Omaha Bankroll Management
BY POT LIMIT OMAHA STRATEGIES, ON JANUAR Y 10TH, 2011
Bankroll management in Pot Limit Omaha is one of the
most overlooked aspects of the game. Because PLO is a fast paced “action game” it often
attracts gamblers and adrenalin junkies who are more interested in the possibility of getting
lucky and making lots of money fast than protecting themselves against the possibility of a
bad run of cards from the poker gods.
Because you’ve sought out this website I already know that you’re not like that. You don’t
want to rely on luck to beat the games, you want to rely on skill. When you’re winning
because you’re the best player at the table you can keep making money indefinitely and
even turn poker into a full term career, but if you’re winning because you’re getting lucky
it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crumbling down and your bankroll is obliterated
overnight.
So how should I manage my bankroll?
That’s a good question! In No Limit Hold Em it is generally recommended that you should
maintain a bankroll at least 20x the buyin for the stakes you choose to play. That means
that if you play at the $10 six max cash game tables then you should start with a $200
bankroll. Of course if you don’t have thatmuch to begin with you can’t always follow these
guidelines, but they are best practices if you want to avoid going broke should a bad run of
cards fall your way.
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Because PLO is a much “higher variance” game, however, we recommend you try to keep at
least 40 buyins in your bankroll for whatever game you’re choosing to play. That means if
you’re currently playing the $50 PLO cash games then you should stick to those stakes until
you have built your bankroll up to $4000, at which point it would be a suitable time to move
up to the PLO $100 game. By sticking to these guidelines you will almost eliminate the
possibility of going broke and your skill will shine through in the long run. Remember
though, if you were to go through an unlucky streak and your bankroll went down below
$2000 you would want to switch to PLO $25. By always moving down as your bankroll
shrinks it will be almost impossible to go broke.
On the other hand the absolute worst thing you can do, and the sign of a gambler and not a
poker player, is to move up when you start losing rather than moving down. It’s a typical
human reaction, to try to chase your losses by moving to bigger stakes. The problem with
this strategy is that if it doesn’t work, and at least half the time it won’t, you’ll end up going
broke extremely quickly and losing everything you might have worked months to build up.
The lesson is this: if you want to make sure you have a future in poker and a possible
reliable income then you need take bankroll management seriously.
But what is variance?
Variance would be any event that departs from your expectation. In poker you usually get
your money in with varying degrees of equity but you will generally either win or lose by the
river. Let’s say you get all in on the flop with top set against your opponents open-ended
straight draw. You are roughly an 80% favourite and the pot is $100. Your “expectation” is
$80 over the long run, but in this particular hand you will always either win $100 or end up
with $0.
Getting into that situation repeatedly would earn you a lot of money over time, but if you
were unlucky you might even lose 3 times in a row. That would be what we callvariance and
it happens more often and more brutally than some people realise.
In Pot Limit Omaha you can be the best player at the table and because of a bad run of
variance you might still lose 5, 10 or even 15 buyins. The more situations where you get
your money in close to 50/50 the higher the variance will be. In Pot Limit Omaha coinflips
are extremely common–far more so than in NLHE–and because of that you want to have a
larger bankroll to deal with the swings the game inevitably delivers.
The other reason the variance in PLO is so high is because it’s so much easier to get
outdrawn on the turn or the river. In No Limit Hold ‘Em if you flop top set you’ll almost
always have the winning hand by the river, in PLO on the other hand you have to get used
to being constantly outdrawn. Using some of the tips and strategies outlined in this website
will help you to learn when to get away from big hands when you’re beat but you’ll still be
forced to often pay off in situations where it feels like you’re getting unlucky over and over
again.
To give you an example of just how erratic variance can be over the short run take a look at
the following two images. The first image shows 100 players who normally have win rates of
5 big blinds for every 100 hands they play. In poker circles this is generally the notation
used to determine somebody’s “win rate” and 5bb/100 is considered vary high. The image
shows the random variance of 100 players over 100,000 hands playing at the $25 buyin
0.25/0.50 cent games. You can see that some players who are riding the good side of
variance earn a massive $5000 whereas the unluckiest players barely eke out a small profit.
Then compare that to the 2nd image which is over a 1 million hand sample. Here we can
see the randomness of variance beginning to equalise and everybody showing clear profits,
as good players always will do over the long run.
[Click either image to enlarge]
How can I begin to build my poker bankroll?
The trouble with needing $2000 just to safely play the $50 PLO cash games is that most
people do not have $2000 to invest. Perhaps you are just learning the game and only have
starting capital of say $50-$200. Don’t worry, that’s fine, and it’s how I started.
I built my entire bankroll from one single initial deposit of just $50. From there I played
very low stakes until I built it up to $200, I then moved up a little more and it all snowballed
from there. Don’t get me wrong, along the way I went down as well as up,
but whenever that happened I made sure to drop down and never risk more than 10% of
my roll on any one table at any one time. It was this discipline, rather than any good play
on my part, that allowed me the time to improve my game, learn from my mistakes, and all
the while not go bust.
The problem with this process is it was a long and gruelling one. It took me almost six
months before I was able to start playing at stakes that actually meant realistic money.
When I finally began playing the $100 tables and earning a few hundred dollars a week that
is when I was finally able to quit my job and make Poker my full time living. Sure it wasn’t
much at the time, but the freedom and the knowledge that I was on the path to real
earnings was exhilarating.
But who wants to grind out tiny profits for six months?
Although I did it, it was because it was the only way I knew. Later I realised that there was
a fast track way to building a $2000 poker bankroll and it’s all to do with making the most
of the sign up bonuses the various online cardrooms offer. By simply moving your bankroll
around from site to site while taking advantage of their great deals you can turn a $50
deposit into a healthy $2000 bankroll within just 2-3 months EVEN IF YOU’RE A
BREAKEVEN PLAYER!
The even better news is that because you’re using the strategies on this website there’s no
reason why you shouldn’t be a winning player while you grind out these bonuses which
means at the end of the process you could have an even bigger bankroll that that.