Buy-In's vs. Bankroll.

[TomtheBomb]

Often I contemplate how to buy in for sng's.


With a varity of accounts, I try to stay into +EV where ever I go.

But what percentage should I use for buy-in tournaments with no real +EV?

What I like to do is start small, and run 2.

Then I will usually double my buy-in on the next set, with a bigger bankroll.

With my accounts, I usually stay at the $3 or lower on accounts under $100.

I try to use the double down bet theory with sng buy-ins.

For Instance playing a Double or Nothing.

Starting at the $2 if you loose, winning a $5 on the next shot makes you even.
If you loose the $5, Play a $10 to even up, if you loose on the $10 play a $25, if you're bankroll is at $200.

All you have to do is win a top 50% once on the first 4 tournaments you play to go up and at worse if you can win one of the late ones go even.

I will continue to play a level when I win to try to accumulate profits, but doubling the screens.

Win a $2, load 2 $2 tournaments.

This is one of the SNG strategies when making buy-ins.

[LombardiStix]

That is really interesting Tom. So you gotta make top half of the table on a double or nothing tourney... I like it. It is very similar to what I used to do on bodog. Only sucks if you hit a TERRIBLE run with the doubling up of buyin's and all. On how many sites have you successfully used this strategy?

Do you personally like the double or nothing games? I know they seem to be working for you, but do you really like playing an incomplete game? I guess its just like a ticket game. Idk... are you enjoying poker as much? just wondering

Stix

[TomtheBomb]

I'm a grinder.....do I like playing the lower levels...not as much, but what it does for me is allow me to basically work up for little risk.

Understand I work a dead-end graveyard job.....I am trying to really establish a bankroll.

Double or Nothings are basically my avenue for initial profit.


I have been able to use the Double Down, on Double or Nothings....at Cake and Pokerstars.

I don't just play DON's.....its just a good way to risk minimal to profit yourself a little to make a buy-in or two...with out risking your bankroll..

When you win 4 double or nothings in a row....and a sng...your account booms...and you are not recovering and rebuilding. Just stacking.

[TomtheBomb]

When my accounts go up I enjoy poker.

I play about 30-40 hours, and study about 10.

You could say I enjoy poker.

[gnk2727]

We were chatting about this a bit this morning. Looks like you're looking for suggestions and answers. Thats a good thing. Nothing better than being a student to find out what you dont know or were incorrectly informed about. Now with that being said:

I'm gonna make some examples of SNG buyins and bankrolls.

$1 Buyin + Rake = $25 Bankroll
$2 Buyin + Rake = $50 Bankroll
$3 Buyin + Rake = $75 Bankroll
$5 Buyin + Rake = $125 Bankroll
$6 Buyin + Rake = $150 Bankroll
$10 Buyin + Rake = $250 Bankroll

That gives you around 20-25 buyins of each game. That should be more than enough to sustain losing streaks and bad beats. You should be ITM at least 40% of the time, if you cant do that then you should move down in limits.

I know when we chatted earlier we talked about SNG's, Tourney's & Ring Games. The reason why I said to stay at the $5 games even though you have much, much more of a bankroll is to use the $10 games to reward yourself with when you're playing well and that you have too much variance in your SNG game at the moment. Plus it allows you to allocate some of that other cash to Ring games and MTT qualifiers.

If you still think I'm wrong and you need to play higher limits then run 50 SNG's at the $5 level on Cake. You need to be ITM on 23 of them or 46%. 7 (1st) 6 (2nd) 8 (3rd) 2 (4th).

Even playing that well will only net you $40 in profits. Thats pretty decent too when you think about especially with rakeback earned ($6.60) thats almost $1 in profit per game.

Take your time and go thru each level rather than skipping a few. The variance can and will kill a bankroll. It has happened to me 2x now and I'm not going to ever let it happen again.........

[GypsyTea]

We were chatting about this a bit this morning. Looks like you're looking for suggestions and answers. Thats a good thing. Nothing better than being a student to find out what you dont know or were incorrectly informed about. Now with that being said:

I'm gonna make some examples of SNG buyins and bankrolls.

$1 Buyin + Rake = $25 Bankroll
$2 Buyin + Rake = $50 Bankroll
$3 Buyin + Rake = $75 Bankroll
$5 Buyin + Rake = $125 Bankroll
$6 Buyin + Rake = $150 Bankroll
$10 Buyin + Rake = $250 Bankroll

That gives you around 20-25 buyins of each game. That should be more than enough to sustain losing streaks and bad beats. You should be ITM at least 40% of the time, if you cant do that then you should move down in limits.

I know when we chatted earlier we talked about SNG's, Tourney's & Ring Games. The reason why I said to stay at the $5 games even though you have much, much more of a bankroll is to use the $10 games to reward yourself with when you're playing well and that you have too much variance in your SNG game at the moment. Plus it allows you to allocate some of that other cash to Ring games and MTT qualifiers.

If you still think I'm wrong and you need to play higher limits then run 50 SNG's at the $5 level on Cake. You need to be ITM on 23 of them or 46%. 7 (1st) 6 (2nd) 8 (3rd) 2 (4th).

Even playing that well will only net you $40 in profits. Thats pretty decent too when you think about especially with rakeback earned ($6.60) thats almost $1 in profit per game.

Take your time and go thru each level rather than skipping a few. The variance can and will kill a bankroll. It has happened to me 2x now and I'm not going to ever let it happen again.........

Hi Guys'
fantastic post GNK,

Poker is ALL about BANKROLL IMHO.

and having the right bankroll for what you are playing I get more poker out of a $1 dollar sit and go than I do from any other poker, including live play.

Gypsy

[TomtheBomb]

Well I actually won my only sng since our talk, 3rd so I'm 1/1....rough couple of last days.

[mathieu06]

thank you for all this information it's very good to perform my poker !

[Poker Orifice]

I'd suggest only using a maximum of 2-5% of your roll for any one buyin. Personally I stick to 2% max.
I'm not sure I like the idea of doubling up in buyins when you lose one, even if they are the double-or-nothings. I personally stay at one buyin level as the play tends to change as you move up in buyin amounts (generally speaking it does).

[hojediade]

That thread is really interesting for me.
I'm playing 1-table Sngs at Tilt thoses days, in a dilletant style, saying one at the time, and i would like to have some advices. First, i chose to play $5 HORSE 8 players Sngs (no turbos) which paid top 3. I'm doing well there but didn't play enough games yet to have any real useful stats. Let's say that i finished 7/9 ITM, with a profit of 3.83 per game. I stick to $5.50 BIs and my BR now reach +$230 and i will stay at that limit for next months, no matter if i have my BR growing better than i thought.
I will probably wait till it reach $500 (if ever happening) to move up at $10 tables.
So what you guys think about my strategy? Am i too conservative? i read somewhere else that a player should change move up when it has 40 to 50 times the BI, is that the way you're doing?

Here is a piece of an article i read, which might be useful to everyone:

So how can you protect against these swings of fortune? The answer is to ensure you have a big enough bankroll to withstand them. Most Pro SNG players recommend that the minimum requirement is 50 buy-ins for the level at which you play. Others suggest that a 100 buy-in SNG bankroll will effectively shield you from any thoughts / concerns about variance.

Here is what your 50 buy-in Bankroll should look like for the various levels.


$5+50 SNGS -$275
$10+1 SNGs - $550
$16+1 SNGs - $850
$20+2 SNGs - $1100
$25+2 SNGs - $1350
$30+3 SNGs - $1650
$55+5 SNGs - $3000

Another thing that bother me is that i can't find any consensus when calculating ROI percentage. Some will say that's profit (with or without fees)/BI (with or without fees, depending on versions) x100. Is that the right one or should i keep searching the right one.

Here is another piece of an article on the subject:

The common consensus is that today’s chart should look like this:


11s - 20% ROI
20s - 15% ROI
33s - 10% ROI
55s - 8% ROI
109s - 7% ROI
215s - 6% ROI

Not my level of BI, but not my % either.