A common frustration we hear about is folks who have trouble building a bankroll to play at their preferred stake level. Frequently, people want to move up a bit too quickly than is “safe” for their bankroll. We’d love to hear from you on when you think it’s a good idea to shift stake levels!
How big should your Replay Poker bankroll be to play in a 10,000 chip entry MTT? Assume there are 40-50 players and 7-10 prizes:
100k
250k
500k
1 million
0voters
Let us know why you chose your answer, and any tips you have on how to build your bankroll from the ground up!
In my opinion I think 100k chips is fine to play a 10k tournament. You just have to be responsible while managing your bankroll. Try to minimize the amount of 10k buy in tournaments you play in if you have a low bankroll.
Play some satellites to try to win your way into higher buy in tournaments and try to cash in those tournaments (and win) to build up your bankroll. I did that as well as play in a lot of freerolls and still play in freerolls.
Recently I started playing in the “Sensational Blinds” tournaments. There is a game at 8:30PM EST every night. It’s a 3k chip buy-in and from what I’ve seen typically 50 - 70 players in total enter so there’s a pretty good prize pool if you can cash.
Another good way to win some chips and improve your bankroll is if you can cash in Bust the Staff. Only a 1k buy in and the field is huge. If you can cash your looking at a pretty good boost to your Replay bankroll depending on how deep you can go.
Remember responsibility is a key In Bankroll management.
Play within your means. It’s just like running your household budget. Little chips/ little bets, little money/ little purchases.
The nice thing about Replay is everyday you log in you get free chips, need more ? You have the option to purchase. Play free rolls and build your bank.
Educate yourself with online resources. There is a wealth of information here and on the web.
Use common sense. I see and here about a lot of players getting frustrated playing and then go all in to try and win it all back. Eventually you will lose everything.
I would say somewhere between 50 to 100 buy ins (depending on your skill level) I’ve been studying different poker coaches, and they seem to feel on average that 100 buy ins are needed for MTTs due to the higher variance of larger fields (and to cover you during the downswing stretches that you don’t get good cards). I generally play a tight aggressive style and play a little more cautiously in MTTs due to ICM, so I don’t do crazy gambling to try to build my chipstack (which won’t let you consistently win over a large number of games anyways) So from my studies, if you play your best game of poker, and play from a sufficient bankroll, then the times that you win will make up for the times that you lose.
I agree that satellites and freerolls are a great way to supplement your bankroll. Also, you can use the daily chips that you get from logging in to buy satetillite tickets. In addition, consolidating your efforts on a leatherboard(s) is another great way to build your bankroll.
As a side note, I would encourage newer players to consider SnGs to build their bankroll, as it is basically a single table version of MTTs, and I feel that (according to poker teachers) 25-50 buyins (depending on your skill level) are sufficient for those (again attributing for variance and the stretches where you don’t get good cards)
I like your ideas as they are like mine and great sound advice but I have to disagree with you that you need or should have 1 million chips in your bank to enter a 10K tournament.
That is why I said somewhere between 50 and 100 buyins, 50,000 might be enough for a more skilled player (which is cutting the poker coaches recommendations in half because they are addressing larger fields). But a newer player might need more. Again, the idea of a bankroll is also to be able to go through downswings when you aren’t getting good cards or are losing hands by getting outdrawn by other players and then have to drop down in stakes as a result. With a bankroll, you should be able to play at the stake you are playing at forever and not ever have to drop down in stakes.
Ok , ok I guess. The question was how many chips in your bankroll should you have to enter a 10K tourney and you voted 1 million. Just questioning why so high and the logic that’s all.
I’ll have to look up those poker coaches and read it.
Most of the top pros suggest putting “no more than 5% of your bankroll at risk.” What they DON’T say is over what period of time. Clearly, if they meant over a single No Limit hand, 20 misjudgements or unfortunate hands (that could occur in rapid succession) and you’re wiped out. I suspect they mean over a single sitting or day. 250,000 X 5% = $12,500, which is probably close enough for most purposes. So, $10K is within that window, but if/when you lose, I’d be sure to limit any additional possible losses for the remainder of that day. Plungers will play for higher stakes with lower bankrolls. You need to be comfortable with your level of risk; once you’ve decided you’re comfortable, have at 'em, Sport.
I guess it depends on if you’re talking about taking a shot at a higher level or choosing what level you want to consistently play at. I agree that using a smaller part of your bankroll to take a shot at a higher levels is ok if you are ok with the risk and the idea of moving back down in stakes if you don’t do well.
in fact all answers are possible depending on how you look at the question
1: 100k is fine because of the low skill level and very high winrate if you play ABC. besides, all you need is to log in 4 days to get it all back.
2: if you don’t count in the free chips, and are a average winning player on the stakes (which i believe is still a less then a solid ABC player) 25 BI’s should be enough
3: when you consider standard BRM, most people uses 20 for cash, 30 for SnG, and 50 for MTT.
4: also often used BRM for conservative players is 30/50/100. however i don’t think there are many play money poker players that are that much conservative in their BRM (which isn’t nessecary anyway if you play well enough here. especcialy since there aren’t even close as much players entering in comparison to real money poker)
so since they can all apply depending on the way you consider the question, i go with the one that’s fitting best with all variables, which is 250K. however if you are a solid ABC player, 100K is more fitting.
Personally, I tend to be on the more conservative side of things, so I generally play tourneys that represent between 0.5% and 2% of my total bankroll. At lower stakes, I’d lean a bit toward the higher end of that range, since I’d take the 2.5K “daily bonus” into account. Plus, there’s greater availability of tournaments in that range - about 40 per day between 5K and 10K, while there are only about 20 between 50K and 250K.
Don’t worry about taking too long to up your stakes as you’re coming up. Taking your time and solidifying your game at the lower levels is really important, and will pay massive dividends at the higher levels. A couple of 5K tournament wins or strong placements - many of which have top prizes north of 100K - will quickly put you in the 500K bankroll range. At that level, you can comfortably play 10K tourneys without putting a big dent on your bankroll when your luck turns south. And yes, eventually your luck will turn south - there’s a good (first half of a) thread on managing downswings here.
Craig_Anthony1d
Ok , ok I guess. The question was how many chips in your bankroll should you have to enter a 10K tourney and you voted 1 million. Just questioning why so high and the logic that’s all.
I’ll have to look up those poker coaches and read it.
If I have never even had 10K and I don’t win often. I would say “it will be a long time before I ever enter a tourney like that”. I stick to freerolls and I can play in one 500+r (since I will use the R till I hit zero).
Realistically, If I would play in a 500 tourney with my daily free 2500, then I would play in a 10K if I made 50 daily, I picked 250 since I don’t get that much just for logging in.
If the tourneys ran 10k 9k 8k 7k for players that enter more than once, or if the daily log in increased to manage a multi-day tourney; perhaps there is a way to build what we have already amassed, a great gamesite.
This calculation requires 2 pieces of data that are player dependent - their estimated ROI and their definition of “safe”. Does safe mean 99.7% sure they wont go broke or is 95% or even 70% enough? The stricter a player’s definition of safe is, the greater the bankroll required.
Say a player has been at the 5K MTT level for a while and wants to know what bankroll they would need to move up to 10K. This player has averaged a 7.5% ROI over a decent sample of 5K tournaments and wants to make sure he has a sufficient bankroll to play at least 50 10K MTT’s without going broke.
Let’s say that the player’s expected ROI will probably decrease from where it is every time he moves up in stakes. The games should be incrementally more difficult so this seems reasonable. In this case, lets estimate that the player will still be positive but that his ROI will only be 5% instead of 7.5%.
Once we have made a reasonable estimate of future ROI, we can use a tournament variance calculator to find out how much of a bankroll we would need to be “safe” at certain confidence intervals. Running a simulation 100,000 times for 10K MTT’s (9500/500), an average of 50 entrants per MTT and a standard payout structure for top 9 places, we come up with the following:
The player can be 70% confident that his losses over the 50 MTT’s will not exceed 167,500
The player can be 95% confident that his losses over the 50 MTT’s will not exceed 300,500
The player can be 99.7% confident that his losses over the 50 MTT’s will not exceed 409,750
***Added: Note that these numbers are only for cumulative losses, not peak losses. Therefore it would be wise to add a buffer in to account for situations where losses are more front-loaded than expected. Looking at 50-game simulations to see how peak losses fell, I’d think adding 20-25% would be enough to mitigate agaist this.
Players wishing to do this calculation for themselves can go to the following resource. Its pretty cool and as long as your expected ROI is pretty accurate, this should tell you how many chips you need to step up from any level to any other level. If you don’t know what your expected ROI should be, its probably best to be extra conservative. You can always adjust it later on but you don’t want to be too optimistic and not have a sufficient bankroll. GL to all.
@Alan25main - One of the benefits of playing here is that people can get accustomed to making the correct decisions without them necessarily having a monetary consequence. Focusing on the decision and not the money is important. Of course there are problems getting people to treat play chips as valuable so the pendulum tends to swing too far away from meaningful consequences but that’s a tradeoff and can be mitigated.
Another player here inspired me to do some reading about how intangible rewards can become important to gamers and its fascinating. So, I think with proper care, the site can create/maintain a value in the players minds for the chips. For some segment of the player base here, this can be a great training ground. Taking bankroll management seriously is one important part of that training.
Largely, I concur. Personally, I look at these situations and their responses as being on a spectrum from almost never call to almost always call. Just as in live cash games, the player has to take the consequences of error into account when making their decisions. (Ocean-going ships would have no life boats if they thought they’d never have a need for them, even though they may consider that risk very low–as, in fact, it is. So, prudent shipping companies provide life boats and prudent cruise customers take that into account when they book their cruises.) At the same time, every person’s willingness make those risk/reward decisions is intensely individual. I tend to be risk averse; others can and do make very different decisions; both are valid, if taken knowingly. I buy a lottery ticket now and then, even knowing the chance of winning is slight at best.
Interesting to note how conservative the author is in terms of having enough buy-ins - far more than I’ve seen recommended elsewhere.Everyone can decide for themselves about whether these guidelines are applicable here or not but the premise is that the greater the variance, the greater the number of buy-ins required.
