Personal Challenge

well I have decided to try a personal challenge.

To preface
this, I have ran kinda bad lately. I am also unhappy with my lack of
bankroll management and trying to chase my losses at a higher limit,
tilt or whatever.It's all pretty shitty in fact. I am having difficulty in committing myself to a proper bankroll management criteria.

Last week I read an article on the Kelly criterion, and general bankroll management.
There was also a discussion of compounding profits and bankroll
building. I decided to set up an excel spreadsheet and test out
different formulas and examining the effects of compounding profit.

It really fascinating
to examine the trend when earning a consistent return. However, the
return on poker is not consistent and can have a wide range in results.
When moving up in limits the competition becomes harder, and there may
be some related loss in adjusting to the level of play.

I want to try and follow a strict bankroll management regimen. Setting goals, and following guidelines that properly dictate the buy in level I will be playing.

Bankroll
Since I have been running bad lately I have decided to withdraw all but $100 of my bankroll. This will be my starting bankroll for the challenge.

Goal PBI
I dont want to dont want to be overly optimistic in my achievable Percentage of Bankroll Increase (PBI) .. I think that a 7% weekly PBI is possible. I am going to use this as my weekly goal.

I know I will have some weeks that are over 7% and likely weeks that are -%. Any week where my PBI% IS >12% I am going to withdraw 75% of the overage and use it on nonpoker related expenses or for savings. If my PBI is >4% for the week I will not take any withdraw the following week.

Games/Levels
I know I will kill some limits or games, but may suffer on others. Since I want this challenge r to be fun to do, I am not going to limit myself to one particular game format. I dont want this to feel like a grind.

I set up a spreadsheet that will divide my bankroll by my minimum buyins for a game. I will allow myself a 5% variation of this calculated amount. For instance if I have a 100 bankroll and am going to play a STT, my min br requirement is 50 I would be constrained to $2 sng's, but will allow a 5% deviation up to $2.10 (not that these exist).

I plan to follow the following min br requirements which are on the conservative side. Therby reducing the impact of variance and my general peace of mind in playing at a specific level.

STT-50 buyins
MTT-150 buyins (rebuys 500x buyin)
NL-30x max buyin
PL-25x max buyin
FL-400bb
H/L FL- 300bb

Stop Loss - Anti-TILT
I have been known to steam off, and am going to try to control that with a stop loss. When I hit my stop loss I am going to take no less than 30 mins off from playing, if I hit my stop loss twice in a 24hr period I wont play again until I have slept.

My stop losses are:
STT- 4 buyins
MTT- 12 buyins
NL PL- 3 buyins
FL - 30 blinds

So that is the initial layout for my challenge. I will fill in some more info in the next couple of days. I am trying to determine how much time I cna afford to have as a minimum weekly play.

At this point I am not going to play anymore until I actually commence my challenge maybe sometime this weekend, or at least by next weekend. I picked up a couple of books from the Stars FPP store and am going to read them over the next couple of days. I think I need to take a break anyway b/c of my bad run/tilt sessions. I also have a lot of things going on with the holidays.

I still plan on playing all of the Freerolls I am qualified for including the BPT final, Stars VIP freerolls, and a couple other leagues I play in.

I guess all of this also means that I will keep this blog running next year, and probably have updates about 2-3 times a week.