Great post Steve. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Remember when Patrick Sebastian challenged us to the 10 to 250 challenge? It was somewhat of a wake up call for me about bankroll management.

With respect to online play, I've basically been unable to play at the levels necessary to exercise proper bankroll management techniques and play the games that I wanted to play. For example, a $50 initial deposit is too little to play the TPT which is a $5 buy in event. Risking 10% of your bankroll on a single buy in is just well above what you should be doing.

So I created a separate Full Tilt account for the sole purpose of the challenge, and have stuck to the bankroll management techniques reccommended by Chris Ferguson in his $0 to $10k challenge. It's been a real grind, but I've been able to move up in levels twice, and have run my bankroll from $10 to just about $100. I'm still a long way away from the $250 goal, but I've been steadily increasing the bankroll, and only moving up in payscale when my bankroll tells me that I've been running positive enough to take the risk.

But here's the more important thing, when I went through a rut, I moved down a level. I feel that it was VERY important to realize that when I wasn't winning at the higher level, instead of jepordizing my bankroll on players that had a likely higher bankroll (especially since they now had my money ), that I needed to eat a slice of humble pie, stand up, and move to another table with lower limits. I think that this is the mark of a good player. Being able to recognize limits that are acceptable to play within so that you're comfortable if you do lose. This is a game of skill, but it also has an element of chance/luck. And sometimes, the cards just don't fall your way. When you're on the one of the down swings, you have to know what your comfortable losing, and not jeopardize your entire bankroll with the swing.

Moving up for me is just a simple matter of mathematics. If you've got the cash, you can take a swing at the bigger stakes for a percentage of your bankroll that you're comfortable losing. But when you don't have it, stay disciplined, and within the ranges that you're comfortable playing at.

Paul, as usual, you have a very detailed and reasonable approach to moving up in levels. I agree with all that you have said and I don't find it difficult to move down in levels when my bankroll is in jeopardy.. Thank you for the comments and thoughts about moving up and down levels.

Paul, as usual, you have a very detailed and reasonable approach to moving up in levels. I agree with all that you have said and I don't find it difficult to move down in levels when my bankroll is in jeopardy.. Thank you for the comments and thoughts about moving up and down levels.

[...] July 14, I wrote a post about “When to Move to the Next Level”. My twitter poker tour friend, Paul Ellis AKA @CoolWhipFlea of PablosPlace.com wrote a great [...]