Growing My Live Bankroll

I've said many times in this blog that to play MTTs (multi-table tournaments) I should have a bankroll of at least 100 buy-ins whenever I enter a tournament.

That wasn't hard when I was playing $1 online tournaments on PokerStars.  I put $50 on the site, which didn't give me 100 buy-ins, but it gave me something to work with, and eventually I started growing my bankroll and working my way up.

I would occasionally play a live tournament with a buy-in between $30 and $60.  I didn't have the bankroll for that, but it didn't really matter.  I was just playing live once every few months, and I would do it when a tournament was available and I had the money to do it.

Now I'm taking live poker more seriously, and I try to play once a week at my local charity poker room.  I started playing the cheapest tournaments available, $35 or $40, with no bankroll.  I got some small cashes and was about breaking even, but I quickly realized that I was in effect starting with a bankroll of one buy-in (what I paid to enter my first live tournament at the Big Game Room) and it was going to take forever to build a $4,000 bankroll to play comfortably at that level, let alone move up to higher levels (the largest buy-in tournament at the Big Game Room is $200.)

I get a stipend for living with my mother-in-law an average of  3 or 4 days a week.  She is 91 years old and has Alzheimer's, and she can not live by herself.  I'm saving a lot of that stipend and deciding what to do with it, and eventually a large portion will go toward poker.

I'm investing a little of that money in growing my live bankroll.  Every time I'm about to enter a $40 tournament, I add $60 to my poker bankroll.  When I cash, my bankroll is up $20 plus whatever I win.  When I don't cash, I've still added $20 to my bankroll.

This month I will be playing four live tournaments:  Wednesday the 10th, 17th and 24th and Saturday the 29th.

My current live bankroll is $190.  I have a very long way to go.