“My bankroll is the amount of money I would spend or lose before I got a job. It is calculated by adding my net worth to whatever I can borrow.” -Nutsinho’s signature on flopturnriver.com

Most good players you ask about bankroll management say that you should have 50 or even 100 buy ins for the regular stakes you are playing. The most risky will say at least 20 buy ins. You probably use similar bankroll management. Personally, I tend to only play in games where I have 40-50 buy ins. But I’m beginning to think that I am far too conservative at bankroll management than I should be.

I had deep contemplation about this recently when freaking out on a downswing. I contemplated stopping playing games and players at high stakes, and taking action from others at higher stakes I that I thought were good investments because of my semi dwindling bankroll. But I couldn’t justify it, even though this is common downswing advice.

The crux of the argument was my bankroll was much higher than the amount of money in my account. The idea of going “bust” with then money you can back yourself with is not as bad as it seems. Any player with long term success will be able to get staked fairly easily. That option is likely to be open even with a few stakes that go bad. Even as stakes become harder to find at the stakes you’d like to play, you’ll undoubtedly be able to get staked at lower buy in levels.

This is not to say be stupid and play in games that you are a loser in. But if you see a fish at a 5600 SNG and you only have 50k to your name, you may want to consider taking that shot all by yourself. Because what is really the worst that can happen? You lose your roll, you get staked, and your winrate doesn’t really even take a hit.

The counter argument to this is that using risky bankroll management can cause high levels of emotional stress in your life and will help you play your A game more. That is true, but I don’t look at the mental side of the game as something unimprovable. With coaching from Jared Tendler and my own work with myself I have become vastly better at playing my A game more of the time and my C, D, and F game less of the time. Conservative bankroll management will never challenge your ability to handle large swings, and therefore you will never be able to play or buy action in good games that may be risky, yet good investments. Unless you get rich enough.

If you are 50 years old and trying to get enough money to retire, disregard everything I said. But if you’re like most online poker players, you are undoubtedly around 21 years old give or take a couple years. Take some risks, don’t settle for mediocrity.

So about a week ago I made a post theorizing about why cash game players seem to suck at hu sngs. I was inspired to write this after playing a few games with David Benefield and saw that he wasn’t as good as one would have expected. I was hoping I’d get some more action from him, and I did for over an hour a few nights ago.

Well about 50 games later, here are my results:

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(Keep in mind Danny always has half of me when I play 5ks and I have lost some money buying some of Danny’s Berdnsen action)

Now I was running ridiculously hot against him, all of my big hands held and we definitely got into a bunch of cooler situations with me on the good side of it. However, I do think I played better than him and I hope he gives me more action. Here are some hands from our sessions:
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I’m not going to sugar coat it (not that I need to for anyone who has seen my sharkscope graph), December has been a very bad and frustrating month for me. The bad is that I have lost a lot of money. My ROI at 2250 turbos is -17.5% since the beginning of December. I believe I have went 0-6 or 0-7 in 5600′s. The frustrating is that I’m actually up a lot if you go by buy ins, and feel that I’m playing the best I ever have played at SNGs.  Objectively, the competition I have been playing is obviously tougher at the higher stakes, but nonetheless I don’t play in games I don’t feel like I have a greater than 0% ROI playing.

Most of the games have been vs a player named Berndsen12. He is a very good player, and I have been playing him mostly to make the 180k vpps I needed to make in December a lot easier, which it has. Although he is a very good player, I believe that I am a very good player who has a small edge on him. Despite this, the results have said otherwise. This entire month I don’t recall more than one session out of the more than 10 sessions we played where I was up on him.

I had a mini meltdown one morning after losing to him for the third straight day. I called my life coach brother Aaron and Max up for some consoling. Downswings can be really tough, especially when they are the consistent losing type of ones. You forget what its like to win, and it becomes hard to believe your objective opinion that you are a winner. But after talking to my brothers I got a lot more positive, realized that I’ve been getting unlucky and need to stay in my right mind to turn that luck around.

Consequently, I have done very well in the past few days. I have dabbled into the short stack cash games I’m going to try on a more regular basis next year with some great success. Yesterday I had the best day buy in wise I’ve ever had playing SNGs. I try not to subject myself to the fallacy that everytime I run well I have played well, but running well has made it easier to see the very goods and the some bad aspects of my play.

While downswinging, I could not wait for next year to come so I could play much less SNGs. But now I’m excited to finish the year strong. I am planning not to go for SNE next year, but it seems like it is something that may happen anyways. If my main games are SNGs and 6 max cash, I should rack up VPPs non stop. But I’m not going to pressure myself to get to one million. I want to give myself to option to play in other, non VPP accruing games if I feel like they are the best for me to play.

This morning I’m grinding superturbos when Danny aims me.

“David Benefield is sitting at 5ks”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah I’m in the middle of a few sngs right now but you should play him.”

There really wasn’t anything to consider, 5ks are a little bit of a BR stretch for me but I knew even a high caliber player like Benefield (aka Raptor) was going to probably suck at hu sngs. I sat down and started playing. Then he sat at another open 5k so I decided to two table. Then he sat at another open 5k and I tried to sit but Iftarii took it. Altogether he was playing 8 sngs at once! Total insanity.

Now, I only played 4 sngs with him before he left (I ended up 3-1), and he was 8 tabling, which means a) I didn’t really have enough info to have that great of an assessment of his game and b) I don’t think anyone can win at 5k sngs playing 4 different opponents over 8 tables. But I can almost guarantee that if he continues to play these he’s going to get owned. And the same really goes for many high caliber hu cash players. If you look at sharkscope you’ll see that the ones who try almost always fail. I came from cash and it basically took me a year to really be a winner (in my defense I did practice terrible game selection, just playing everyone in the lobby and not waiting for fish).

So why is this? Even having a cash background I have a hard time figuring it out, but I do have some theories:

1) The theoretically optimal strategy of deep cash game play and shallow hu sng is totally different. To make it worse for cash players, optimal hu sng play looks retarded to them. Because of this, they’re unwilling to be open minded about correct strategy and struggle. Even when playing the very best players, they assume that what the best players are doing can not be right.

2) Cash players don’t understand game theory very well. HU sngs (in my opinion) are a very theoretical game. In cash, you can overcome a lot of theory flaws by raw poker. Now I’m not saying all cash players are bad at this I’m just guessing hu sng players are better. However, I’ll admit that it’s possible point 1 is the reason it seems that way.

3) They think all they need to do is learn the 20bb and under preflop math and they’ll win. Although preflop math against a competent player is important, I think cash players assume that it’s all they need to figure out. In reality, they need to figure out 60bb-30bb stack play and postflop play much much more.

Anyone else have any theories?

I’ve been so busy of recent I haven’t even thought about the blog so sorry for the lack of updates. Max and I were in heavy negotiations for a triplex here in Iowa, and we managed to get a great deal. It marks the beginning of a company we just created: Steinberg and Steinberg Real Estate. Basically our plan is to buy real estate to rent out and sit on it. I’ll keep you guys updated on how the business is going. The triplex we just bought was 73k and brings in 1200 a month.

I have 140k vpps to go for SNE. This is probably pretty daunting for most players but it isn’t actually that difficult for me to achieve. Even though this morning I made 8.5k vpps in 2 hours, I make about 2k vpps per hour playing HU Sngs normally. So basically it’s going to be 5 hours a day for 14 days. I do more than that when I’m not traveling so it’s not really a big deal. I’m 100% confident I am going to make it.

In other news, I’m considering what exactly my plan is for poker next year. I am planning to go to Las Vegas in the spring to give high stakes live poker a shot. I think my poker strengths are very well suited to live, but the biggest reason I’m going is for the experience. Seems like a pretty fun thing to do, can’t imagine how pumped I will feel when I bring home a shitload of cash (Not looking forward to how crappy I’ll feel when I don’t).

But that is only going to be a month of the year. A few days ago I was certainly done with Hu Sngs. I did not want to play them anymore because I didn’t think they were going to give me the most earnings. I think the shallow stacked and cap games on PS and FT could be my biggest profit potential. When January comes I am definitely going to give those games a shot and see how I fare over a big sample. But now I’m not so cold on HU Sngs. I think with rakeback I broke even on them this year. But as crazy as it sounds after 2 years of these things I think I have finally gotten to the point where they are going to be really profitable for me. Even if my ROI is just 2%, I earn so much rakeback 6 tabling it becomes a significant winrate. I’m excited next year to see if I can really start seeing results from all the work I’ve put in on them.

Wish me luck.