Hello everyone,
I've been playing online poker now for seven years and one of the things that kept me on point is something called bankroll management. Some of the older players that have been around for awhile probably already know about this concept, but to all those that are just starting out this is something to consider.
First off bankroll management is where you play at certain limits to avoid losing all of your bankroll due to bad runs of cards, which any poker player must expect from time to time. This is called ‘playing within your bankroll’. Subsequently, if you play at higher limits where there is too great a chance of losing all of your poker money, you are ‘playing out of your bankroll’.
The reason why you should choose your limits carefully in poker is due to the variance. Variance is a term used to describe the ‘ups and downs’ of poker where you fluctuate from having bad runs of cards to good runs of cards, resulting in varying profits and losses. If you play poker for long enough there are going to be periods of time where you will consistently lose money, not because you are playing badly, but because the cards are not falling your way. This means that if you do not have enough money in your bankroll to absorb these downswings, it is likely that you will lose it all.
So your asking yourself what limits should I be playing at?
Cash Games
If you play No Limit poker, the safe recommended size of your bankroll is 20 times the full buy-in of where you want to play. This means that if you want to have the best chance of making money at a $1/$2 game where the maximum buy-in is $200, you should have a bankroll of at least $4000. Another way of applying bankroll management is by only putting a maximum 5% of your entire bankroll on the table at any one time, which works out the same as having 20 times the buy-in for the game.
If you play Limit Holdem however, you should have 300 Big Bets as a minimum for the limit you wish to play at. Therefore to play $1/$2 limit Holdem, you should have a bankroll of $600 at least.
Tournament Games
It is recommended that you have a bankroll that will give you 40 buy-ins to the level of tournaments that you wish to play at. Therefore if you want to play at the $10+$1 Sit n Go’s you should have a bankroll of $440.
For any poker player intending to make money from playing poker, it is essential that you exercise good bankroll management skills. If you do not then you are setting yourself up for failure that you will find hard to prevent, no matter how good you may be at poker.
It should be noted that if you are a losing poker player, bankroll management is not going to help you win money. The guidelines mentioned above will only apply if you know that you are a winning poker player in the long run.
:smile::smile:::grin:
