Poker Bankroll Theory
Summary
So did everyone tired get of opening this site and seeing david williams morph into xxx David williams? Well I am, so I’m going to write a poker bankroll theory article! I promise this won’t be another boring bankroll management […]
So did everyone tired get of opening this site and seeing david williams morph into xxx David williams? Well I am, so I’m going to write a poker bankroll theory article!
I promise this won’t be another boring bankroll management article. This one’s all about how the tiniest changes in your win rate can have HUGE effects on your winnings in the long run. I’ll use $100+$5 heads up sit&go’s as the example so we’ll end up with easy numbers, and it’s the first limit where you can really make good money.
So lets say you play 20 of these every day, which would take around 3 or so hours playing two at a time. If you simply win 10 and lose 10 (50%) then you’re going to lose $100 for the day in rake. But if your aces didn’t get cracked that one time, and you won 11/20 games (55%) you’d be $100 ahead instead of $100 behind. So if you want to make $100 a day you just have to win 11/20 of your heads up sit and gos.
Break this down to one game, and by winning 50% of your heads up sit&go’s You’d be losing $5 per game (the rake). By winning 52.5% of them you’d be breaking even, and 55% you would make $5 per sit&go. so every 2.5% change in your poker win rate means the difference between $5 per game.
Got it so far? This isn’t hard stuff, but just something you might not have thought about.
Alright so now lets look at how this works out in the long run. Often new players think they can maintain a 65% – 75% win rate over a long period of time. Some even claim to have that win rate. Is that possible? I don’t think so, but I’m not going to prove that wrong. Instead i’ll show you how just by winning 55% – 57.5% of your heads up sit and go’s can make you A LOT of money. And anyone who talks about their win rate being anywhere from x% to x+15% doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Lets say you play $100+$5 heads up poker games full time averaging 5-6 hours a day which would be about 1000 per month. If you just beat half of the players and lose to the other half you’re going to lose $5000 per month, all to rake. Ugh! But then if you win 525 of these (52.5%) you’ll break even. Phew! Now make it 55% and you’re up $5000! It’s crazy how the slightest changes can be the difference of that much money right? If you’re doing this for a full year then it’s the difference between winning $60,000 (55%) and losing $60,000 (50%).
I read a post on a forum where someone confidently said their heads up sit&go poker win rate was between 65% and 85% after playing consistently for 7 months. Haha alright lets look at how silly this is. I’ll guess that he played 5000 of these.
After playing 5000 $105 heads up sit and go poker games you’re going to lose $25,000 to rake. So every 2.5% change means difference of $25,000. Winning 65% of your heads up poker games would put you up $125,000. Winning 85% would mean that you made $325,000. Maybe 65% is possible (I don’t know), but when someone gives you a range of numbers like that at a limit where that’s a HUGE difference just ignore them.
With any form of poker or gambling you need to be 100% focused all the time, keeping notes on everyone, and always looking for mistakes in your game because the smallest adjustments over the course of a year can be the difference of a large amount of money. And if you’re playing for a living you have to keep really good stats because you can’t be thinking, “Hmmm… If I play like this for the rest of the year I’ll win anywhere from $20,000 to $350,000.”, unless of course you’re playing really high stakes like $1,000 and $2,000 heads up sit&go’s or $100/$200 limit poker.
I really don’t know what a good heads up sit&go win rate is for an average player. But you don’t need to win every one to make a lot of money. I’d be more then happy to win 56% of my $200+10 heads up sit&go’s. Full time that would be about $150,000/year, plus a bunch of cool stuff from the FPP store.
Again this is all stuff you could have figured out on you’re own, but may not have thought about to hard. Poker is all about pushing the smallest advantages and only playing when you know you’re better then your opponent. Take your losses like a man, keep your head when you win, always think about the long run, and you’ll be on your way to making a lot of money with poker.