Bankroll question (1 Viewer)

[MrCatPants]

For those of you who track a bankroll, how do you handle situations where you share action in a tournament (think staking each other)? If you receive winning from a staking effort, is that a poker success that you track alongside the dollars you may make or lose while playing? If you are staked, do you still count the success personally or is that a gain you never realized?

Is staking someone else not bankroll related, but being staked is?

 

[acezag]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it seems like you're making this too complex. A bankroll = a fund walled off from all other money and dedicated to playing poker, with the purpose of helping the player intelligently plan for and ride out variance. It's structured for a specific game and buy-in strategy.

Staking is an investment (or speculation) with the hope for a return. Doing so out of my bankroll is temporarily reducing the careful structure and strategy I designed to navigate variance.

Personally I'd be doing that out of other funds. Some people have a "mix it all together" strategy, but I think that invites a lack of discipline, which can translate into a deadly double whammy if I'm tilting bad in a big wave of variance.

 

[TheJestyr]

Short answer: It depends on your situation whether you’re using a dedicated bankroll to track your poker results, or if you’re using your a bankroll to keep poker/speculative investments separate from your living/family/other expenses.

Early in my poker journey I would track ONLY wins and losses from poker. Not tips, gas money, etc. I just wanted a metric to see my results and what I could work on to improve. But I also had funds outside of poker that took care of all other expenses. But I also wasn’t a “professional,” I just kept records to see if I was improving. (Spoiler, I’m bad at poker)

Later in my gambling journey, I treated all poker/gambling/speculative investments in the same boat. If I backed a player, it came from that investment pool. If I bought poker chips, it came from those funds. Vintage guitars or other music gear that were more investments, crypto, short term loans, etc was all from the same pool of funds. For me it was more about creating a separation between family expenses, solid investment, and then my “mad money” fund.

So ultimately, it depends on what you’re tracking. For me it evolved from almost feeling like a video game where I was just trying to get more “points” to today where I have three kids so I’m much more responsible with what portion of my funds goes where.

 

[TheJestyr]

Also, for about a year I took it really seriously and tracked all my expenses in daily journal entries. Ran it like a true cash business. And when I backed someone, I treated it as an alternative investment. And while I wasn’t backed, I would still occasionally swap pieces with other players, I just treated it as if I played a smaller tournament (so if we swapped 10% in a $1k tournament, I’d enter the log as if I played a $900 tournament and based my results off that)….not saying it was the right way to do it, especially when you take tax ramifications into account, but that was my method…but as I stated above, I’m bad at poker so I never had big scores to track haha

 

[MrCatPants]

Short answer: It depends on your situation whether you’re using a dedicated bankroll to track your poker results, or if you’re using your a bankroll to keep poker/speculative investments separate from your living/family/other expenses.

Early in my poker journey I would track ONLY wins and losses from poker. Not tips, gas money, etc. I just wanted a metric to see my results and what I could work on to improve. But I also had funds outside of poker that took care of all other expenses. But I also wasn’t a “professional,” I just kept records to see if I was improving. (Spoiler, I’m bad at poker)

Later in my gambling journey, I treated all poker/gambling/speculative investments in the same boat. If I backed a player, it came from that investment pool. If I bought poker chips, it came from those funds. Vintage guitars or other music gear that were more investments, crypto, short term loans, etc was all from the same pool of funds. For me it was more about creating a separation between family expenses, solid investment, and then my “mad money” fund.

So ultimately, it depends on what you’re tracking. For me it evolved from almost feeling like a video game where I was just trying to get more “points” to today where I have three kids so I’m much more responsible with what portion of my funds goes where.

Thanks. This is a helpful answer. I've been including costs directly related (tips, time charges and memberships in texas card rooms) but do keep any "gambling money" budgeted and separate.