pooling my bankroll with two other players.

[fender55]

My two roommates and I have recently been playing a lot of smallish buy-in homegames all over town. To this point we've all just chipped in the $20 or $50 a game and our winnings and probably even the initial buy-ins go back in to our pockets. However, now that we are playing 3 to 4 games a week I want to make the poker money separate and organized.

All Three of us are solid players and regularly dominate the homegames we play. Each of us has significant experience playing in larger games, but bills are high here in So cal, so none of us are playing the $2-$5 NL game right now.

I think it might be best for us to pool our resources to ensure we all have poker money and it stays organized. Here is my idea.

We each chip in $200. This should be enough for $20 tournaments that are extremely soft. From that $600 pool we take our buy-ins. If one of us loses, that players next win, they will have to replenish the bankroll for however many buy-ins they are down.

When a player makes a profit, he gets to keep most of it, but puts a certain percentage in to the BR to keep it growing. I'm thinking that maybe the profit split should be around 70 percent for the winning player and 30 percent to grow the BR.

Will this system work? Should the profit split be a different percentage? Thanks for the ideas.

[VoidCog]

Hmm. Honestly, it sounds a bit needless. Why should I pool resources with others just so I can pay for a trivial $20 tournament -- especially when they take a cut of my winnings. And it allows them a chance to abuse the system by riding off of my success. Or stealing from the BR. I guess it's nice that if I lose, the communal BR is there -- a form of insurance, I guess. But the way it's set up (it sounds like), it encourages the weaker players to sign on, to ride on the coat tails of the successful ones. (A bit like real insurance -- it encourages the sick people to sign on, thus raising the costs of insurance for the healthy.)

Anyway, if you really trust these guys, and it will increase camaraderie, it sounds like it would be fun. Mostly just to have a group of people to talk about Poker with. But if you want to do it just for the hell of it, make sure they're better than you, because if you're using it primarily for $20 tournaments and you each have $200 to front, you don't need eachother's money. Invariably, someone will begin winning a lot, and contribute a lot of money to the pot, while others lose or break even.

Just my thoughts. I'd be interested to know how it works out.

[aka_red]

2COMPLICATED

[fender55]

Yeah, it is a little complicated. However, as I said, the three of us consistently are beating these games, but we're all pretty broke. $200 is a pretty large investment and each of us on our own would not be able to replenish the $200 if one of us ran bad.

We're all playing primarily for fun, but since money is quite tight, I am sort of favoring the micro management of what resources we have.

I know some pros got started by pooling bankrolls with other up and comers to let them play bigger games with a smaller risk of ruin.

These games we play in are two to three tables and pay the top three or four places, based on entrance. At least one of the three of us is in the money most every time with none of us showing dramaticly different results than the other two.

My two roommates are agreeable to this idea, but I wanted to run it by y'all first, since this is one of the few poker forums where I feel I can trust most of the advice. Thanks for the thoughts and I'll keep you updated.

[swiggidy]

I wouldn't. Nothing good will come of this.

[givememyleg]

I wouldn't. Nothing good will come of this.

unless you're twins

[tom]

isn't the point of pooling money to play in higher buy in games? if you're not going to just play the same games I don't see the point.

[swiggidy]

I wouldn't. Nothing good will come of this.

unless you're twins

haha, but no. I think they got lucky (in the fact that no conflict developed).

[jasekelly]

Good luck if you decide to do this?!?!?!?