some thought on buy ins

[Adaon]

Some of you read my article on bankrolls back in the day. Since I was paid for it I won't be re posting it but I thought I would take some time to talk buy ins.

A typical limit game for me involves buying in for 20 Big Bets. Although I would consider 30 to be closer to a "full" buy in, I'm mitigating my risk while still developing as a player. However it is likewise important to have enough chips to win money when you do play a hand. Consider what a "typical" hand might look like:

Player 1: raise
Player 2: call in position
Player 3: call in the big blind
Pot: 6.5 small bets

Flop comes out,
Player 3: check fold
Player 1: bet
Player 2: call
Pot: 8.5 small bets

Turn:
player 1: bet
player 2: call
Pot: 6.25 big bets

River:
Player 1: bet
player 2: call
final pot: 8.25 big bets.

To be one of those players you had to invest 3 small bets and 2 big bets, or 3.5 big bets. Any given hand might have one or 2 more bets in it, so you basically need to plan on about 5 big bets going in to the pot if you are going to play a hand down to the river. So if your buy in ever dips below that you should strongly consider either re buying, or standing up.

Now for no-limit and pot-limit games.

There are 2 basic categories: 1)covering everyone else at the table, 2)NOT covering everyone else.

This was illustrated in "High Stakes Poker." Daniel Negreanu showed up and bought in for $1,000,000 while everyone else typically was buying in for $100,000. His thought process was simple enough, If you have everyone else covered, you can win the maximum amount of chips from then in any one hand. If you don't have another player covered then your ability to win is limited.

The reason players don't ALL try to do this is managing risk. If you have to make 10 $100,000 decisions, vs a single $1,000,000 decision, and run the trial 1,000 times even though you risked identical amounts you will most likely come out ahead by making the 10 decisions. That's what poker pros do best, make good decisions over time and survive the swings that happen along the way.

So what's the right buy in stratify for you? That depends on what your goal in any given game is.

[StarlightCoast]

The buy-in to a limit game is meaningless as long as you always have 12 big bets in front of you at all times. 12 big bets is the most it can cost you in any one given hands and that is if all streets and preflop were capped.

[Kat]

Quiz:

In NLO8 the amount you buy in for is closely linked to the strategy you plan to employ. (In fact, this is true for all big bet games to varying degrees.)

The most common approach is to buy in for the table maximum. This allows you to maximize value when you make a big hand. It also allows you to play deeper into the hand. (If you're very deep-stacked it makes it much less likely you'll get AIPF.)

A second approach is to buy in for the table minimum and employ standard short-stacking strategy. The details vary between games, but in NLHE for example you reduce nearly all your pre-flop decisions to fold/raise/reshove. Since these ranges are mostly solved via game theory you can massively multitable without having to think.

Here's the quiz.

Players who take the table maximum approach nearly all use the "auto top-up" facility so that as soon as their stack dips below the table maximum it gets refilled. Scott Clements - one of the strongest P/NLO8 players in the world - usually buys in for the table maximum. However, even when he loses 2/3 or more of his starting stack he never tops back to the table maximum until he has been completely felted.

Why?

[dwayne645]

Really good blog... Thank you..

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