DYM's, spreadsheets, bankroll and about a million other noob questions

EvilPingu

Having watched Channel 865 since the end of 2007/beginning of 2008, I signed up on Sky Poker at about 5 minutes past midnight on my 18th birthday I've currently been playing DYM's at various levels using my welcome bonus, as well as trying out Bounty Hunter tournaments and the 2p/4p cash tables. I haven't deposited a single penny yet, just playing with what's left of my £10 welcome bonus for now.

So far, here are my DYM records, which I have been recording in excel:

£0.30 - Won 4, lost 5 (44.4%)

£0.60 - Won 2, lost 1 (66.7%)

£1.15 - Won 12, lost 3 (80%)

£2.25 - Won 4, lost 4 (50%)

£3.30 - Won 5, lost 3 (62.5%)

According to my spreadsheet, I've made just under £8 in my first couple of days on here in DYM's. I've found the 30p and 60p's have too many weaker players which means I can't make moves as they usually just call with ATC (Maybe I'm doing something wrong here ), so from now on I want to play at a minimum of £1.15.

Here's my dilemma:

I'm very comfortable playing at the £1.15 level - I would back myself to beat players at that level most of the time. The losses at that level are because of people hitting a 2-outer on two occasions, and the third one was me being an idiot and playing at 4am and trying to stay awake, and making a call which I wouldn't usually make if I wasn't falling asleep on my keyboard.

At £2.25 and £3.30, I've played 16 games and pretty much broke even, however, I've found the games more challenging and would probably say that I'm at about the same level of poker ability as the majority of players at that level.

1st Question: Should I stick to the £1.15 level and build up my bankroll (Currently about £6 after my latest cash adventure/disaster) for the time being, or should I deposit some money and start playing on the £2.25 and £3.30 tables and playing against players where I'm going to improve my game?

2nd Question: Despite making a small profit on the £1.15 DYM's, I've also had a go at the 2p/4p Cash Tables, and usually end up losing my £4. However, I don't know whether it's because I'm playing badly, or whether the rest of the table are weak and I'm having the same problem as I have been with the low stakes DYM's. Can anyone shed any light on this? I know I've not posted any hands, so I know I probably haven't given enough info.

3rd Question: How many buy-ins should I have in my account for DYM's? I remember the experts always say never spend more than a certain % of your bankroll on 1 tournament, but does that still apply for DYM's because the variance is relatively small compared to tournaments?

Thanks for reading, and hope you guys can help

jugglegeek

Sounds like you are doing well. Keep going and good luck. I play about 90% cash and the rule is you need 20 buy ins for the level you wish to play. So for NL4 you need £80. Because there is so much variance in MTTs I would recomend that you have 40 buyins for MTTs. DYMs are much lower variance so you can probably get away with 10-15 buy ins but I would still recomend 20+.

The reason for this is because bad beats happen all the time, they are part of poker and the reason that poker is profitable. If the best players won everytime and there was no luck involved then poker would be more like chess and people wouldn't play each other for money, just pride. It's very possible to be playing 4 tables at once and suffer a DYM ending bad beat on all four at the same time (I've lost my buy-in at four cash tables within 10 seconds when multi-tabling and I went in with the best hand on all four). When this happens you need to be able to think "sigh! that's poker" not "holy mother off... I just lost half my bankroll!"

Keep on grinding and see you on the NL4 tables soon when the fun really starts

Lambert180

1) If you have the spare cash to do it, then I would recommend you deposit a little bit more to have enough money yo play at this level. Purely because I dunno if you've noticed but at the 60p games the rake is 10p (20% of the buy-in), so you're only actually doubling the 50p and as you move up the levels, the percentage rake gets lower which means you don't need to win as often to make profit. Definitely read JohnConnor's DYM guide though, he's a DYM pro and it's really helped me:  https://www.skypoker.com/secure/poker/sky_lobby?action=show_static&page=poker_community_blog&plckBlogId=Blog:984622ff-5ae6-4357-a087-da942593ca53&plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&userId=984622ff-5ae6-4357-a087-da942593ca53&plckPostId=Blog%3a984622ff-5ae6-4357-a087-da942593ca53Post%3a83f0cf62-41cc-4fdf-ae31-6c78ff94aaf4&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest

Also check out my DYM thread in the General Poker Chat section because I'm doing something similar....grinding DYMs and I've only been doing it for a few weeks.

2) Well I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're playing well enough to beat 4NL (which really isn't that good lol) but this can just be variance and the reason it's hard to take is because £4 is such a big chunk of your bankroll. I'm not saying you should deposit this much (I've never even deposited half of this) but if you had £100 the site, losing £4 from a bad beat wouldn't worry you too much. If you're good, then you will win in the long term but you have to have a big enough bankroll to be able to last long term.

3) You'll see in JCs DYM guide that if you're playing 2 tables at a time (or less) then you should have buyins for the level you play. So if you play £1.15 ones you need £25.30, then once you've worked that up to £49.50 you can move up to £2.25 cos that's 22 BIs for the next level.

Hope this helps and Welcome!

Wilhelm

20 buy ins is fine for DYMs but if you really want to be really confident of not going broke somewhere like 40-65 buy ins is advisable.  Although the rake is higher on the £1.15 tables, my results tell me that they are the softest by a long way.  I don't know why.