Scared Money Doesn’t Pay

You'll hear this phrase every once in a while in our game. Most of the time it is after one of us went broke to The Pirate or we were cowering and folded to one of his relentless nickel bets that would have left us even shorter stacked.

It is a terrible mindset to have. It is not a mindset that can win against The Pirate or anyone else for that matter, including me. Even I'll crush you. :-D

As I write this, I am trying to think of any episode of High Stakes Poker on GSN where any of the players were playing with scared money. Maybe on a hand or two, but certainly not for an entire session. They would have been just eaten alive.

One of the ways to keep this from happening is to manage your bankroll. Poker bankroll that is. Take any given session you want to play. Our game has only been $0.50/$1.00 for quite a while. We take it seriously. At the same time it can get expensive. A typical buy in is anywhere from $50 to $100. Most any resource giving advice on bankroll management is going to say have a MINIMUM total sum of 20 buyins to devote to poker. Do the math. There aren't too many of us that have a two dime bankroll.

So, here is what you do to avoid being skeered. Play in games with stakes just that – 1/20^th of what you have for poker. Keep it devoted to poker. If you want to move up in stakes..just do the math and grind it out. You are not allowed to move up until you have 20x your buy in, which 'should' be 100 big blinds.   Now, keep in mind, I'm not your dad, so do what you want.

However, buying in for 100 big blinds lets you actually play the game. You aren't sweating making a call of a preflop raise in position with a suited connector as much. You have the implied odds you need – against the Pirate anyway, because he is NOT buying in short. Someone else committing 10% of his stack preflop, maybe not so much of implied odds. This is another subtle part of the game that I am not getting into here.
Anyway.. keep those numbers in mind: 100 big blinds and 20 buyins. I'm not saying don't play in the 'Big Game'. All I'm saying is you are likely at some point going to be playing with 'Scared Money'. So, until it gets built up to that number, The Pirate will be on the lookout for the Cowards!



In the meantime take a gander at what not being skeered will do for The Pirate:

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/1209631

David Bridge, Jr.
www.nolimitholdempokerpirate.com