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There are so many faults that technically skilled players have that prevent them from being long-term winners that I couldn't even begin to list them. Many have been spotted in "Why You Lose At Poker" by Fox and Harker. One is "Playing with an inadequate bankroll".
Fox & Harker take a rather stereotypical and extreme example of this -- a guy who has a lucky run at $4-$8 in, say, the Bellagio, and then moves up to $15-$30 with no more than a dozen big bets in front of him. This mixes the inadequate bankroll fault with two others; inadequate emotional control (impatience) and inadequate skill.
The problem here is that a large number of people who read the book will say "ahh, thank god that I'm not like that!", when in fact this chapter should be the one to which they are paying the most attention.
I suspect that more than 50% of the "good" players I am up against at $2-$4 have an inadequate bankroll. Often this is because they deliberately leave themselves with an inadequate bankroll, withdrawing cash to spend on other things. But there is another factor. If you are playing tight-assed poker and getting the average run of hands, you are unlikely to see an extreme "micro" run (I'm ignoring the once-in-two-years mega-disaster for the moment) more than once every couple of months. You are also, in the main, up against people like you. Cagey, hesitant to push thin edges, playing a game that does not intrisically have high swings.
The problem arises when a couple of maniacs arrive. All of a sudden your EV has gone from maybe half a big bet a hundred to two or three big bets a hundred. But this comes with a caveat. Your variance shoots up as well. If you only have a bankroll of $400, because in the normal run of things this is plenty for three-tabling at $2-$4, suddenly you are under pressure. And this puts you on the backfoot against these maniacs. You do not reraise when you should. You let them take control (which is, of course, what they want), and, a couple of bad beats later, you are full-on head-smacking steaming.
We've all seen players lose their rag (online and in B&M games) when this happens. And the one constant that I've noticed is that they do not reload. They know that they are better than this maniac, but they don't have the ammunition in reserve. Meanwhile, the players who are often accused of playing at "too low a level", (for example, me), can take this micro-sequence of bad beats in their stride, if they happen.
Except that often they don't happen, because we have spotted the maniac, and we have the ammunition to play him properly. We react pre-emptively, so the maniacs lose one of their strongest weapons, fear, fear and intimidation. Two, they lose two of their strongest weapons. Fear, intimidation, and surprise...
(Sorry, couldn't resist it.)
I've noticed that this is even more important at short-handed, where the proportion of LAGs is higher and the variance is correspondingly greater anyway. Playing short-handed with a bankroll of 300 big bets strikes me as woefully thin, and sitting down with less than 50 big bets at the table is foolhardy.
Playing at ring tables, I occasionally see a player sitting down with a large amount of cash (say, $800 at a $2-$4 table). Normally you can be fairly sure that this player will not be a maniac about to spray his cash around. His raises will reflect real hands. But the added cash aims either to get people to call when they would fold, or fold when they would call.
My immediate reaction if a player sits down with this kind of cash is to reload to the same level. This has a subtext of "yes, this level means fuck-all to me as well, but don't think I'll play differently just because you think you are rich".
Fox & Harker take a rather stereotypical and extreme example of this -- a guy who has a lucky run at $4-$8 in, say, the Bellagio, and then moves up to $15-$30 with no more than a dozen big bets in front of him. This mixes the inadequate bankroll fault with two others; inadequate emotional control (impatience) and inadequate skill.
The problem here is that a large number of people who read the book will say "ahh, thank god that I'm not like that!", when in fact this chapter should be the one to which they are paying the most attention.
I suspect that more than 50% of the "good" players I am up against at $2-$4 have an inadequate bankroll. Often this is because they deliberately leave themselves with an inadequate bankroll, withdrawing cash to spend on other things. But there is another factor. If you are playing tight-assed poker and getting the average run of hands, you are unlikely to see an extreme "micro" run (I'm ignoring the once-in-two-years mega-disaster for the moment) more than once every couple of months. You are also, in the main, up against people like you. Cagey, hesitant to push thin edges, playing a game that does not intrisically have high swings.
The problem arises when a couple of maniacs arrive. All of a sudden your EV has gone from maybe half a big bet a hundred to two or three big bets a hundred. But this comes with a caveat. Your variance shoots up as well. If you only have a bankroll of $400, because in the normal run of things this is plenty for three-tabling at $2-$4, suddenly you are under pressure. And this puts you on the backfoot against these maniacs. You do not reraise when you should. You let them take control (which is, of course, what they want), and, a couple of bad beats later, you are full-on head-smacking steaming.
We've all seen players lose their rag (online and in B&M games) when this happens. And the one constant that I've noticed is that they do not reload. They know that they are better than this maniac, but they don't have the ammunition in reserve. Meanwhile, the players who are often accused of playing at "too low a level", (for example, me), can take this micro-sequence of bad beats in their stride, if they happen.
Except that often they don't happen, because we have spotted the maniac, and we have the ammunition to play him properly. We react pre-emptively, so the maniacs lose one of their strongest weapons, fear, fear and intimidation. Two, they lose two of their strongest weapons. Fear, intimidation, and surprise...
(Sorry, couldn't resist it.)
I've noticed that this is even more important at short-handed, where the proportion of LAGs is higher and the variance is correspondingly greater anyway. Playing short-handed with a bankroll of 300 big bets strikes me as woefully thin, and sitting down with less than 50 big bets at the table is foolhardy.
Playing at ring tables, I occasionally see a player sitting down with a large amount of cash (say, $800 at a $2-$4 table). Normally you can be fairly sure that this player will not be a maniac about to spray his cash around. His raises will reflect real hands. But the added cash aims either to get people to call when they would fold, or fold when they would call.
My immediate reaction if a player sits down with this kind of cash is to reload to the same level. This has a subtext of "yes, this level means fuck-all to me as well, but don't think I'll play differently just because you think you are rich".
