Start Up Your Poker Business - Part 2: Variance and Bankroll Management
Right in the beginning it is vital to mention that all the monetary issues and requirements assume that you are playing at a no limit hold'em table with the utmost, 100BB buy-in. In a later part we will discuss how the requirements change if you wish to play some other sort of poker.
I tell you in the beginning, the importance of variance is a key issue in poker. You have to be patient with yourself because after having a couple of sessions it can easily happen that you're winning with a horrible strategy or you are losing while playing perfectly. In the short run (10A�000 — 100A�000 played hands) even a bad player may have revenue, in the extra short run (1 — 10A�000 played hands) anyone, even the worst players can end up with a profit. Obviously this is true the other way around as well. After a short period of time even the world class players may have a negative record. This variance is important because this edge gives weaker players an opportunity to take a shot and play. If they had absolutely no chance they would never play. If you are winning in the beginning it can happen that it is only the positive effectation of variance (and your strategy is not as effective as you think). This ostensibly means that if you play one night only, you might even beat Doyle Brunson. However a professional player understands the variance very well and knows how to handle it. This brings us to the very crucial issue of bankroll management.
Bankroll management accounts for keeping under control at which level you play in relation to the money you have in total for playing poker. Based on the bankroll management discussions on the 2+2 Forum, we can say that 4-6 buy-in variances in your winnings are absolutely normal. Many professional players who are long-term winners even had streaks of losing 16 buy-ins. Most poker players have encountered scenarios like this: within 1000 hands dealt you flop an underset, lose two coin flips, miss an open ended flush draw on the flop, and on top of this, your AA gets crushed by a KK in a preflop all-in. You look at your winnings, and feel terrible because after multitabling for 1-2 hours and making the right decisions, you end up with 5 buy-ins loss. As you climb the ladder to higher limits, the achievable win rate shrinks which increases the probability of such things happening. These negative streaks sometimes happens any time, you need to be ready for them and act appropriately. If you lose some buy-ins take your loss and move back again to a smaller stake table before you actually hurt your whole bankroll.
Since we are discussing a business, you have to simply take three considerations very seriously:
1. the more hands you play, the smaller the role of variance will be
2. you have to have the proper bankroll to reduce the chance of bankruptcy
3. you have to have the proper bankroll in order that in case of negative variance it won't influence the way you play (being on tilt)
In the next part we will discuss the first investments you ought to make apart from your inventory (bankroll) to be able to gain competitive advantage.
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