My Bankroll Problem

There are two main things to know about my poker bankrolls (live and online):

1.  My goal is to have at least 100 buy-ins for every tournament that I play.

2.  I started my bankrolls from nothing.

The idea was to build both my live and online bankrolls up to 100 buy-ins, then build them further so that I could move up to the next level.  I'm at 68 buy-ins for the highest online tournaments that I'm playing.  I'm down to 4 buy-ins for live tournaments.

An astute reader of this blog is thinking, "Wait a minute Clif, you said you should drop down a level before your bankroll gets small, then build it back up."  Yes, I should have done that, but I can't.  There are no lower levels.

There are two places that I know of where I can play live tournaments, one close to my home and one in the nearby city of Grand Rapids.  The tournament line-ups are nearly identical, in fact, they are identical on Friday and Saturday, offering one $50 tournament each of those two nights.

I am a caregiver, on alternate weeks, on duty either Sunday through Wednesday, or Sunday through Thursday.  I allow myself a day to catch up on my sleep before playing live, so the only nights that I can play live tournaments are some Fridays and most Saturdays.  That's it.  I play one of those $50 tournaments, or I don't play that week.  The $20-$40 tournaments only run on days that I can't play.

I always tell my wife that there is usually more than one solution to a problem, and that is true in this case.  Some of those solutions are:

1.  Play live less often.  My wife and I get a weekly stipend for helping with my mother-in-law, and I have been using 20% of that money to prop up my live bankroll, 20% for my poker expense account, and 10% for adding to my online bankroll. If I keep doing that and play only once every other week, that money can keep my bankroll propped up as long as my losing streak continues.

2.  I can change those distribution percentages.  I don't have any wiggle room with the expense account, because I have to buy a new printer.  But I could stop adding to the online bankroll for a while and bump the live bankroll distribution up to 30%.

3.  I can modify my playing style for a while.  I hate to do it, but there have been times when I (correctly) played to win the tournament when I could have easily coasted and won a few buy-ins, instead of going for the $1,000 first prize (20 buy-ins).  If I get in a situation where I'm vey low on chips I might consider hanging on to those chips if it gets me into the money, or if I've already cashed, I might be satified to coast one place higher before I'm out of chips.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I hate all of those options.  #1 is bad, because most months I am in fact able to play only three times in a month because of family or other obligations.  Johnathan Little says that it takes 100 live tournaments to be good at it, which is really scary when I'm playing 3 times a month.

#2 is bad, because I already have 68 online buy-ins on Americas Cardroom or in cash, and I would love to push forward and get that up to 100, then start building for the next level.  I'm doing fairly well in those tournaments, and I expect to get up to 100 buy-ins before too long.  I don't really want to slow that process.

#3 is bad, because tournament poker sucess is about a few big cashes, not a lot of small ones.  Most of the money is at the final table, and most of the final table money goes to the top three places.  #3 might save my bankroll and let me hang on until things turn aournd, but it will considerably lengthen the time it takes to get to 100 buy-ins.

Unless I get a decent live cash soon, it will probably be some combination of those bad options.  I'm only going to play in Grand Rapids once this month, which will free up a little money and time for me to do other poker-related things and try to finally get this thing off the ground.