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I was wondering if anyone had good advice on building a bankroll live.

Because of the low volume of hands, I've generally been playing an "earn a half buy-in, re-evaluate and leave" strategy as a low variance way to get up to the 20 buy-ins I need before I will start going for thinner spots.

So far, it's working, but I'm also leaving a lot of money on the table while building. I was wondering if people that have already climbed that mountain had any decent tips, or strategies.

Thanks,

So you leave when you're winning? What do you do when you're losing?

I don't think leaving every time you make 1/2 buy in is a good strategy at all. Just play when the game is good, quit when it's not. Don't focus so much on winning each time, just make good decisions.

leaving when you win half a buyin sounds like a really bad plan imho.

How many buyins do you have? Are you playing 1/2? Is your current bankroll all the money you have available for poker, or could you get additional funds if necessary? (This affects how risky you should be.) What games does your casino offer? How much experience do you have playing NLHE live? How much experience do you have playing NLHE online? Can you describe briefly what you consider to be your edge in the games you play in?

As others said, your plan seems very suboptimal, but it's hard to make a recommendation without knowing more about your situation.

How many buyins do you have? Are you playing 1/2? Is your current bankroll all the money you have available for poker, or could you get additional funds if necessary? (This affects how risky you should be.) What games does your casino offer? How much experience do you have playing NLHE live? How much experience do you have playing NLHE online? Can you describe briefly what you consider to be your edge in the games you play in?

As others said, your plan seems very suboptimal, but it's hard to make a recommendation without knowing more about your situation.

I typically leave the house with 3 buy-ins.

I'm playing 1/2. My current bankroll is all the money I'm willing to put up right now. It's easy to get more, but I'd rather not have to.

1/1NL, 1/2NL, 2/5NL sometimes 2/5PLO and 1/3 spread

Most of my NL experience is live. My biggest edge is preflop, but my postflop edge is starting to get substantially better since I've started value betting thinner on the river. Most of the time it's still a game where I need to make hands, but I'm getting more out of those hands.

My online experience is mostly limit and SNGs. I would probably only be a winner online to about .25/50NL, but a winner at 3/6L and 30=3 SNGs

I know the strategy is horrendous, which is why I'm asking for advice from people that have done it. I'm only doing it because it seems pretty low variance.

As for when I quit, If I lose a big pot on a mis-read, I'll re-evaluate my play, and the table after the loss. If the table is bad for me, I'll usually quit. If the table is really good, I'll think about any adjustments I can make, and review my mental state. If I feel tiltty, I'll just leave.

Personally I go with the mindset of "I'm going to play X hours" and I generally stay until I feel like I'm not playing my A game anymore (if I'm tired, hungry,etc).

Now sometimes there's a somewhat rare occurrence where I'll stay longer, like a few weeks ago...

Some maniac gave away about 1700, was shoving 100bb preflop in the dark, and rebuying a bunch. I ended up staying 12 hours to try to snap off a piece, and only managed to get 200 =/. I was able to call a $200 PF shove with 10/10, that's not something you're going to be able to do if you're super worried.

I actually started really short (with 200bb/2 buyins). Luckily I managed to run pretty well until I got comfortable with live play. When I was still really short I was just starting to play live, and I was NOT comfortable playing deep at all, now I prefer it.

You strat is screaming scared money, you might not think it (I didn't when I was) but it is. Put in more time, get comfortable with live play, and with your BR.

All I will say is live is a lot slower than building up your bankroll online, so you have to take some shots if you really want to get anywhere. So yeh, pushing it to something like only having 15 100 big blind buyins isnt the worst idea. But it sounds like youre on way too thin of a roll, like 3 buyins, that aint going to cut it period, even if you have a job, id recommend like 7 or 8 buyins at least.

If you don't have a roll and don't really want to dip into other money to replenish, then take PLO out of your resume. You're gonna have huge swings, it's just the nature of PLO. You're not great at po-flop play? then double what I just said, PLO is a disaster waiting to happen.

I dont understand why people quit when they are winning. Poker is just one big session.

Unfortunately, you are trying to get around variance in the game that is unavoidable. In theory, short stacking live games could be very profitable, but you are hurt by the high rake and it is a really painful way to very very slowly build a bankroll.

The most important thing you can do is to really work hard on your postflop game and be able to buy in deep. You really aren't taking a whole lot more risk, because you can profitably play in a style such that your deep stack only goes in when you have a big equity edge versus your opponent's range. That's the general dynamics of how live play goes, since value betting is much more important and bluffing is not a big component of the game.

If you're not great postflop, then you are going to have a significant risk of ruin, and no attempt at quitting after winning X amount or playing X hours is going to stop that. In fact, stopping after small wins is likely to lead to serious tilt and bad judgment when you hit the inevitable run of suckouts and coolers that everyone encounters.

Maybe I'm taking this wrong, but essentially; "play as long as you're feeling good about the situation and don't worry about anything else" is what I'm getting from the comments.

I focus more on putting in hrs. I'm tracking my results in Excel but one of the most important fields is how many hrs. I play. A friend of mine doesn't play that much and has trouble keeping in the game. I think he's trying to gamble and make something happen in a short session or one night for a few hrs. For me, my plan is to be able to do well over the next year playing as many hrs. as I can. Typically I like 4 hr. live blocks of time. I really don't want to ever play less than 3 hrs. because it takes an hr. or two to learn the table and players. 4 hrs. gives you enough time to hopefully do ok. That should give you 120 - 150 hands. After 4 hrs. take a break and if things are good then play another 2 - 4 hrs. I always remember as soon as I'm done, they will still be spreading cards when I wake up the next morning. It's pretty much 24/7 so it's always there. I want to be playing much better 5 years from now and even a lot better 10 yrs from now.

I can not help but think you should go online, build your roll there and gain far more skill and knowledge ther faster while playing within ones BR. Anyone think this is a better plan?
I will state the number one reason for tilt is being under rolled.
If this is all the money you are willing to put towards your venture and you are currently under rolled you should really re evaluate. Give it more commitment with the realization that it is going to take a lot of time, effort and money or recognize that you are not prepared to make that commitment and spend the money on something else. Just an honest thought, not a criticism from someone who really understand how high the odds are stacked against you.

I can not help but think you should go online, build your roll there and gain far more skill and knowledge ther faster while playing within ones BR. Anyone think this is a better plan?
I will state the number one reason for tilt is being under rolled.
If this is all the money you are willing to put towards your venture and you are currently under rolled you should really re evaluate. Give it more commitment with the realization that it is going to take a lot of time, effort and money or recognize that you are not prepared to make that commitment and spend the money on something else. Just an honest thought, not a criticism from someone who really understand how high the odds are stacked against you.

IMO going online to build a live bankroll isn't really going to improve your live play, they're very different beasts. While there are plenty of things that apply to both, you really can't play the same way.
Taking a partial live roll (lets say a couple hundred dollars) and putting it online to get adequately rolled would also take a very long time I would imagine. Considering options for US players are very limited, you might not even be able to play high enough to effectively build that kind of roll. Someone that plays online might be better able to chime in here, but afaik all of the sites we're able to play on have very limited traffic, and higher stakes games aren't really an option like they used to be.

So... u guys are saying that if I wanna play say 1/2 NL Live with max buy-ins at 100bbs, then I should have $3000 - $4000 set aside strictly for playing poker? Where each time I bought in to play it would come from this bankroll, and all my profits as well would go to the bankroll? Am I correct in assuming that the main reason for having a bankroll is so that your decisions at the table aren't tied to your current financial situation, and your play doesnt have to halt when you hit a downswing associated with variance? I see the value in having a bankroll for these 2 reasons but I feel like it would take me too long to save that type of $$$. Should I not play a hand of poker until that happens?