Beginer poker br management?

Question

Can you give some good tips on how to manage br properly? ie, Im very new to this and even though I managed to play really well in tourney sit n go n freerolls and make it to the money quite often, my problems is I kept on playing and playing especially in ring games n could not stop until I lost my whole bank roll, the reason that I kept playing because I just want to build it fast so I can move to higher stakes, stupid me right LOL, anyways I kept busting my rolls and it getting really frustrating because of the money and hours that I invested, any advice? Please be kind with your comments :) btw one time I have I less than $5 and manage to run that up to over $50 in less than hour just to be bust later. yup foolish me, i need some good tips and opinion, please help all reply and advice greatly appreciated! have a good day!

Answer 1

This is a problem a lot of players run into.  Lets operate on a scale of $100 to make this explanation simple.  Like others have said, risk no more than 5% of your bankroll on ring games or SnG's.  For MTT (multi-table tourneys) risk no more than 2.5%, preferrably less.  

Keep a log of your sessions winnings and losses.  A simple Excel sheet will do.  Log what kind of game you played, your buy-in and fee if you're playing a tournament, what the result is, and the date (to get an idea of how often you're doing what).  

When I'm playing a ring game, I set a winning goal.  Say, if I triple up my buy-in, then quit.  That is, if I enter to a $0.05/0.10 NLHE with $5 and I hit $15, then I quit for the day.  This stops you from building a big stack and blowing it.  Also, if I lose more than two buy ins (in this case, if I lose $5 in one session and another $5 in another session during the same day) then quit for the day.

I will adjust my buy-in with my total bankroll.  Say I'm down to $75.  At that point I'd be playing as if I had a $50 BR and not risk more than $2.50 per session.  That's the great thing about micro limit online play, you CAN play for that little.  On the other hand, if I build up to $125 or more, then I can adjust a little bit for the next highest plateau.  Where you decide to move up in stakes is your discretion.  

The main thing is to be disciplined.  If you can follow these guidelines and stick to them, and assuming you have above-average poker skills, you can be a winning player!  And playing tight-aggressive can't hurt, either.

Answer 2

First, two points:

1. strategies for tourneys don't work well for ring games and vice versa. if you don't know this, I hope you have proven it to yourself through experience.

2. br considerations are different for ring games and tourneys.

So, my first advice is this: BR requirements are wildly different from ring games to tourneys You need roughly 300-500X the blinds to have sufficient bankroll for a ring game. However, for a tourney, i would say the largest tourney you should enter is 50% of your current bankroll. If you have $100, you should only try a $50. If you lose, the next largest would be a $25. However, to build a bankroll, you should stick to the nickle and dime tourneys. One player on the sharkscope.com's leader boards made 6k only playing the $1 tourneys.

That being said, the best way to build BR as a small tourney player is through tourneys with fewer people. If you look at most of the top players are sharkscope.com's leaderboard, about 60% of them made their money on heads up games. But if you are really that good, play the sng's with large numbers of people, e.g. 180. Usually, the payouts are far higher than tourneys even if you barely make the bubble. In most tourneys I've seen, the minimum payout is around 110% of the entry fee. In sng's the minimum payout is 180-200%, but you have to place higher than in a regular tourney to cash.

Answer 3

Its very simple. Use less than 5% your bankroll when you join a game. Say you want to play a 1/2 game. You need 4k to play this at this level.

Another way to remember the 5% rule is to play at the level with 20 buyins or more.

If you are going to play ring games you need at least 200 dollars at .5/.10. You have no idea how fast you can lose 3 or maybe even ten buyins.

Answer 4

go to www.fulltiltextra.com they give u $5 when u set up an account so u can practise with no risk :-)

Answer 5

The best rule of thumb is to limit yourself to sitting down with 5% of your bankroll for ring games and 2% of your bankroll for tourney entries. These basic rules are pretty conservative but allow for the swings you'll experience in NL holdem.