Hi all. Haven't posted in quite a while ... been playing. But thought I'd post a followup to my 'ground breaking' bankroll strategy. (ok, maybe just novel, but interesting none the less)

As some of you may recall, I wrote about a new idea for NL bankrolls in my post "" last fall. Since then, I've played about 40k hands and figured it was time to follow up. Here are my observations.

Emotions: I have almost no emotional conection to my gambling money any longer. With only a 4 buy-in threshold before you move down, you rapidly start playing for smaller stakes when you are losing. The dollar amounts quickly become 'small' in comparison to what you have recent experience with, and the fear factor never creeps in. My biggest losing streak was about $1,000. I wondered why I was playing so badly, but never once thought about quitting because I couldn't lose so much money.

Withdrawals: At times, I'm running up through the levels so fast (the quickest is like 700 hands or so) that I need a way to take money off the table. I settled on a 10k hand hard limit. Every 10k hands, I withdraw half the money I'm playing with. What this realistically means ... you have to beat a level for at least 4 PTBB / 100 to stay 'even'. If you aren't meeting this minimum level, you withdrawals will force you to play lower. If you are doing better than this (a reasonable threshold), you will move up. The more you crush the current game, the sooner you move up.

Am I playing good lately: With the quick movement up and down through levels, you are quickly playing in easier games when your skills may not be at their peak. You are also rapidly playing higher when you 'A Game' is working.

I've had a considerable amount of success, both skill wise and emotionally, with this new bankroll concept.

Anyone else tried playing so 'short rolled'? Comments?
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My entire NL career has been "short rolled" and I've finally wised up that it's just DUMB. I would regularly only have 600 for 4-tabling $100 and just take my winnings out every 1k that I made. It kept me in rent, food, and fun money well enough...and if I needed to reload (which only happened once or twice I believe) I had the funds to do it. But, I was still playing short-rolled and not thinking seriously about my situation.

I've finally wised up and made a plan for moving up the limits (before I was sitting at $100 and some forays into $200 and happy to just stay at those levels and play for living expenses). So, I started with 1100 and did some whoring which brought up my roll to 2200 (martins, staffpoker, titan, and party did all of that). Then I dropped down to the $50 tables to get back into the groove (I took a month or so off over xmas cuz I was having a TERRIBLE run beforehand). My roll is now at 2900 making 600 just this past week. That's nearly 60 buy-ins for the 50 level, and I'm playing better than ever...NO pressure of losing (a -300 day doesn't mean a thing anymore...as long as I was playing well). I used to have to avoid the big variance situations because I just couldn't afford to lose with a short-roll...now I can gamble it up squeezing more EV out of the game since variance doesn't matter anymore. So, to the plan!

I still need income from poker...about 1k a month is nice. But, I want to be able to reliably move up the limits over the next year...I want to be at 5/10 within 2 years. So, to have a compromise, once I hit 3k, at the end of every month, I'll take out half of my profit for that month...the other half obviously stays in the roll. I think that I want a 40x roll for any given level, and I'll take shots at the next level when I get to 50x. So, I'll take my shot at $200 when I have 5k behind me. Since I have >50 buyins at the $50 level, it's time for me to move back up to $100, and I made that move yesterday.

I really love having a big roll under me to play poker as my primary source of income, and have realized how stupid I was in the past. Not only was I giving up tonnes of EV from having to avoid variance at all costs, but I completely stunted my growth as a poker player by not committing a certain % of profit back into poker..I wasn't investing in myself as I should've been.

Big bankroll = peace of mind

Why keep moving up and down levels? If you're a good player you lose money moving down just because you had one of the normal swings? Just like at a table you want to have the biggest stack so you can stack anyone when you get a monster, you want a big roll so you can play at your most profitable level... My oppinion.