Firstly, I don’t like your point about “not playing poker outside of your bankroll building project”. Personally I’m building a bankroll multi-tabling SNGs. I’m grinding them out successfully and moving up the levels as my bankroll grows. However, I do play live games with friends, and also Sunday tourneys at much higher buyins – but I treat them as totally different things. I guess it comes down to attitude, and some people would be different, but so long as your goal keeps you motivated (in your earlier poinst!) then I think it’s no trouble getting back to the grind after playing a bigger game!

My second point (this ones’s probably a bit more constructive!) is that often I see people recommend a fixed number of buyins for a bankroll. In fact you say 40 – 100 buyins for SNGs. Well in my opinion, if you’re a reasonably solid player you can get away with much less than that, so long as you set the rule (and stick to it!!) that you scale your buyins down if your bankroll decreases.

For example – let’s say someone is playing $6.40 SNGs, your guide would be that they need a bankroll of between $264 and $640. We I would say 30 times the buyin is fine, but if you have less than 25 times the buyin you drop back a level. So you would need to start with aournd $200 to play the $6.60 games, but if you dropped below $165 after a losing streak you would then start playing the $4.80 games until you had built it back up. That way your bankroll is never in danger – but you do need the discipline to stick to it!!!

Great blog BTW!
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