I did a brief audit of all my poker sites and it appears that my bankroll is now $450. That’s better than I expected and only $50 short of the NL25 minimum bankroll. Although if I want to be strict with myself the actual ‘move up to NL25′ point is 25 buy-ins (so I have an overlap), which is $625, and that seems a long long way off.

So I’ve started to get twitchy about my bankroll and being at NL10 and not really moving forward very quickly. That sounds kinda stupid since it was only June that I cashed out and started again from $30 – it’s not as if I’m heading in the wrong direction!

I think the thing is that it feels like I’ve been playing NL10 forever – I started out playing online poker a little bit more than two years now and where I was playing had NL10 minimum. I would play, lose, redeposit etc, but didn’t really know what I was doing. I found 2p2, starting raising preflop more, and started losing even more. Fortunately I moved to Pokerstars where I switched to NL5, although continued to spew horrendously (losing 40 buy-ins! Check my lifetime chart – that’s the slightly smoother crash at about 12k hands). I moved to NL2, fixed some major leaks (ie learnt to fold), and started rebuilding.

So I’m feeling confined by NL10 – I’ll tempt fate by saying I’m not here because I can’t play any better, but merely tethered by my bankroll being insufficient. And that’s where this whinging is moving into dangerous territory – I’m getting seriously itchy to start taking shots at NL25. I know I can do ok, but I also know that I’m a swingy player and it could be an utter disaster. I don’t play sufficient volume to iron that kind of thing out (which is also why I’m not moving up quickly enough – I’m too lazy to play enough hands!).

To divert myself from making a big mistake I decided to try the MTT route again last night. I played a bunch of 180 & 90 man SNG’s, thinking that a single good win would give me the wriggle room to ‘safely’ take a few NL25 shots.

Of course it didn’t go to plan – I only played a handful and as everyone knows you have to play a whole bunch to realise a ‘real’ return from these things. Out of the 8 I played I only cashed in one, and that was really stupid – I was 3rd in chips and we were down to 15 (from 90). I ended up calling a shove with TPGK to see the with villain with 2 pair. Turned out the villain was 2nd chip stack, and I was out. So stupid… I did the same thing on another 90 man – chip leader until about 20 people left, then threw it away on two badly played hands.

So, still feeling twitchy. I need to come to some kind of decision by Saturday – chances are that’ll be when I’ll have a go if it comes down to it. However if I do it while feeling that I’ve got to make a return I’ll play badly and probably make things worse. And then what happens if it goes well? Even a nice 3 buy-in win won’t push me into NL25 territory – it’ll only make me want to risk my BR more.

Bankroll management sucks.