I'm looking for suggestions for a bankroll strategy to meet my needs. My needs: I want to reliably move up in limits, but I'm happy at staying at 1/2 for a year before moving up to 2/4. I like to have 40x a given limit to play full time at a given limit, though I'll start at 20x. I had a pretty good first full year of poker last year, but I'm still learning and my game is still getting better by leaps and bounds. I can reliably kill the $100 games on any of the big sites for at least 5ptbb/100 over big sample sizes. I've also taken shots at 200 and haven't seen anything that makes me think that I won't be able to expect the same there...though 400 looks like a different story.
I don't have a job (well, I do at the moment since I'm a grad student, but that doesn't count since I barely do any work for it) so I consider poker as my primary income...and I'd prefer to keep it that way. However, in order to do that, I need to be making at LEAST $1k/month for bills, some fun, and investing. I'm taking a year off starting in Sept and I'll be starting law school after that year off. If all goes to plan, I'll be able to log lots of poker hours...or else I'll have to get a *gulp* "real" job...maybe just part time. Also, once I get to $200NL I think that I can reliably bring in $1k just from bonuses/month.
I had a rough end to last year as I sort of lost my game short-rolled at $200 (I didn't go broke...and I've NEVER had a losing month). So, January was getting myself back on my poker feet, and finding my game...starting with some good ol' whoring to pad the roll. I started with $1100 and made about $900-1000 whoring. Following that, I had $2k and got back to 'real' poker (getting away from that b2b crap which isn't poker
) on the PR network playing the $50s. I got up to about $2500 in a week or two and felt AWESOME about my game, so I moved back up to $100. As it stands, the roll is at $3300 (lots of bonuses on the way too).
Here WAS the plan: I want 5k before I move up to 1/2. I also need some cashflow. I committed myself to FIRST building my roll so that I could sustain playing at a minimum of .5/1. So, I dedicated all poker profits untill I hit $3k to my roll...none for me. Then, the plan was to save 50% of my winnings after that for my roll, the rest going to me (uhh, bills...including 2k in moving costs in April...yikes!). I'm wondering if 50% is perhaps too much to dedicate to my roll, or if it's fine...how LONG is it fine? Should I stick with the 50% plan until 5k then drop to maybe 25% or even lower since I'd be quite content to stay at that level all year (since I'm concerned about taking shot at the 400 level which would reliably require a LOT more effort from everything that I've been hearing and from discussions with friends who frequent that level)?
p.s. Since my comeback, I've been >8ptbb/100 for the last 9k hands...nice!
Thoughts? Thanks!!
