Small Stakes Grinder

Through combination of play, consolidation, and planning, I have amassed a decent amount of money on Pokerstars over the last month. Enough that I am considering making that final push toward having a stable bankroll, something I am hoping to achieve by the end of March. While this does include live play (and that bankroll is separate physically for obvious reasons) most of it is obviously going to be online. In the interest of full disclosure, I have about $1000 in Stars and $450 cash-on-hand, which considering I had less than half that last month total this is a pretty good month. (I do pay my taxes on my earnings, but at this point the government is still owing me money, not the other way around. Hence why I don’t mind publicizing this.) My goal is two-fold:

1. Never deposit again.
2. Don’t go broke ever again.

I can’t say I’ve gone totally bust-o since I’ve started taking this seriously, but I have definitely lost bankrolls of varying sizes from $20-$100 before, so losing $1450 would be…umm, how shall we say, bad. As I’ve probably stated before, I have until the end of this semester (mid-May) to prove I can earn a stable-ish income in poker in order to keep it up. My earlier post has suggested that I have a backup to the tables, but it won’t be a feasible source either until later this year, so I definitely need to make this run long. So coming up on the heels of my bankroll management lesson, its time I show what I have planned for my next two months.

The goal is to get from $1000-$10000 on Pstars by 3/31/10. After this, I can probably grind 100NL for $1k-$1.5k a month (assuming 2 BB/100 this would require I play 25k-35k hands) and that coupled with PStars VIP rewards and bonuses I can get by for the time being. Lofty goal? Yep, certainly. Hard? Hell yea. But why not? I’ve got my back against the wall, with the possibility of having to deal with corporate America (again) looming close. So without further ado, here is a chart of my plans for this to work.

Its pretty clear some of this requires some explanation. First the starting point: for cash games I can start playing when I reach 50 buy-ins, for SnGs I can start playing when I reach 65 buy-ins. Why am I starting with such a conservative number? Well first, I wish to allow for variance, which will inevitably happen as the skill level ramps up. Secondly, as I stated in the video, this is the most risk adverse of the three options, or the option that you should take if you are trying to establish a “pro” income. This should still help me build my bankroll, and while it won’t be as quickly as others may like, since I will be multi-tabling between 3-8 tables at all times, I allow multiple tables to have multiple buy-ins of cushion between them.

The range section also deserves some explanation:

• For cash games, the range is from 30-90 buyins.
• For Sit-N-Gos, the range is from 40-100 buyins.

The lower bound is self explanatory. The lower bound is my “drop down” point, if I ever reach this level after playing a set of sit-n-gos or cash games, my next session must drop down to the appropriate level. No questions, no concerns. If I fall below $640, I will have to play $11 regular SnGs and stick to 10NL. A drop in value can come with a drop in both cash and SnG limits, and both will certainly apply. The upper bound is there because I dont think the starting value should be a hard cap. If for whatever reason I think the games are particular juicy in the $60 SnG and I have $5200, I don’t have to go up to $78 6-max games, I can keep playing the $60 SnGs. But if I have $6000 at that point, I’m gonna need a very good reason to stick at that table level. In 99% of cases I will default to the new stake if I hit the hard cap, the starting level is sort of a soft cap.

Notice how I didn’t say anything about MTTs which includes any multi-table SnGs. This is a hard, no-change, no-nonsense limit; I must have 100 buy-ins in order to play any tournament, and that includes the rake. No justifying “well I have a $1000, so a $10+1 tourney is good because the rake doesnt matter” Yea…it does. This accounts for the obvious huge chance you’ll bust in these, but does allow for the occasional stab. If I win, awesome, if not, it was at most a 1% hit, which isn’t too bad. I also didn’t include limit games (holdem, HORSE, stud, etc), but for that you can just assume that if I am playing 10NL then if you go up two steps to 50FL then the buy-in amount is roughly equivalent (I have 2000 big bets in this scenario at this point, and I realize that’s huge, but I don’t expect to do too much limit unless I’m learning a game, in which case I don’t expect to win in the short run.)

So there you have it. Practicing what I preach. I don’t really plan on announcing how I’m doing all that often, but if I hit major milestones I’ll be sure to mention it here. This just gives you a good idea on how to create an all-encompassing bankroll strategy.

EDIT: Out of pure curiousity, I was wondering if there was a decent “benchmark” I would expect to get a reasonable increase in money to hit 10k by the end of March. Surprisingly, I found it with little to no effort:

• $45/day for 16 days
• $90/day for 12 days
• $180/day for 12 days
• $360/day for 14 days

This is on the average, of course I expect at least one losing day, but on the average i should be getting $45/day for the first 16 days, $90/day for the next 12, etc. The surprising part is that if I follow my bankroll management, this is entirely possible and somewhat reasonable (remember: a 1st place profit in the $16 turbos is ~3x the buy-in, or $51, and likewise the profit of a $109 Turbo is $341.)