You are about to start playing your favorite form of poker which just happens to be limit Texas Hold’em. You have read all of the books countless times and you know the game inside out and can sure show those dummies on the internet a thing or two.

You intend on playing at a fair level and are looking to start in the $20-$40 poker game on your favorite site. You have what is considered to be an adequate bankroll by many leading experts and mathematicians and the prospect of earning an income from poker is exciting you as is the thought of possibly turning professional.

Your first session goes very well indeed and you win over a thousand dollars and your second session is almost as profitable…..life could not be sweeter! Suddenly after a couple of winning sessions, you have your first losing session, followed by another and another and another. You started off with a 300 big bet bankroll of $12,000 but find that your entire winnings have evaporated and with it 150 big bets of your original poker bankroll.

You try to look for reasons for it and cannot find any. The beats have been cruel and constant, you are in there with the best hand and you have lost count of the number of times that you have been outdrawn….how in heavens name can this continue you ask yourself? You find yourself getting frustrated and agitated and even angry and you want an explanation for all this but no one is there to help you.

You are $6000 in the hole and conclude that limit hold’em cannot be working for you so you take your remaining $6000 and play heads up at $50-$100 No Limit Texas hold’em as you figured that you know this game well enough to beat it and that you could get the money back that you lost playing $20-$40 limit in a fraction of the time.

Less than three hours later and the screen prompt is informing you if you would like to buy back in as you are out of funds. How have you lost this money on this table? The answer is academic and you know it because you should not have been on this table anyway.

But why were you on this table in the first place? You may say that you tilted at the thought of being $6000 in the hole at $20-$40 limit, you may also say that you tilted at the brutal outdraws time after time and that many players played as if they had taken leave of their senses….either that or they knew what the cards were, a subject you have seen discussed on several forums and there is no smoke without fire….right!

I have heard tales like this countless times although not always for these amounts of money. But the subject of adequate bankroll sizes is a very complex and difficult subject because depending on individual ability then what constitutes an adequate bankroll for one player may be totally inadequate for someone else.

Even two players of identical ability may need different size bankrolls to avoid going broke depending on what types of games they were playing in and against whom. Look out for part two of this series coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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