High On Poker

My online bankroll keeps growing day in and day out as I slug away at the Summer Bankroll Challenge – Southern Hemisphere Edition. This challenge, like several of the challenges I had participated in in the past, has reinvigorated my game. Instead of playing for the sake of playing, I am playing with a goal in mind. I suppose the extra transparency doesn’t hurt either. When I am only person seeing my online bankroll fluctuations, its easy to de-emphasize the importance of results. When I have to compare my results with a half-dozen or more fellow bloggers, suddenly it matters a lot more to me whether I bubble or min-cash.

On that note, last night was min-cash night. I entered a slew of SNGs, mostly 9 or 18 person $16 PLO8 SNGs but one 45 person $27 NLHE SNG as well. I took 6th in the 45-person SNG for something like $67 or so, along with a fourth in an 18-person SNG (~$27, or $11 profit) and a couple of third places in the 9-person SNGs (worth $27 apiece). That’s all fairly loose. I’m certain about the 45-person results, and I remember a lot of min-cashing, but my exact recollection may be a tad off.

The result, though, is that I have now cracked $450 or so. That’s roughly a 260% increase in my bankroll thanks to the Challenge. Not too shabby.

CK, who incidentally remains one of my favorite reads, has been playing a slew of PLO8 tournaments as a part of the SBC-SHE. Unfortunately for her, she’s been focusing on lower buy-ins ($5 or less, from what I’ve seen) and she’s been suffering a lot of min-cashes that net her a fairly measly payout, even though she is consistently cashing. Those tournaments make sense for one of the sidebets of the SBC, the highest percentage finish in a tournament. Presumably, since the players are weaker at the lower stakes and more plentiful, and since PLO8 naturally attracts worse players than any given NLHE affair, these small buy-in PLO8 tournaments are good value if your goal is to go deep. Still, I couldn’t help but think that with CK’s skills, she ought to be playing higher stakes and consequently taking down bigger prizes.

I asked CK about this in her comments and she made a fair point. Her goal is to build her online bankroll without having to reload. So, bankroll management makes perfect sense. In and of itself, this is an argument that I would not and could not deny. If you accept that you will not (or don’t want to) replenish your online bankroll with outside cash, then of course you should be careful and responsible with your online roll. That has always been a hallmark of my online play until I finally stopped seeing online poker as a real avenue for my poker success. That’s right. I don’t consider online poker a real possibility for success for me. Maybe I’m wrong, and more and more, thanks to this challenge, I am reconsidering that notion; but at the time, I had come to the conclusion that I was not good enough at online poker, mostly because of the distractions and my inability to really focus.

I haven’t completely abandoned that thought. I still don’t see online poker as the way I will actually “make it” in poker. It just takes a certain set of skills, and I think my skill set favors live play. But alas, I do have a larger theory of online poker bankroll management that is worth mentioning, but hardly revolutionary.

Simply put, I don’t have an “online bankroll”. I simply have a bankroll. So, when I played the $44 tournament earlier this week with less than $200 in my online bankroll, I wasn’t really playing above my actual bankroll. My actual bankroll includes the cash I have for live play. That money might not be in my online account, but it could be if I wanted it to, so I see no reason to limit my online play to smaller stakes. I’m playing with my actual bankroll in mind, and not just my online bankroll.

All that said, that does not mean that if I bust out online, I will reload. I may reload, just so I can play certain games or kill time, but ideally, I’d rather just walk away. That’s right. Walk away from online poker. At least for a little bit. Because on some level, I still don’t see online poker as my most likely means to success. It’s just what I do to kill time.

Does this make any sense? Basically, I simply mean that I do not treat my bankroll as its own entity or even as a limiting force, since I know that more poker is always available in the real world. Because of that, I can take chances at higher buy-ins than would normally be advisable based on my online bankroll alone; but I can also bust much more easily online. That second scenario does not bother me that much, though, because I devalue online poker.

Now, lest this seem like a criticism of CK, let me just re-emphasize that CK is actually being smart about her bankroll management. I simply am putting forth the alternative view.

I should also add that this is not how I always feel about my online bankroll. I’ve played lower to avoid having to deposit funds, and I’ve played according to stringent bankroll requirements in the past. Hell, I don’t even think that my current approach is the best approach or even advisable for many of you out there. But its been working for me, especially in context of the SBC.

Until next time, make mine poker!