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3/15/05
- Manage to Stay Ahead Of The Game.
As promised, I’m
writing this column on how to better manage your poker money
or so called “bankroll”. This piece will deal more
with managing the downside in poker, while my next offering will
talk to managing the upside.
Now, of course,
there are different ways of doing things but I’m going
to tell you what works best for me. The lessons here can be applied
whether you play Texas Holdem online or in person. This article
talks more to a real money cash game player but the
concepts are easily applied to single and multiplayer tournament play, as well.
Ok, here we go…
I have written many
times about my background in finance and many moons ago I was
reasonably successful at trading stocks and options. The single,
most valuable lesson I learned when trading was to put a proper
money management system in place.
I learned from someone
a lot older and wiser than me to put rules in place, establish
routines; instill a discipline that you can stick to on a daily
basis. Without this I never would have been successful and I’d
be like the majority of people that trade stocks or play poker,
for that matter, a consistent loser.
 
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At the end of the
day, what differentiates the minority that make money, from the
majority that lose it, is a good money management system (this
goes for most anything in life or business). Think about it,
you could lose money on 8 of 10 stock trades, cutting your loses
at 5% for each of the 8 losing trades and with the 2 winners
make enough to turn a profit, overall.
But if you let the
losers drop precipitously, without having a sell discipline in
place, it’s not going to matter what happens with your
2 winning trades. I apply these exact same principles to how
I manage my poker bankroll. Let’s take a closer look at
what I’m talking about…
First, I hear people
complain all the time about how they were ‘up big’
and gave it all back and then some. Secondly, I see it happen
almost every time I play cards. Every time I play, I see players
losing and going to get more money, more money, more money…
the point is this, you can be the best card player in the world
but if you manage your money poorly then your results will always
be below average.
Texas Holdem is
a tough game. The game delivers bad beats to all of us and can
be very cruel and unrelenting at times, there’s nothing
that you can do about that. You can know the game odds cold or know your
opponents tendencies to a tee; none of this matters
sometimes. The only thing you can control is your emotions, how
you react to these situations and the amount of money you put
in front of you .
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How many times have
we all seen a player, whose a 3 to 1 favorite in a hand, take
a bad beat, get pissed off, get another $500 and make poor decisions
the rest of the night and inevitably give back the $500 and then
some…I have seen friends that are good players, go on
TILT, temporarily lose their minds and give away their entire
bankroll in one night. Not me and hopefully not you and here’s
why…
Although, these
days I win more then I lose on a time over time basis, the difference
is when I lose I cut myself off when I’m down $500 and
call it a night. Now $500 is an arbitrary number depending on
your bankroll, it could be $10 or $100,000 but the key is it
should be a reasonably small percentage of your overall bankroll.
On the flipside,
although I may be losing as many times as I’m winning,
my upside nights are far superior to the $500 losing nights.
Typically, I’ll make somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500-$3000
on winning nights. I become a much more dangerous player when
I have more chips and if your skill level is above average this
should help to pad your profits, like it does me.
Sure there are going
to be periods where you may have poor luck for what seems like
an ungodly amount of time but if you limit your downside risk
and protect your bankroll, it’s bound to turn around for
you. Just don’t get caught in the emotion of it all and
keep going back to the bank when things are not going your way.
When I see that
kind of player, I start licking my chops because I know he’s
not thinking clearly and has now become a target. Much like a
wounded gazelle in the Serengeti, there isn’t much hope
for him!
Instill a discipline,
limit your downside, grow your bankroll and then you’ll
have more flexibility with setting your parameters in the future.
The next Clove’s Column
will deal with better managing those winning nights…
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