Hello everyone,
I am new to this site and I have noticed that many good players are progressing quickly, I am also trying but I feel like I am not using the right strategy when it comes to bankroll management.
What percentage should I play for ring games and tournaments?
I see you have 2.5 million in your Replay bank.
I believe the mindset to have is " NEVER GO BROKE"
Therefore, what worked for me was to never even consider playing the 2 Million.
If I reached 2 million going the wrong way, I’d only play with saved tickets, freerolls
or with the daily amounts given by Replay.
About 500k to work with so I’d say to buy-in into mainly 2.5k, 5k, and 7.5k tournaments.
If you’re trending up and feel confident, then give an occasional 20k or 50k tournament a try.
Once you hit 3 million, consider it as 1M.
.
5% would be 50k to be played more often but still be cautious and play the 7.5K and 20k.
Adjust as needed according to your play.
I’ve thought in 2 million increments lately.
2,4,6,8,10
This year, my yearly goal was to get to 10 million.
The occasional 100k Free Ticket was used in the Look No Further tournament.
I’ve reached that goal and even had enough to pay for RPOS XII.
I took 1M and played Omaha Hi/Lo ring games successfully.
It was a risk, and it was 10% of my bankroll.
Now, going back in time, I reached 80M challenging the higher tier players.
The experience was worth it, but they won it all in the end except for the 2 million.
The bottom line is the baseline 2 million worked!!
Good luck to you!
So if my calculations are correct, with a bankroll of 2.5M, a buy-in should never exceed 3% of my bankroll on a regular basis with exceptions of 20k or 50k from time to time.
I went from 20k to 300k very quickly by playing my entire bankroll in ring games, after that I was more careful but I quickly reached the million after two days.
My goal was to reach 10M before November by winning 250k per day, but I realize that this may be too ambitious and risky a goal.
Do you play mostly tournaments, ring game, or both?
Where do you feel you have the biggest edge?
+99% of my chips come from ring games, but I get more enjoyment from playing tournaments because I like the competitive aspect of them.
50 buy ins for tournament if you have a big edge. 75 to 100 buy ins for tourneys if your average. 125 to 150 buy ins if your below average.
25 buy ins for Ring game if you have big edge. 35 to 43 buy ins for Ring game if your average. 50 to 63 buy ins if your below average for ring.
I might suggest SnG tournaments. If you have some skill, you can achieve a pretty high ITM rate, due to the small field.
Deep & Slow, which starts in a little less than 2 hours right now, is a 50k MTT with Rebuy. @Lelaina got very good results over time in that tournament; the field has a lot of weak/speculative players, and due to the structure, there’s an opportunity for a big edge over the field.
I embrace volatility more than some players; when my BR was under 50M I was often playing 10-20% of my bankroll when taking shots at higher stakes for both Ring and Tournaments. That said, I quickly realized I was probably more skilled than 90% of my opponents; if you feel your edge is not so big, I wouldn’t exceed 10% at any time, and set a stoploss at 2 buy-ins.
Of course the more risk, the more reward, so it depends how fast you want to grow.
Tournaments
Big edge → 2%
Average → 1% to 1.3%
Below average → 0.66% to 0.8%
Ring games
Big edge → 4%
Average → 2.3% to 2.8%
Below average → 1.6% to 2%
I converted the buy-in to percentage.
But I have a question, how can I evaluate my level? How do I know if I have a big edge or if I am below average
Thank you very much for your advice Younguru (I like this name because it reminds me of one of my favorite music producers).
I think I also really like volatility because I often played 100% of my BR to progress quickly, but in hindsight I think I may have been very lucky and that I am not strong enough to play that much.
I have been registered for less than a week and I see that I already have more chips than all the rookies, so maybe I am not that bad either.
Deep&Slow looks interesting, I may give it a chance, Lelaina is a strong player that I have faced a few times, I am also impressed by your results in less than a year, I would dream of being able to achieve the same thing.
RING:
How long on average does it take you to double your buy-in?
How often, as a %, do you have a losing session?
How often, as a %, do you more than 3x your buy-in?
MTTs:
What is your ITM %
What is your ROI
What is your podium %
NOBODY is strong enough to play 100% BR. You will go broke. Don’t do it 
At my most volatile I had 1/3 of my BR in the game. I lost. I took 2 weeks to get it back.
If you can stay mentally tough when you lose, go for it. If it tilts you or makes you too discouraged, scale back the risk.
Fastest growth by far is available in Ring.
Most stable growth is available in SnGs.
MTTs are more haphazard as even the best player loses the vast majority of the time, but you can get massive ROI with a 1st place victory.
As I tell anyone who asks, my journey took off when I won the 5M buy-in Widow’s Bite. I don’t remember how much my BR was at the time, maybe 70M or something. So it was a decent chunk, but nothing devastating if I lost.
However, winning more than doubled my BR. Then I was able to pursue more aggressive growth 
So I generally recommend conservative buy-in strategy for ring, and taking occasional shots at high buy-in MTTs where you can get a huge ROI if you win or place 2nd/3rd.
@Brolik if you like volatility I also recommend moving up Ring stakes as fast as possible. Once you have 10 buy-ins you can start taking shots, and just move back down if you lose 2-3 buy-ins.
There will be a lot of “bingo” players until you hit at least 10/20k and really the more “real” poker tends to begin at 20/40k ring. So I would make it a goal to reach those stakes ASAP, where you can really start to see your BR take off (because players will actually fold, and your win% can be higher, though you may stack 2 other players in the same hand less often)
Start out at the average buy in. Track your LONG TERM results. If your long term results are bad, then your about average at best, to below average to semi bad. Also study, read, watch various poker resources, then pay attention to how you play. If you notice that your doing a lot of bad things, then your probably not as good. If you notice that your doing a lot of good things, making good decisions, then your probably good. Next you can start posting hand histories, both good, neatral, bad hand histories, for feedback on your play. If your getting good feedback from credible trusted sources, then your probably playing well. If you get constructive feedback that says your not playing well, then you probably play less well.
Trying to figure out how good you are, what kind of a edge you have takes time. Another factor here at Replay is the fields. At the lower stakes, your probably going to have a bigger edge. At the mid stakes, your probably going to be average. At the higher stakes, your probably going to be below average.
“if you do bad you are playing bad, if you do good you are playing good” is the most hilarious and also the most accurate statement about self-assessment I have ever heard 
Final random thought, I just played Royal for the first time and got sucked out on, so I only got 2nd place (level stacks on last hand, AT > QQ all in preflop) instead of winning it all.
Honestly it was ABSURDLY easy. Nobody has any clue how to play that variant. So you might also try some Royal MTTs for quick BR growth. I think one could potentially have a bigger edge in that game than anywhere else on the site (other than O8, where there’s also lots of room for a massive edge).
Oh, and I’ve made a basic guide to Ring strategy, maybe you’ll find it useful:
Simple Replay Ring Strategy
Sorry but I played less than 2k hands and I absolutely did not track my results.
How do you track it? You’re collecting datas?
What I can say is that in the overwhelming majority of cases I do not make a podium and very rarely ITM.
I play at a loss on MTTs
For ring games I have a rule that I always stick to, as soon as I double I leave the table.
If I lose my buy in, I try to recover my losses on a higher table (dangerous strategy I must admit)
There is a high roller with 15M prize pool in two hours, I hesitate to participate because if I do well it would be awesome, but I saw that it was an R&A tournament, so a lot of pressure to buy more chips…
I think I will focus on ring games and a few 20k tournaments to see where it takes me. There are also rookie tournaments which allow you to win up to 25k and which are relatively easy.
How do you track your results?
Is there a function that allows it in Replay or do you have to do it yourself manually?
I don’t know if it’s a good way to improve but I like watching pro tournament videos on Youtube. I think Tom Dwan is amazing lol
There’s so much variability in poker that you can’t really know until you’ve played hundreds of thousands of hands, and at that point the answer won’t really matter.
The better question is how disciplined are you when you need to move back down to lower stakes games? I don’t think it’s a problem to buy in for 10+% of your bankroll on ring games as long as you can commit to dropping back down when you lose a few buy-ins. That can be difficult to do if you’re in a really good game where you’ve just having really bad luck.
You should also never play a stake where you’re not willing to put all your chips in in tricky spots. You probably don’t actually need to be running huge bluffs or making any hero calls at most stakes on Replay, but the reason for that should be that you’re exploiting your opponents, not because your scared of losing your chips. (Although if you’re trying to Martingale your way out of losses, it doesn’t sound like risk aversion is a problem)
Replay provides no remotely useful stats tracking, sadly. I think @lihiue found a way to automate the process via outside software, but it was over my little English major head 
There are lots of ways to improve at poker, and plenty of good free resources online these days.
Personally, most of my strategic knowledge comes from simply watching EVERY SINGLE VIDEO that Doug Polk has posted to YouTube. More recently, he’s started doing like “news updates” about the poker ecosphere, but he used to do almost exclusively hand reviews. I’m talking a 10-15 minute video to review a single hand, breaking down both players’ options and decision making process from a theoretical standpoint.
Doug was once the #1 heads-up NLHE player in the world, and his approach is almost entirely math-based, so I find him to be one of the more reliable sources to gain a sound theoretical foundation.
You can check out guys like Charlie Carrell too, who are Team F*** GTO and just try to exploit everyone, but YMMV
Most importantly, don’t start playing like everyone else. There are very, very few players on Replay, at any level, who are playing anywhere close to theoretically sound poker.
That’s basically the opposite of what you should be doing most of the time. If you’re at a good table, stay - especially if the person you just doubled through is likely to be tilted. Recover your losses by dropping down stakes, not moving up.
Seconded. You will lose your first buy-in fairly often if you’re playing aggressively (which you should be). My general rule for ring is stop-loss at 2-3 buy-ins, depending on the stakes and if the game is really live (the better the game, meaning the more action there is, the more tolerance I have for losses as it’ll be easier to recoup).
I don’t usually leave a good game until I’m up 4 buy-ins, unless there’s some other reason to leave. The bigger your stack is, the more you can profit from your opponents’ mistakes. Quitting whenever you double is kinda shooting yourself in the foot, in that respect. Not to mention you may be leaving a really good game.