Looking For A Few Opinions

[melaskins 0]

I consider myself, mostly a recreational player that loves the competition that poker provides. I like the money of the game when I am winning but mostly I like the opportunity that the game affords me to exercise my competitive nature. I'm a small stakes player that wants to stretch my limits.About three years ago, I put $25 on UB. I played mostly $1sng's and a little bit of .02/.04 cash. At one point I had $1.11 in my account and put it on a sng. I won that and kept grinding. I got my roll up to about $30 and started playing a $1 mtt just about every evening. One Friday evening I won that sucker and pocketed about 90 bucks. I was beside myself with joy. It was one of my best moments in poker. Anyway, I kept improving my game and eventually got my roll up to about $400. I was playing mostly $5sng's at the time. I cashed out $200 mostly just to make sure I would get my money from UB. Then I started grinding again. Back in the spring with my roll at about $350, I cashed out $300 and put $175 on Tilt. I figured I would burn the $50 that I had left on UB and play mostly on Tilt. I was playing mostly $2sng's on FT and started playing the $1x45sng's on UB. My roll on UB went down to less than $20 and my roll on FT stayed stagnant for a long time.On UB, I get up to about $100 and then back down to $30. I played a $3 MTT on Labor day this year and won nearly $200. Since then, playing mostly $6sng's I have gotten my roll up to $500. For the last two months, I have been playing very good poker. I've played by the "rules" and just been solid. I've realized that in the past, when I cashed out most of my roll, I did so out of reward. Then I read about bank roll mgmt. This time, I have decided I was going to try to grind my roll up and be a little more serious about the game and try to advance in stakes. I got my roll up to $500 last night and felt that I probably need to move to 10sng's. Do you guys agree? I am probably a bit over protective of my roll and don't want to hit variance and chew up $100 and have to move back down. I am concerned about the psychological aspect of having to move down and the effects that it might have on my play.At the same time, I have played two $20 sng's on FT in the last couple of days and won both of them. I did it with a bit of luck but mostly solid and creative play. I have only played a $20sng one other time. I promptly lost and carried my butt back to the $5 tables. But now, I really feel that my play has improved and that I might be better off to continue to play the higher stakes on FT. I currently have $260 in that account. I know that right now, I am experiencing a bit of an over inflated ego because I have stepped up with the big boys and have whooped them in a whole two tournaments.All of us at some point think that we should move up because we are a better player than the people at our current level. You know...the Donks. I'm not struggling with bad beats at the $6 level but I would like the challenge and the potential profit of the $10 level.Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[Mercury69 3]

Well, I'm no big city BR specialist. In fact, I suck at BR management. But, from what I can see here, you are really doing things right. Keep doing what you're doing, EXCEPT...watch it with the SnG's out of your range. Lose even a couple or so and you're just ****ing yourself.If I were you, I'd use the 100 buy-in rule, so if your BR is $500, play $5 SnG's. If you play 10's and variance nutpunches you, you'll look back and say "WTF was I thinking?". Sure, taking stabs is fun, but you really want to limit that.

[rbakken2504 0]

Depending on how quickly you can rebuild a busted bankroll...$260 is enough for the $11's, but if you drop below $170 drop back to the $5.50's...i think 30 buy-ins is good enough for levels up to the $33's...50 buyins for the $55's, and than 100 or more for anything above that.Altho, this is coming from a guy who has been busto three times, lol

[Darth Maple 0]

I use a system like$500 BR for egSNG's = $10 (2% of roll)Any amount over $500 I play any game to enable me to take shots: for exampleI multitable 5 $10 games and profit for $30I will then either take my shot at a $30 game or play a couple of $15 games. If my roll doesn't go above the $500 marker I grind $10 SNG's until it does. It helps me and keeps me sane. It may work for you.In addition, your post was very well written, it looks as if you're doing great for yourself so keep up the good work OP.

[melaskins 0]

Thanks for the thoughts. As has been the case for me in the past, I got a little full of myself last weekend and promptly lost about $40 out of my FT account and $20 out of my UB account. I just wasn't playing good and knew it. I was playing $5x18 sng's on FT and some MTT's on UB. I stepped back for a couple of days and just played 1 five dollar sng on tilt last night. I got second in it and I feel that my play is back on track. I think I am going to move to the $10 SNG's on UB and see if I can grind that level. If I drop back to $450 in my acct, I will probably go back to the $6 tournies.

[UncleHoot 0]

Mostly agreeing with one of the posts above, but providing more detail:Last year, I read Chris Ferguson's article about his "Zero to Hero" article, and thought I'd give it a try. Google that.After some trial and error, I modified his system to better fit my play, which is almost entirely based on SnG's.About 3-4% of my roll to buy into any SnG up to 18 man2% of my roll for any other SnG up to 180 man, or a big MTT. But also keep in mind that if all you do is play MTT's, this should probably be set even lower. Perhaps 1%.Using those guidelines, last year I worked my roll up from about $20 in September, to about $1100 in January. Then I started playing the $10 and $20 SnG's, and quickly lost about $300 of it. I never really recovered from that, eventually cashed out $600, and restarted the grind from the bottom-up this fall. I've been very marginally profitable up to the $10 level on Pokerstars. At the $20 level, maybe I've just been unlucky, but I've done very poorly. It definitely seems to me that the $20 SnG's are substantially harder than the $5 level, but realistically, my experience is quite limited there.As recently discussed in another post, if I lose 10% of my bankroll in one day, I take a mandatory 1 hr break. If I lose 20%, I'm done for the day. Period. I have bad days, though, and perhaps you won't. I don't know if I just don't think clearly, although that's my best guess, but after having several very bad episodes, I've created this rule for myself. Losing 50% of your roll in one day really sucks, and yes, it can happen even if you're still practicing good BR management.