Bankroll building strategy reflection

Poker Strategy
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Hello all,

I’ve been looking at my bankroll evolution since I joined the site and noticed that I had a huge leap when I started playing ring games.

Now I don’t play as much MTT as I used to play since I feel after a certain amount of chips it doesn’t make sense to play MTT to build a bankroll, it’s more to have the satisfaction of wining a tourney.

I was wondering if you were experiencing the same thing, I’ve 4,4M right now and noticed my leap around 500k when I started to play 100/200 NHLE at full ring and 6max. Then I went from 100/200 to 1000/2000 pretty quickly:

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I think it could be interesting for new players to have an optimal strategy on their bankroll building from the beginning so they stick around more. Intuitively I’d say start with MTT/SnG then go to ring game and play MTT/SnG for fun.

2 Likes
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Here are graphs of my chip progression and my daily profit/loss. Last July I started to play a lot more ring and fewer SnGs, and my bankroll rocketed from 8m to 19m in 2 months.

I recently got bored with ring and started playing really experimentally and then quit the site for a month after losing 6m chips in the process (never bluff a fish). My conclusion is that while ring will always be more profitable (you can consistently win 500k+ per session, while winning a 250k mtt will only net ~2.5m), at some point the chips are meaningless and tournaments are more fun because they are more dynamic. I also think that Replay tournament strategy is closer to real-money tournament strategy than Replay ring strategy is to real-money ring strategy.

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Just out of curiousity, any idea how many more/less you’re playing as a result of switching to Sit n Gos? I wonder if your bankroll is going up more quickly because there are no time restrictions on when you can play a SnG. Granted, that would only be a small part of the picture, but I like weird stats. =)

Thanks for sharing!

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I agree, MTT and SnG are way more realistic at high stake levels so it makes 'em funnier to play.

I think the good thing about ring games though is you can have an history with the players around the table which is harder to do in MTT. So you can start to work on your image and that’s a really interesting part of poker (obviously you’ll need players paying attention to such things but some do).

Thanks for sharing I guess we’re pretty much on the same page.

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When I started, I played only MTTs because that’s what I like to play. After a couple of weeks, I decided to buy some chips so I could afford to play bigger tournies. I consider bank management to be an important aspect of the game, and, except at the very beginning, never risked more than 5 or 10% of my bank on any tournament buyin.

As far as I’m concerned, the lowest levels on any site are a freakin zoo. If you really want to increase your enjoyment, buy some chips to get started. I took advantage of the first time buyer bonus and got 375,000 chips for like $25 USD. I have paid a lot more for games I got bored with in a lot less time, so it was money well spent.

If they “cash” the top 20% in tournies, you have to cash 1 tournament for every 5 you play, and cash it hard enough to pay for the ones you don’t cash and then have enough left over to show a profit. This can be done, but it’s not that easy.

I played only MTTs for about 3 months, then seemed to get stuck at about a million chips. For about the next month, I couldn’t get going in the right direction and was losing almost as much as I was winning.

Starting in April, I decided to play only ring games for awhile. I started with 25/50, booked quite a few winning sessions, and now moved up to 50/100. So now I’m up to about 1.6 mill, and have gained about 1,000 spots in my ranking to 2,750. I’ll be moving to higher stakes soon. :slight_smile:

1… Don’t be afraid to buy chips to get you going. The lowest stakes levels can be way more frustrating, it’s worth it to jump to higher stakes.

2… Don’t play higher stakes than you can afford. You have to be able to lose a few racks and not get broke. Take a long term approach and build slowly.

3… Never sit a table with less than a max buyin, and always use the auto-retop feature. When you do hit the nuts, you need to extract max value.

4… Understand proper betting. Learn how to lose as few chips as possible when you lose a hand and win as many as possible when you win a hand.

5… Don’t forget to have fun. Talk to the other players, joke around, be nice. Don’t forget that the chips are fake but the people are real. Even donkeys need love!

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I have to agree with you on the buying chips to get started thought. While it was nice to help the site out (and I don’t mind admitting that that was part of the reason I did it), it was the only option I had to play any of the 3K or 5k tournaments, rather than the bankroll-builder or free-roll. I have to wholeheartedly agree that the bankroll builder tourneys (with re-buys) left a bit of a sour and false taste in my mouth. Calling it a zoo is spot on, from what I remember from January and February. (But maybe people were kinda ornery from the cold winter months and that translated to their play… I dunno.) I literally would let out a sigh of relief when the initial half-hour was done with and the rebuy time was over, because it just didn’t feel like real poker to me with the chance to jump back in the tourney after bizarre all-ins (without any real consequence, like being eliminated from the tournament).

But when you’re starting out, that’s pretty much the only tourney you can participate in. (And, at this juncture, those are still the games I prefer to play here. Perhaps the ring games will hold appeal for me at a later juncture in time)

And I absolutely, 100%, over-the-top agree with the ‘have fun’ thought. There isn’t always time to flesh out a fully realized thought or quip when you’re trying to play but, in my heart of hearts, I really believe people can cotton on when one is trying to share a fun thought on the fly, even if it’s only in a couple of abbreviated words between hands. Because if we’re not having fun… then what’s the point?