How Many Times Have You Gone Broke?

[Petoria 0]

Never went broke, but I was VERY lucky when i was grinding my way up through microlimits and had no BR management.

[Abbaddabba 0]

If you play poker for fun and have a regular job, I guess you can't really go broke. If poker is your only source of income, then the reality of going broke is a true possiblity. Look at it this way: for fun, you don't need to spend money on bills such as rent, tuition repayment, etc. You can just keep building your bankroll. When it's your only source of income, bills need to be paid. Lets say you have a roll of $36,000 to play 40-80. You have an average month and make $5,000. You have to pay rent (1,200), school loan (400), car payment (500), utilities (200), insurance (100), living expenses, etc..... Not much goes into your roll. Let's say the next month, variance kicks your balls and you lose 80BB for the month. You still have to pay your bills. Your roll is suddenly shrinking. This is the "life," and it can get brutal. Are there any people that do this for a living. I don't mean college students who don't want to get a job waiting tables. I mean people with real expenses. I have been doing this for real for since my senior year of college (though it was my once source of income after my sophmore year in high school, but I didn't have real expenses then), thru law school, took a break to be a lawyer, started again, and will probably be done for good in the fall when I go to Berkeley for my MBA. It is tough. Feel free to chime in.

a ) you're talking about playing with only a 450BB "bankroll" at what is probably a tough game. that's insane. i play with 1400BB's at 3/6 and im not even supporting myself.b ) you make more than 80BB per month unless YSAP, so your "bankroll" shouldnt be shrinking, unless you live extravagantly.playing 30 hours a week at 4 tables with a winrate of 2BB/100, you should be up 600 big bets a month before rakeback and bonus. even at 2/4, you could manage all of the expenses that you mentioned and still be contributing to the growth of your 'bankroll'. After 40k hands, it's a near impossibility that i'll be down at the tables i play.

[TheCinciKid 0]

Unless you count the time last January that I deposited $30 on UB with no clue what a bankroll was or how to manage one and quickly went busto, I've never been poker broke.Of course, I've only been playing seriously for 1 year, so who knows...I guess that could change.

[jayboogie 0]

Most players do go broke at some point, but it's usually at the higher limits or at least middle limits. The reason for this is that variance kicks in at some point, your playing against people better than you or on par with your ability and the aggression in these games cause huge swings.To the OP, this topic is probably irrelevant to 95% of the posters on here, because most are not playing all that high where the Risk of Ruin is relatively low. I'm also assuming you don't really play online for those limits, because swings can get a lot more worst than losing 80BB for a month, that happens in an hour sometimes playing online.

[Abbaddabba 0]

People go bust at higher stakes because people arent willing to admit that they might be outclassed. Even great players might not be winners at a 100/200. If they arent honest with themselves, they're going to perpetually go down in flames on a lifelong downswing.The "variance" or whatever you want to call it, isnt exponentially larger at those games as opposed to something like, say, 10/20. Their winrates are just lower, and possibly non-existent.

[dakielbasa 0]

hahahahha.......no seriously i just went broke 2 minutes ago...guess 1000x BB isnt an adequate bankroll for high stakes NL hold em.... never happened before as ive been playing same stakes for over 1000 hours now and have been consistently making money.....no matter how much better i played after taking only 5% of my bankroll to the table i didnt expect this to happenman the lows in poker are abysmal

[Yoda 1]

People go bust at higher stakes because people arent willing to admit that they might be outclassed. Even great players might not be winners at a 100/200. If they arent honest with themselves, they're going to perpetually go down in flames on a lifelong downswing.

But the biggest reason people go broke is because they go on a big winning streak, then assume they can take their whole stack and buyin 5 levels higher then their previous highest limit. Before you know it, all or most of it is gone. Play within what your BR safely allows and you cannot go broke unless you really aren't good at poker! (Assuming you move down in limit when you run bad)

[dakielbasa 0]

But the biggest reason people go broke is because they go on a big winning streak, then assume they can take their whole stack and buyin 5 levels higher then their previous highest limit. Before you know it, all or most of it is gone. Play within what your BR safely allows and you cannot go broke unless you really aren't good at poker! (Assuming you move down in limit when you run bad)

Ya wish i took your advice and moved down in limits... but ive never experienced such a bad streak as this before usually they would go away or seem as if it was going away because i would win some sessions as well...they would go away after a day sometimes a week (less often), sometimes a month (extremely rare but i did have 1 month like this), but never such a HUGE slump in a short amount of time. not to mention when i start losing i become more motivated and focused and play 10x better than when im winning! Oh well, if anyone is reading this... just so you know it can happen to you, and im sure you wont realize this til it happens, but do what he said and go to the lower stakes if you have a bad streak that is VERY drastic

[CobaltBlue 662]

Never gone broke. Never plan to go broke. BR management is my friend.

[nritchi3 0]

I guess you could say i've gone broke plenty of times but it was when i started and would deposit 50 bucks on party turn it into 200 cash out 100 blow through the other 100 deposit somewhere else blow that. And then repeat it then next month. But since my BR got up above 1000 i haven't gone broke.