Eddie Ledbetter on Poker

I think bankroll management is the SINGLE biggest skill any poker player can have. Let me say that again. I think bankroll management is the SINGLE biggest skill any poker player can have. Great players can be LOSING players with poor bankroll management and Bad players can be WINNING players with good bankroll management. Decent players can be consistent WINNERS with good bankroll management and good players can be BIG WINNERS with good bankroll management.

OKAY ENOUGH LECTURING EDDIELEADBETTER, LET'S GET TO THE MEAT AND POTATOES!

I am a firm believer that the same rules don't necessarily work for everyone, but I also believe just as strongly that HARD rules can work very well for ANYONE. You have to adjust and find your balance so that the rules work for you, but it is important to stick to them. Also, your rules should be dynamic (percentage based) and you should have your rules for growth (and decrease) in game-size based on your bankroll already pre-planned out.

Rules I TRY to follow:
1. Never have more than 5% (FIVE percent) of my bankroll in play in a cash game or as a buy-in for a tournament.
- I have broken this rule if I have seen a very select group of players playing in a game that is maybe a bit bigger than my current stakes, but not extremely higher. This select group is mostly very weak, passive, big-fish-donation-machines (seeing 80-90% of flops, letting me easily freeroll them for their entire stack every time I are in a hand with them, etc.

2. Play ONLY when I feel good and when I feel like playing.
- I end up break this rule a lot. The reason I break this rule a lot, but mainly because poker is my job. If I had another job, I feel that I would follow this rule more strictly and only play when I felt 110%. Since I don't always feel 110% and I usually have to play most days, I let this rule slide a bit. While I do let it slide some, I do try to have a minimum level of confidence and be physically feeling good before playing.

3. Move up in stakes as my bankroll allows. If you move up stakes as your bankroll grows, you stay focused on growth. It is not always bad to stay in a lower limit and grind out a consistent profit, but if you keep staying at $10 level and are consistently cashing out and never moving up, you will never break through to the next level and so on, which I assume is your goal. Sometimes I might have enough money to move up a level, but if I just don't feel comfy with the bigger swings of moving up in stakes, then I'll hold off and try to grow a bit more, but not so much that I forget about the goal of moving up and making more money.

Rules I Follow ALWAYS:
1. I will NEVER have more than 10% (TEN Percent) of my bankroll in any one game.
- If I take a shot at a higher limit that is a little above my bankroll (following 5% rule) because some huge fish are in that game, I will still not use more than 10% of my roll in this game. I might buy-in for 10% (or even a half-buy-in with 5%), but i'm not going to reload and lose more than 10% of my roll that night if I happen to run bad in the game.

2. I never play after drinking. Even one drink makes my poker mind deteriorate. If I have drank during the day then I must wait as many hours as drinks I have had AFTER finishing drinking AND nap in the middle. So if I had 3 beers from noon-2PM, then only after 5PM and with a nap in between will I consider being able to play poker. If I come home drunk from a party or something, and for some reason have nothing better to do, my solution has been $2 HU matches. They can be fun, you can do stupid plays, and you can't really hurt your Bankroll too much by playing them.

3. I ALWAYS move down in stakes as my bankroll allows. This is probably the most important rule of all. When I move up a limit, I have a number in mind that I will stop playing that limit if I get down to it. This prevents me from ever decimating my roll at a new higher limit. If I have enough money I move up, but if I do not, I move down. If I lose there, I move down a limit again.

Those are MY rules. You can use these rules or make your own, but once you do, it is really important that you stick to them. WRITE THEM DOWN. Obviously like anything poker related, you can modify them once you've made them. If you are going to modify a rule, I recommend that you don't do it like on-the-fly, mid-play, while you are playing, "just this one time" kind of stuff. If you want to make a new rule or modify an existing one, you should do it when you are level-headed, before you've played any hands that day. Preferably even after a day off to think about what you need to change about your rules set.

For Sit N Go tournaments, I make a chart, based on buy-in, what my roll has to be to play a certain level and what my roll would have to decline to in order for me to move down a level. I also think it is important in sngs to stick to 1 level at a time so you are properly motivated and balanced between your tables. if you have a $11, a $22, a $33 and a $55 sng going, if you get unlucky in the $55 and/or the $33 it will feel like an uphill battle to just get the money back between the other cheaper SNGs you are playing. Consequently you might tilt off in them, or not take them as seriously, or stress out and play them more tightly than you should. When you stick to one level, and play four at a time, losing in one does not set you back so much that you cannot easily break even or still turn a profit by playing well in the other three.

For SNG's I find I play best at about 20x buy-ins. I believe that for a good player at the lower limits, PLO8 sngs have a much lower variance than NL HE sngs, so if you are doing NL HE SNGs I would definitely bump your requirement up to 50x buy-ins (or even 100x)

my basic chart for PLO8 goes something like:
Have Play
$100 $5 sng
$200 $10 sng
$400 $20 sng
$600 $30 sng

If I start playing $30s and I get close to (but not under) $400, I start playing $20s again. If after I start playing $20s I get close to (but not under) $200 I start playing $10s again. It is helpful to write this rule down because then it makes the choice seem out of your hands but still under your control. You can easily look at the chart, look at your balance, and then filter SNGs based on buy-in so you only SEE the games you NEED to be playing. Pokerstars and Full Tilt both have great filters that allow you to select games and buy-ins and limits for both SNGs and Multitable tournaments. These are a great tool as you can find the games you are profitable in, then isolate the filter to show only those games in the buy-in range that fits your bankroll. So then no matter how much you are tilting you won't enter that $500 Turbo Razz SNG you see filling that you have no business being in.

A good NL HE sng chart would probably be more like:
Have Play
$250 $5 sng
$500 $10 sng
$1000 $20 sng
$1200 $30 sng

For MTTs I really want like 50x (or even 100x!) buy-ins. I have made exceptions but really never more than 1/20th (5%) for special, rare tournament situations. I may not have $15,000 in my roll when a big tournament series rolls around, I still take shots at $200 PLO8 FTOPS/WCOOP type events, even if I don't have the chance to satellite into them (but still have ~$4-5k). On a daily basis if you have less than 50 buy-ins, the long run variance of MTTs will crush your roll. I have the requirement lower in SNGs because to not have at least a few cashes in 20 sngs in a row would be almost impossible for me, but to not have any decent cash in 20 MTTs can be a common occurance for even the best players.

My large field MTT chart for regular, daily play:
Have Play
$500 $5 mtt
$1000 $10 mtt
$2000 $20 mtt
$3000 $30 mtt

I do not play fixed limit cash that often, so I don't know how many big bets would be ideal operating level for you, but I think that something like 1000 big bets would be best. If I have $1000 I would be playing no higher than $.5/1 fixed limit until I got to $2000 where I would jump up to $1/2 fixed limit and so on. 1000 big bets is very safe, and it will probably open up your game as you will never be too stressed out about any one hand at any point.

With $1000 in your bankroll, you should be playing:
$30 plo8 sngs
$20 NL HE sngs
$10 MTTs
$50 NL HE cash game
$.5/1 Fixed limit O8/HE

It is important to know where you move up and where you move down based on bankroll for each game and each limit. Also I would find what you make the most money at, and where you might be losing, and play more of what you win at and less of what you lose at. This SEEMS simple but until I got pokertracker, I thought I was beating MOST games (by a little or a lot) or at least breaking even. This was not the case, so I stopped playing the games I was losing at, and started playing more of the games I was beating and now I win more money and play less hours (sounds like a no brainer, right?)

Good Luck,
eddieleadbetter
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