Bankroll and variance

A winning player can lose for weeks. In Spin and Go, the multiplier adds variance on top of the usual poker variance: a big part of a regular’s profit comes from the rare big multipliers, and you can go a long time without hitting one.

Your bankroll is the money set aside for poker, and its only job is to survive the swings. Play with too little of it and a normal downswing puts you out of the game.

How big are the swings

Over 100 games, luck decides almost everything. Over 500 games, a good player can still be down. You need several thousand games before your results say something reliable about your ROI.

Downswings of 100 buy-ins and more happen to every regular. Hence the usual range: 100 buy-ins at the very least, provided you move down when the bankroll shrinks, and more like 200 to 300 if you cannot reload from another income.

Moving up, moving down

Move up when your bankroll covers 100 to 200 buy-ins of the next limit and your results over thousands of games are clearly positive. Move down without hesitation when a downswing brings you under 100 buy-ins of your current limit.

Moving down is not a failure, it is the rule that keeps you in the game. The players who go broke are the ones who refuse to.

End of the beginner level

You know the format, the seats, the depths, the hand families, the button and big blind ranges at 25 BB, the shove zone, the three textures and the basic c-bet. That is a complete simple strategy. The intermediate level makes it precise: ranges at every depth, blind versus blind, heads-up, and the maths behind the shove.

The final exercise below mixes questions from the whole level.