Bankroll management is the single most important building block to lay down when trying to become successful at poker be it live or online. Boy do I wish that I knew that when I started playing poker. It would saved me and many others literally hundreds if not thousands of Dollars if we knew how to manage our money from the start.
The truth is, even the most able of poker players would go bust quite frequently if they don’t manage their money. Its not even down to bad play, more down to variance. Lets say you have $100 to your name and you have been foolish enough to risk it all on a cash game. You flop the nut straight post flop, but there are two suited cards within that straight.
Logic says over bet the pot to stop your opponent drawing to his flush, and technically that’s the right thing to do. But lets say your opponent has other ideas, he’s a true sicko who’s going to raise you all in when you bet out and flip the script on you, what do you do? Obviously your going to have to call, again the right thing to do. He has a maximum of 9 cards to hit is flush twice both on the turn and the river, scary but the equity is way in your favour. He has roughly a 35% chance of hitting his flush. You have done absolutely nothing wrong with your play but 3.5 times out of ten your money is going down the pan.
The only mistake in the above example is that you have all of your money on the table. Now lets say you had $2,500 to play poker with or 25 buyins. Yeah the sicko hitting the flush is annoying, but the 1 buyin the beat has cost you doesn’t put you out of the game. If you’re like me, once you’ve called him a C U Next Tuesday, stormed out and had a cigarette, you’ll be ready to come back in and win your money back (we’re ignoring tilt for now, that’s another article later on). The reality about maths and poker is that they are based on statistics. Statistics are based on large samples, or in the case of poker number of hands.
The reason Bankroll management is so important to a successful poker player is that if that situation plays out 100 times you expect to win $100 (roughly) for 65 of those outcomes against losing 35% of the time. If you are playing too much or all of your bankroll in one game, you aren’t letting positive expected value work in your favour. Bankroll management allows you to reap the benefits of consistently good decisions, whilst brushing off the effects of the evil STD’s of poker, the dreaded Variance and Bad Beats.
Tru Grnderz
No comments:
Post a Comment