The bankroll

john | July 24, 2023, 3:09 a.m. Poker

Been watching some of these high stakes poker matches.  There impressive to say the least.  Not because of my opinion of the play of the players, but of the fact that for them to be playing those stakes.  They must have a bankroll.

Its been so long since I had played more than random one offs where I needed to win a tournament or two to do something.  But when I finally decided to start dabbling again, I had to be reminded of poker 101.

Thankfully, I started small, as with most my endeavors.  I use to do this in high school and college, so it's not like I was unfamiliar with online grinding.  But holy hell was I rusty.

Started out nice, playing micro stakes with my $50, and as I was washing off some of the rust, I final tabled a small tournament, and cashed in a few random ones.  Then I got cocky.  I was up to about $400, and I decided to do something dumb, I played in stakes I was not suited for. 

Went to zero real quick.  So I had to rebuy.  That was painful in itself since it took a decent amount to build the roll.  But I couldn't swallow my pride.  So I tried playing in stakes outside my roll.  Zeroed again.

Zero is an interesting number.  If I remember correctly the guy who showed the father of algebra a proof for zero, was killed by him because he could not believe it, to then later admit that zero did exist. 

Digression aside, I re-bought a few more times over the next few weeks.  Till it finally hit me, what I did to get to the $400, and what I had done my entire life, I had not done now.  I was playing out of bankroll.  Fixed that issue, and fixed some holes in my game that only showed because of how many hand I played.  At least it was a slow burn down.  Had to do some hard thinking either way, and confront some zeros.  So finally, back to bankrolling correctly and doubt I'll ever play outside of them again.  That was a hard lesson to learn.