I've talked about the Lazarus line on this blog before. As a refresher, it's the amount below which you cannot allow your stack to fall if you expect to avoid hitting the felt. When I first came up with the idea, I had a pretty conservative idea of where the line fell; as I recall, I thought it should be somewhere around 22% of your starting stack size. As my play matured and my skill level increased, I realized that number was too high, and adjusted it downward somewhat; I forget the exact umber I picked, but it was somewhere around the 15% mark. Now that I'm older, and poker-wiser, I realize that I was calibrating the Lazarus line all wrong. It shouldn't be a percentage at all, but a pure number - the number of big blinds below which you cannot allow your stack to fall. Of course, there's a way to translate back and forth between dollar amounts and big blinds, but by expressing the Lazarus line in big blinds, it drives home more forcefully the dire predicament you're in if your stack falls below it. The new Lazarus line is ... drumroll, please ... 10 big blinds.
Last night, at the end of hand 96, my stack fell below my new definition of the Lazarus line. I was playing at a $250 / $500 table, so I needed to keep my stack above $5,000. It hit $4,944 at the end of hand 96. After that, I went on a tear. Not only did I not hit the felt, I brought my stack back up to within shouting distance of the black, though I never got there. I knew I'd made a good escape, and quit in order to consolidate it.
During current Hold'em session you were dealt 141 hands and saw flop:
- 13 out of 20 times while in big blind (65%)
- 8 out of 21 times while in small blind (38%)
- 48 out of 100 times in other positions (48%)
- a total of 69 out of 141 (48%)
Pots won at showdown - 7 of 15 (46%)
Pots won without showdown - 12
delta: $-8,293
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,447,704
balance: $7,804,657
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Hey Neo,
ReplyDeleteJust top-off. Don't play short-stacked if you want to make the most chips.
Thanks,
Al