Bankroll Management
One of the primary benefits of playing sit-n-go games is that they make it easier to manage your funds. However awful the badbeat, however undeserving your opponent, you can never lose more than your tournament entry fee. This is drastically different to cash games where the cruellest misfortune will often be reflected in the heaviest losses, and the bankroll swings can be brutal. But with sit-n-gos (SNGs) a logical approach and a sound understanding of likely result patterns will leave you in a strong position in the long run.
The first important thing to accept is that anything can happen on any given occasion. I’m always amazed when I hear players predicting their imminent success with clueless bravado. Even if we take the considerable leap of faith that such a player is the best at the table, the luck factor can unravel him at any moment. Once you accept that anything can happen in a one-off game soon you will realise that the same evaluation also applies to a run of 10, 20 or even 50 games.
As a long-time student of the game, I think the one thing still capable of surprising me to this day is just how streaky the runs of fortune can be. With this in mind, a key factor is being able to cope with bad luck at any time. This is always a major challenge from a psychological perspective but it becomes nigh on impossible when playing at a stake you can barely afford, or feeling that you must win.
If you are a good player, and by this I mean you have enjoyed success over a prolonged period of time, then your bankroll will grow in the long term, but it must be there to protect you in the short term. If you have established a rate of return (ROI) of 10% over 1000 games then there is a decent indication of what you can expect to earn at that stake if you play a further 1000 games. I would cautiously suggest that it would be reasonable to think that the same player, in a further 1000 games would probably see an ROI of between 5-15%. It’s only over a huge sample of games that we can start to look at projected earnings as the luck factor evens out.
Some players may feel that 200-500 games are a fair sample from which to draw conclusions. All I can say is that from my own experiences, one 500 set of games can produce quite variant results to another batch of 500. Basic logic suggests with any survey that the bigger the sample, the more credible the results. Maybe one day I’ll muse that even 1000 games isn’t a sufficient sample to draw reasonable conclusions from.
If we follow the example above then we can start to see the importance of an appropriate bankroll, even for a successful player. If a player enters 1000 games with an entry fee of $55, he will be investing $55 000 in total. This seems, and is, a massive outlay but if he has an ROI of 10% on this run then he will re-coup a further $5500 by the end of this period. So theoretically a bankroll that begun at $55 000 would then be up to $60 500. But very few people who play regularly at mid-level stakes have $55 000 to work with from the outset. So what is a reasonable bankroll to start playing hundreds of $55 games without putting yourself in peril?
ROI is just one factor to contemplate. Perhaps a bigger consideration is to estimate how much you will lose on a bad run, and at what point you might drop down in stakes. For example, a player who begins with $5000 may decide that he will play $55 games unless he drops below the $3000 mark. For this to occur he can lose the equivalent of 36 entry fees before he’s forced to re-think his strategy. While it is hugely unlikely that he will fail to cash in 36 consecutive games, a losing run of $2000 is very possible even for an accomplished player.
This may sound discouraging, (and some may disagree that a good player could lose $2000 at these stakes) but it doesn’t need to be. To be aware that bad runs will happen and have the bankroll to cope with them is half the battle; in fact it’s much more than half the battle. Let’s say that I had played 2000 games at $55 stakes and knew that my worst run in that time was a $3000 slump but that I was definitely winning in the long-term. Secondly, let’s argue that I would drop down in stakes if my bankroll fell below $4000. With these factors in mind I would be content with a starting bankroll of $7000. This way it would need an unprecedented bad run for me to run into difficulties.
Although I’ve focused on $55 games here, the thought processes and issues to look at are exactly the same whatever stakes are involved. Bankrolls aren’t just there for the losing players - they are vital to even the very best.