Bankroll Management

It's been a few days since my last entry and, since then, I've participated in two additional home cash games -- One in which I crashed and burned (never play poker when you've just gotten bad health news about your family) and the other last Friday where I walked away with $910 (which more than compensated for the previous loss).

But, an odd thing happened with that win. I started calculating profit-to-date in my head and not only forgot to subtract out my initial buy-in ($250), I also somehow completely forgot about my earlier loss two days prior. I've always had a selective memory, which I think accounts for my generally positive attitude, but when it comes to managing profits and losses in poker, a selective memory is borderline dangerous.

I found a free app for the iPhone called Poker Income, which is just that. It's a way of logging all poker activity (it even allows for player/hand logs) and let's you categorize poker games by type (cash/tournament), buy-in, stakes, cash-out, and more. So, now that I had this seemingly excellent tool, it was time to go go back through past email to determine exactly how many games I'd played, where, and what my profit or loss was at each.

May was a bad month for poker. I was just learning how to play live and hadn't even figured out chip denominations. The fact that I only lost $450 or so total during this time is pretty amazing. June was much better. My total profit for June was $1400. This seemed a little low to me, but as I started looking back over the fields I'd filled out, I noticed that the software correctly accounts not only for your buy-in amount, but that it also subtracts out your tips to the dealer and that steak dinner that you spring for after the Charlestown visit. It's interesting to look at the reporting and see how much of your profit gets chipped away by meals out, tips, the house rake, and more.

That being said, I now officially have a bankroll. For all intents and purposes, since I'm pretty admittedly overpaid, I've always had a bankroll, but this one's official. This was built solely using poker earnings, and, ideally, I'd like to work only from this official bankroll and not have to dip into the money I've sucked off the teet of the federal government.

So, today's bankroll stands at $1140. It's not a lot, particularly given that the average buy-in for a $1/$2 table is $250. But, it's a start. For a gal who couldn't even tell you within a couple hundred dollars how much her bi-weekly paycheck is, having an actual, accurate bankroll reporting tool is pretty impressive.

Now if I can just start avoiding those steak dinners.