that then you have gambling problem my friend. If you have a $1,000 bankroll, take $50 to the poker table and lose it, that means your bankroll is now $950. If instead of losing, you won $250 dollars, then it is up to you if you want to increase your bankroll to $1,250 or take your profit and go out for a nice dinner.

So why do so many really good poker players blow their bankrolls? Bad bankroll management is almost always to blame. People who have learned to be smart and disciplined while sitting at the table are often undisciplined about the amount of money they take to the table. A bit of bad luck, or just one or two bad moves and all the chips are gone. Now they may start playing angry, mad that some idiot hit a two-outer on the river to beat them, or they play at a higher level to quickly win back what they lost. When this happens a bankroll that has been carefully built over weeks or even months can disappear in an hour. It happens all the time.


How can you keep it from happening to you?

Let's forget all about poker for a second. Let's imagine a new card game called "Tyler Draw". The rules of Tyler Draw are very simple: There are two players, me (Tyler) and whoever I'm playing against. No cards are dealt to either player - instead the dealer turns over just one card. If the card is a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 my opponent wins. If the card is an 8, 9, 10, jack, queen, king, or Ace I win. Nice game huh? Wanna play?

In Tyler draw, I will win 53.85% percent of the time, because 7 out of 13 cards make me a winner, and only 6 out of 13 cards make me a loser.

So let's say I have a $100 bankroll. One guy wants to play Tyler Draw against me for $1 a hand and another guy wants to play Tyler Draw against me for $100 dollars a hand. Who should I play? Well I only have $100, so if I play for $100 a hand there is a 46.15% chance I will lose my whole bankroll on one hand. The odds are only slightly in my favour, so why take an unnecessary risk? There is virtually no risk of me losing my entire $100 bankroll if I only wager $1 per hand. In fact the risk is so small, I really should take that "virtually" out. The more hands of Tyler Draw I play, the greater the certainty that I will make money.

Does this principle make sense? Now I know what you are thinking; What kind of sucker would be the "other guy" at a game of Tyler Draw? Well, walk into a casino. Are you in a casino now? Great. Okay, look around. See all those people playing the slot machines? See the sign saying Our Loose Slots Pay back 92%? Well, that's about the same odds they would get playing Tyler Draw.

But today's lesson isn't about the bad decisions other people make - it's about teaching you not to make bad bankroll management decisions. So let's apply what we've learned so far to the game of poker. Let's pretend you are one of the best poker players in the world. You have a bankroll of $100,000. Do you:

A: Take $50,000 to a $250/$500 No-Limit hold 'em table.
B: Take $5,000 to a $25/$50 No-Limit hold 'em table.

Knowing you will probably make money because you are so good, you may choose option A in order to maximize your profit. But as good as you are, you might get unlucky and lose half you bankroll. Better to take a seat at the smaller limit table. If you are really good you will probably win, an if you get unlucky only 5% of your bankroll is exposed.

What is the maximum amount you should ever bring to a table? The very disciplined professionals say 5% but some will say as much as 10%.

Set a limit on how much you bring to a table.

Bankroll management is not easy, but it is vital. So vital that I'm going to write about it in my next post too!