Building a Poker Bankroll From Scratch

   Since the poker boom of 2003, I have developed a strong love for the game. I love everything about it. The numbers and statistics, the psychology, meeting people from all walks of life, the rush of winning a big hand, or cashing in a tournament, the fact that the house has no say in who wins or loses, the freedom afforded to professional players, and even the disguising and deception. The high-stakes players on TV always seemed larger than life. They would play stakes that just seemed astronomical to me. The blind levels were more than a year’s salary. The pot sizes were more than what most people retire on. I remember thinking to myself, “how the hell can they afford to play for those kinds of dollar amounts?” They would bet tens of thousands of dollars on a bluff without even batting an eyelash. It was incomprehensible. It wasn’t long before I discovered online poker, and it all started to make sense.

   Shortly after poker’s explosion in popularity, many online sites began popping up. It allowed players that didn’t have a lot of money (or in some cases, ANY money) the opportunity to be able to play in their pajamas without having to leave their homes, and with little or no investment. Many of these sites would run free tournaments. At Full Tilt Poker, for instance, the tournaments would run every six hours or so and would max out at 2,700 players paying out the top 27 spots. If you were lucky enough to cash, you might make $2, and if you made the final table (top 9), you might get anywhere between $3 and $15 depending on what place you finished. You could then take that money and play low-stakes tourneys and cash games in order to start building up a small bankroll. Many players who didn’t have the patience for that kind of grind would simply deposit small amounts of money into the site hoping to parle it into something bigger.

   The first site I played on was called Poker Room. I knew nothing about bankroll management, and knew very little about how to play. As a result, I quickly lost the $600 I had put into it. I was playing tournaments for $20 or more, and buying into cash games for $50 or more. I had no clue what I was doing, so I went out and purchased some books to hone my skills. The first book I picked up was called “Ace on the River” by Barry Greenstein. I couldn’t have made a better choice. Not only did it teach me a little about how to play, but it taught me how to manage a bankroll as well. I had no idea how important bankroll management was until I read that book. That’s when I realized how these high-stakes players were able to do it. It was poker’s best kept secret. Many books taught you how to actually play the games (“Super System” by the great Doyle Brunson comes to mind), but few mentioned bankroll management.

   Basically, the rule of thumb was: no more than 2% of your bankroll should be used for tournaments, and no more than 5% for cash games. Shortly after my Poker Room debacle, I started playing on Full Tilt Poker. My initial investment into the site was $40. In two years’ time, I had made it into over $1,300. I had to replenish it once or twice along the way due to some unwise violations of the 2%/5% rule, but I pretty much stuck to the plan. My big score came in March 2011, less than one month before the government shut them down. It was for $650. I did it by playing single-table tournaments called Sit N’ Go’s. Full Tilt had a version of these that were called STEP tournaments. Step 1 was $1 to enter and there were 9 players. If you finished 4^th-9^th, you got nothing. If you finished in the top 3, instead of receiving cash, you received a buy-in to Step 2 which was $3. The same basic rules applied. 1^st and 2^nd got Step 3 tickets worth $10. 3^rd and 4^th place got their money back in the form of a Step 2 ticket, and 5^th place received a Step 1 ticket. There were seven steps in all. Step 4 was worth $26, Step 5 was worth $75, Step 6 was $200, and Step 7 was $500. I might be wrong on the exact amounts, but you get the picture. Basically, you didn’t have to get 1^st place every time in order to move up. I would play tons of these. My bankroll at the time was around $400, so I would buy in at Step 2 and work my way up from there. $3 was a relatively small dollar amount as far as my bankroll was concerned. At one point I had 10 Step 4 tickets, and a few Step 5 tickets. The higher up you got, the more difficult it was to advance because the competition was fierce at those levels. So one day I decided to use one of my Step 5 tickets to enter a $75 tournament. The tournament was the main event of the very popular Mini FTOPS which stood for Full Tilt Online Poker Series. The tourney was huge. One person was allowed to buy in up to four times, and as a result, it drew over 45,000 entries. I only used one ticket and I ended up finishing in 645^th place which paid out a little over $650. My bankroll had gone from $400 to over $1,000 in one day, and I didn’t even have to put any actual money at risk. The ticket had really only cost me $3. One month later, the government forced the shutdown of all the major online poker sites, and my run was over.

   Despite my initial disappointment, I had a lot to be thankful for. I had learned how to play virtually every version of poker imaginable, I had built up my confidence, and most importantly, I had learned how to build and manage a bankroll. Over the past five years or so I have not played much other than a couple of small home games, one trip to Atlantic City that was unsuccessful, and a couple of local tournaments with no cashes. The itch to play has never really left me, and although I have no bankroll currently, I know it can be built back up, even though playing online is no longer an option. I just have two rules that I must follow at all times.

   First, any money I win, I save. Whether it’s a scratch ticket someone gave me for Christmas that I win $2 on (I NEVER buy scratch tickets. EVER.), or a cash in a home game, or a win in a March Madness or Super Bowl pool, or a win in fantasy sports, I save it. Just this week I hosted a small poker game at my house and won $6. So, my current bankroll is $6. (Side note: I will be updating my progress on this blog so stay tuned!)

   Second, any time I buy into anything for $100 or less, I use my own hard-earned money, not my bankroll. So, for instance, if the buy-in to a tournament or a cash game is 50, it comes out of my paycheck, or my savings, etc. I never use my bankroll to buy in to a game I can afford myself. This way it never goes down. When you have a small bankroll (and I’ve had many), it’s not worth risking until it gets to a point where it can work for itself. The way I’m treating it is as soon as I get to $100 I will open a savings account and keep it in there. When it reaches $1,000 it goes into a CD so it can earn a small amount of interest. When it gets to $6,000 (hopefully before I’m of “retirement age”) it starts getting interesting. $6,000 is the minimum number of buy-ins required to play tournaments of $120 or less (remember the 2%/5% rule?). $120 is too much for me to justify pulling money out of my savings account, or my paycheck, so the bankroll now becomes my main source for tournaments. I’m not comfortable putting more than $100 on any poker game in which I have to use my personal funds to cover the buy in. Your comfort zone might be different depending on your financial situation, but that’s just my own preference. When the bankroll reaches $10,000, I can start using it to buy in to cash games of $500 or less. I prefer to play Pot-Limit Omaha for cash rather than No-Limit Hold ‘Em, but that’s just me. If the buy-in to a game is $100 or less, I will continue to use my own money as always. I usually start with $40 at my home game, and with a buy-in that small, it isn’t necessary to use the bankroll, but any game where the buy-in is over $100 comes out of it as long as the 2%/5% rule applies.

   I believe there are two kinds of money. Money you earn, and money you win. Earned money comes from the work you do. It’s your weekly paycheck, or your tips, or what you made from mowing someone’s lawn, or maybe even money you received as a gift. You use it to pay your bills, or to go on vacation, or to buy Christmas presents, or to go grocery shopping, or to buy clothes, etc. It can also be used to make more money by investing it. Some people buy stocks, some buy property, and some start businesses. Since I look at poker as an investment, I can justify using my earned money to buy into games as long as the amount isn’t so large that I feel uncomfortable playing. I have my limit set at $100 as I just mentioned, so anything $100 or less can come out of my earned money. Won money (bankroll) should only be used if the buy-in exceeds my earned money limit ($100) and the amount of the buy-in doesn’t exceed my 2%/5% rule. That’s why the $6,000 and $10,000 plateaus are so important to me. At those dollar amounts, I can start using my won money to play. Now, this is subject to change if I can earn more from working which is why I am pursuing my Master’s degree next fall. The main goal is to be able to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas someday. Until then, stay tuned to my blog to find out how things are progressing.

Boston's 11 Reunited

   This past weekend, 10 of my old high school buddies and I spent the weekend in Boston and went to a game at Fenway Park. We all had a great time, and thankfully, the city of Boston is still standing. No one was arrested or hospitalized, which in my mind, makes the whole venture an overwhelming success. It helped that the Red Sox won their game too.



Dustin Pedroia at bat

   We were part of the class of '92 (except for one of us). A couple of my friends I hadn't seen in over 20 years, and it was great to be able to catch up with all of them. It's funny how we all may look a bit older, but in many ways, we haven't really changed that much. So, being the numbers guy that I am, I felt compelled to compile some interesting staistics:

1. Marriage- 2 of us are not married. I am one of them. 1 divorced and re-married the same person.

2. Kids- Of the 11 of us, only one doesn't have kids. He also happened to be the valedictorian of our graduating class, so I guess that makes sense. One of us has five (yes that's the number 5) kids. The other 9 of us have a range of 1-3. The oldest of all our kids is 14, and the youngest is a couple of months. I wasn't able to compile enough information to make an accurate boy/girl ratio though.

3. Jobs- A perfect 100%. All of us are employed.

4. State of Residence- Florida (1), Virginia (1), Minnesota (1), Connecticut (1), New York (1), Massachusetts (6).

5. Smokers- 1 of us, and he's the one with 5 kids. Go figure.

6. Weight- I don't think any of us are at our ideal body weight, but I'd say 3 of us are hovering at or below the Mendoza Line.

7. Hair Loss- 5 of us could stand to join the Hair Club for Men. Thankfully, yours truly is not one of them (yet).

8. Beer Lovers- After Friday night, I think I can safely say that we are 100% in this category as well.

   The real highlight of the trip (other than running through the streets yelling "Free Tom Brady!"), was the Red Sox game. They won 6-3, but not before adding in some of that good old fashioned Red Sox drama they are so famous for. With a 6-3 lead in the 8th inning, Matt Barnes came in and walked the bases loaded with no outs. Enter Brad Ziegler. Ziegler not only got the Sox out of the jam, he struck out the side in 10 pitches, all of them went for strikes. The crowd went crazy, and the Red Sox picked up a very important win to go one game back of the division-leading Orioles.

   Aside from a couple of travel delays getting into Boston, the trip for me was an absolute blast. There are already mumblings of another get-together sometime next year, with a couple of possible additions to our already healthy sized entourage. The goal would be to make this an annual event, and given how easy it was to get everyone together for this one, I'm guessing it won't be another 24 years before we are together again. Until then...

Catching Up

Hello readers! Long time, no blog. I thought after a 3 year, 1 month hiatus, it was time to fill you in on how life has been going. This will probably have to be spread out across a number of posts, but you got to start somewhere so here goes.

For starters, I'm a dad now. For those of you who know me personally, this will not come as much of a shock to you. For those of you that don't, or haven't seen or talked to me in a long time, SURPRISE! She just turned 2 years old on July 8th, and her name is Julia (Juli for short). She is the center of my universe and makes me laugh on a daily basis. Needless to say, I am all caught up on my Sesame Street, Thomas the Train, Sid the Science Kid, and Wild Kratts episodes. Thankfully, she isn't too fond of Barney the purple dinosaur. Phew! There is so much to write about regarding Juli, but I will save that for future posts. Anyway, back to business.

I went back to school in January of 2014 and completed my bachelor's degree in Business Management from Westfield State University this past May. It was a tough grind for those 2 1/2 years (baby, new house, 2 jobs, one of them new), but I got through it, and did it entirely online. Not to make excuses, but school was a big reason why I have been failing at my blogging duties these past few years. I have plans to begin my MBA at MCLA in September of next year, and just recently was promoted to a back office position at the bank I've been working at since June of 2014. Given the sensitivity of the information I am privy to, I won't be discussing my job very much, if at all.

As I touched upon in the above paragraph, Jac and I bought a house in Richmond, MA back in November of 2014. It's pretty cool being a homeowner, and I don't miss apartment life at all. It's very private, down the road from my mom, and a 5 minute walk to the beach and boat launch. We kayak as much as we can, and Juli absolutely loves going down to the small private beach to play in the water. We are loving the pond life.

I haven't been keeping up too much on what's been going on in the sports world. We don't have real cable so ESPN basically doesn't exist in my world. Plus, SportsCenter has been reduced to filling viewers in on what athletes and coaches are tweeting about, and is more entertainment news than it is actual sports news. Like, I really don't care what Kevin Durant had for breakfast this morning, or how Dwyane Wade likes to spend the off-season. I want numbers, and stats, and highlights! That's sports! Save all the other crap for the morning talk shows and senseless radio banter. My fantasy baseball teams are holding on by a thread this year, mostly because I am not up to date on who's hot and who's not, but I shouldn't complain. In one of my leagues, I've won the championship 4 of the past 5 years. Too bad that one isn't for money. Oh well, bragging rights still count for something don't they? At least football is right around the corner, and that I can actually watch on TV. Plus, I'm in a pick 'em league where you can actually win some real money. I came close the past two seasons, but I kept getting screwed right at the end. This is the year I break through so watch out! By the way, congrats to the city of Cleveland! You finally get to hang your hats on LeBron's golden coat rack! Maybe the Indians will follow suit, and the Browns...ok let's not get carried away. Guess this means the Cubs will win the World Series this year if current trends are any indication.

And now, on to poker. Ah, poker. Feels like just yesterday that the government pulled the plug on all of us online players because we were getting royally screwed over by the greedy, high-up executives that were using stacks of $100 bills as kindling to fuel the fires in their giant fireplaces. It only took three years, but I did get my money back from Full Tilt, or the government, or whoever was getting interest on it. The WSOP just wrapped up for the summer, and as usual, the November 9 is full of names I have never even heard of. There were a few highlights to mention however. We should start with what I consider to be this year's most impressive accomplishment which was Brian Rast's second Poker Player's Championship victory. The 34-year old poker pro put up the $50,000 buy-in, and bested a field of 90 of the world's best players to take down $1,296,097. This is especially impressive given the fact that when he finally got heads-up with Justin Bonomo, he was facing a 4-1 chip disadvantage.

Another one of the summer's big stories involved well-known poker pro Jason Mercier. Mercier began his incredible run with a win in the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Championship earning his 4th bracelet. Just an hour later, he entered the $10,000 Razz Championship where he finished in 2nd place. As if that wasn't enough, his next event, the $10,000 HORSE Championship, was another win, and Mercier's 3rd consecutive final table, and 5th WSOP bracelet. In all, Mercier cashed 10 times at this year's World Series, and now finds himself in a rather exclusive group of poker players with 5 or more bracelets. Oh yeah, and he also proposed to his girlfriend Natasha Barbour immediately following her 3rd place finish in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold-Em event. Hell of a summer for Jason!

Other highlights of this year's WSOP include kindergarten teacher Lisa Meredith's 3rd place finish in the $1,500 Millionairre Maker. She took down $500,000 for her effort, and it was her first ever WSOP event! Nicely done!

Benny Glaser also made news after he became the player ever to win bracelets in back-to-back Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better events in the same WSOP. He now has 3 career WSOP bracelets.

So what about me, you ask? Have I been grinding out small scores in nearby home games and local charity tournaments, or travelling back and forth to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun playing various tourneys and cash games? Have I been crushing poorly playing amateurs and taking their lunch money while they go out to the parking lot to cry in their cars and try to explain to their significant others why they came home broke? Am I preparing to head west for the bright lights of Las Vegas with $30,000 in my pocket like Matt Damon at the end of the movie Rounders? Sadly, no. No personal poker highlights to speak of these days. No bankroll, no big games, and no time. Hopefully all that will change in the near future, and you will all be the first to know when it does. Until then...