Poker Bankroll Management
What is Poker Bankroll Management?
Your bankroll is the amount of money which you have put aside to playing poker. Poker bankroll management is a strategy to determine how to use it. It is a very important skill, but a lot of players ignore it.
Setting aside a poker bankroll means you’ll have an easier time when it comes to dealing with variance in the game. And with a bankroll management strategy in place, you’ll have a clearer idea of what buy ins to play and when to move up or down in stakes.
For winning players, as well as anyone taking the game seriously, bankroll management is a must. It’s both a financial tool and a way to lessen the psychological impact of losses.
Why is poker bankroll management important?
Bankroll management is nothing to do with poker strategy. But it will help you out when it comes to maximizing your winnings (or minimizing your losses). Technically, bankroll management is for winning players. But new and recreational players will benefit from a bankroll.
Having a poker bankroll will help any player to enjoy the game responsibly. By keeping your funds separate from the rest of life’s costs, you ensure that you’re only playing with money you can afford to lose.
With your funds set aside, you can start to use bankroll management to progress your poker career. This involves choosing the right average buy in to fit your bankroll and win rate.
The aim of poker bankroll management is to play at a given buy in level without risking too much of your funds. This gives you less chance of going bust and maximizes your opportunities to moving up in stakes.
Bankroll management and variance
Even if you have a huge edge over the field in the poker games you play, bankroll management is still necessary. Nobody is ever guaranteed to win a given poker game. The reason for this is statistical variance, the element of chance inherent in poker games.
In the short term, anything can happen in poker. For example, if you have pocket aces against pocket deuces, you can expect to win the pot around 80 percent of the time. Still, 20 percent of the time your aces will get cracked. And there’s nothing stopping this from happening several times in a row.
Statistics are a strange thing. In the long run, your aces will win much more often and you will gain chips or cash. But in the short term, you need to be able to withstand any anomalous outcomes.
Bankroll management cushions you against bad beats and downswings. Playing with separate funds and within your bankroll limits avoids the blow you might experience when on the wrong side of chance.
Understanding variance will help you to understand why bankroll management is so important.
Setting aside your poker bankroll
This responsible approach will make poker more enjoyable. Think about it this way. You should start out with money you can afford to lose. If you win games and you see bankroll growth, it’s a bonus.
For winning players, a poker bankroll represents an allowance. But also a foundation for their career.
Decide what you want from poker. If you want to play regularly or aspire to improve, you’ll need a larger bankroll to accommodate a run at higher stakes. And provide a decent enough cushion against going broke.
If you only play for fun, reloading your bankroll each month, you might not need a large bankroll.
But the amount you use for your initial bankroll is personal choice. In any case, with your poker bankroll set, you can take steps to put in place a bankroll management strategy.
Playing poker at the right buy in level
The next and most important step is choosing buy in levels suitable to the size of your bankroll. Base this on your average buy in, which we’ll go into more detail about later on.
You shouldn’t risk your entire poker bankroll on one or two games. That’s a very quick way to go broke because of the chance element to the game, which you have no control over. The amount you should risk per game should only be a tiny fraction of your poker bankroll.
To illustrate with an extreme example:
Let’s say you have a poker bankroll of $100. You decide to play two $50 tournaments. The first one, you bust when you lose a 60-40 hand. The second, you actually min-cash for $70. Already though, you have lost a third of your bankroll – and it could have been a lot worse. You would have lost the lot if you didn’t manage to cash the second tournament.
The better approach, from a bankroll management perspective, is to play 50x $2 games, or even 100x $1 games. This gives you a decent cushion to play with, so you can afford to lose many times before finally getting the win.
It may seem like a conservative approach (and it is). But using bankroll management like this protects you against variance. And sustains your run playing a particular poker game.
The advice varies when it comes to knowing exactly how many buy ins to have. There are also other considerations to take on board. Things like your goals in poker, your win rate, skill level, and the variance of the game type you’re targeting. We’ll cover those in more detail soon.
In any case, serious players should be able to afford to lose their stack at least 20 times in any game. But a 50-100 buy in bankroll is preferable. You can see our What is the Best Poker Game for You? lesson  for advice on how many tournament or table buy-ins you should aim to budget for with your bankroll.
Bankroll management for different game types
Poker bankroll management is subjective and affected by many factors.
In short, you’ll need a bigger bankroll if the poker games you are playing are high variance. Either because the competition is tough, or because the field size is larger. Here’s a rundown of bankroll management strategies according to game type.
Bankroll management for tournaments
Multi-table tournaments have the highest variance out of any of the poker games. You’ll have to win several big pots, often with only a small edge, to make the money and min-cash. Deep runs and final table finishes are rare.
Even players with exceptional win rates expect to lose many buy ins before hitting a big score. A win or final table finish will provide a huge boost. But you’ll need the initial cushion of buy ins to give yourself a shot.
Variance is even higher in certain tournaments. No-limit has higher variance than limit players will experience, for example. While turbos and hyper turbos are higher variance than slower speed poker games.
For this reason, the recommended strategy for tournament players is to have at least 50-100 buys ins. The lower end is fine if you have a decent win rate and the field sizes are small. For bigger field multi-table tournaments, you’ll need a larger bankroll.
Bankroll management for cash games
Variance is less dramatic in cash games. A cash game player can actually see an sign of their true win rate after 10,000-20,000 hands. It sounds like a lot, but this is a lot less than tournament poker. An online cash games player could reach this in a matter of weeks or months.
As such, as long as your win rate is decent, you can play with a smaller bankroll when targeting cash games. The recommended amount is 20-30 full buy ins.
A full buy in for cash games is the maximum stack you can bring to the table, which is 50-100 big blinds. So, in a $0.10/$0.20 cash games, the maximum buy in would be $20. So you would need a minimum bankroll of $400-$600 to compete at this level using proper bankroll management.
Bankroll management for live poker
Poker bankroll management is similar for both online poker and live poker. For live poker there’s an extra consideration. You’ll need to account for extra costs such as transport and accommodation.
If you play live cash games or tournaments at your local casino, these costs may be minimal. But if you travel to play week-long live poker series, the costs of hotels, travel and expenses can add-up.
You’ll need to factor in these costs and combine them with your average buy in level to see how this impacts your bankroll management strategy.
Consider your skill level
There’s a somewhat hidden factor when it comes to bankroll management. If you want to be a winning player, you can’t select buy ins based only on whether you can afford to play at those stakes. You’ll also have to consider your own skill level compared to the competition.
As you begin moving up in stakes, competition gets tougher, especially in online poker. Not everyone will be a master at the mid or high stakes. But a greater number of opponents will know at least the basics, leaving less of an edge to gain.
With bankroll management, what we’re actually talking about here is win rate. If your win rate is higher, then you have more of an edge over the field. As a result, variance has less of an impact. If you only have a very slight edge over other players, you’ll experience higher variance because spots are more marginal.
So, the smaller your edge, the bigger your poker bankroll will need to be to give you the cushion you need. This is going to need honesty on your part. And you may want to track your results over time to figure out your approximate win rate in the games you’re playing.
For new players, even if you can afford a larger bankroll, you might want to start small when it comes to buy ins. This will allow you to gain the knowledge, experience, and confidence required to move up in stakes.
Controlling your average buy in
A poker bankroll management strategy aims to regulate your buy in levels according to the funds available and your skill level. So, if you have a $200 bankroll and are using a conservative bankroll management strategy for multi-table tournaments, you should play events with buy-ins of about $2.
But, you don’t have to stick exactly to $2 games. You can use this as your average buy in and deviate by including both lower cost and higher cost poker games.
For example, you may want to play a mix of $1, $2, $3 and $5 games, always keeping your average around the $2 mark. This allows you to mix in a few higher stakes games to gain experience. And give yourself a chance of winning a prize that could boost your poker bankroll.
Moving up in stakes
It may seem tempting, especially if you win a lot of money in one tournament or promotion, or deposit a huge amount. But you’ll want to avoid moving up in stakes immediately. Poker is not a get-rich-quick game. Professional poker players have spent thousands of hours to get there.
Before moving up stakes, you’ll want to review the aspects of bankroll management discussed so far:
- Have a big enough poker bankroll to fund your campaign
- Have the skill and confidence required to compete at a higher level
When it comes to skill and confidence, it’s up to you to know when you’re ready. As a guideline you’ll want to be crushing your current stakes before making a significant jump. Then, test the waters and see how you get on.
If you’ve been crushing the games you play, you’ll have seen bankroll growth resulting in having the funds to move up. You can then use the same poker bankroll management formula to see if your bankroll can support the new buy in level.
For example, you start with a bankroll of $200 and are playing $2 games. You’re looking to move up to $5 games. To keep the same conservative 100x buy in bankroll management strategy, you’ll need around $500 in your poker bankroll.
Reaching a point in which you can move up in stakes is one of the most rewarding aspects of poker bankroll management. It’s the fruits of your labor!
Taking a shot
Lower stakes players may feel the urge to play higher stakes games, or to compete for life-changing prizes. Like taking a shot at the Sunday Million or a WCOOP event.
You can do this while still sticking to your average buy in. You can play games that are equal or less than your average, and throw in the occasional higher stakes game. The other option is to play satellites around your average buy in.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a shot. As long as it doesn’t throw you off your poker bankroll management strategy.
Moving down in stakes
On the other side of the spectrum, knowing when to move down in stakes is a huge part of poker bankroll management. It’s not something any player wants to do, but doing so could well save your poker career.
Your poker bankroll management strategy is designed to give you enough buy ins to sustain a run at your stakes. But variance can still hit you so hard your bankroll starts to crumble. This is called a downswing, when you are running way below your expected win rate.
If a downswing hits you hard, you’ll no longer have the 30 buy ins to play online cash games. Or the 50-100 buy ins needed to play MTTs. When this happens, you’ll need to switch levels so your average buy in falls in line with your current bankroll.
For example, let’s again say you start with a $200 bankroll, but this time you’ve lost half of it and have just $100 left. You could carry on with a $2 average buy in, but if this carries on you’ll be running on fumes.
So, you decide to switch to a $1.50 average, boosting your relative bankroll back up to 75x buy ins. If you fall any further, you can switch to a $1 buy in level.
Moving down in stakes is never desirable. It is a (hopefully) temporary measure stopping you going broke. And it gives you breathing space to play out a downswing. And start climbing back up with bankroll growth.
The golden rule is you shouldn’t play higher stakes than your bankroll permits. If this means moving down in stakes, then so be it.
Is it possible to build a bankroll from scratch?
To start using bankroll management you’ll need funds to play real money games. For many winning players, starting small is the way to go. This is what’s recommended for those who are new to the game.
If you’re looking to play real money games without depositing funds, this is possible. Freeroll tournaments are completely free to enter, but with real money prizes to win. If you manage to win one of those, you’d be setup for very low stakes real money games.
The problem is regular freerolls tend to attract huge fields. While promotional freerolls only come around once in a while. You’d have to be very patient to make freeroll tournaments a part of your strategy for building a bankroll.
Bankroll management and tilt
We’ve focused on the financial implications of poker bankroll management in this article. Specifically on keeping funds separate and choosing games without going broke. And the biggest chance of moving up in stakes.
Aside from the financial benefits, bankroll management also has a psychological element. It makes the result of individual games or hands less meaningful, reducing the side effects of losing a big pot.
For example, let’s say you’re playing a $10 game with a $100 bankroll. Losing this game would cost you a huge chunk of your funds. It’s going to hurt if you get bad beat or crash out before the money.
Now, let’s say you are playing the same $10 game with a $1,000 poker bankroll. This time, losing one game will cost you a tiny fraction of your funds. Losing is not going to hurt as bad.
A solid bankroll management strategy can reduce the frequency and intensity of tilt in poker. It reduces the chances you will get frustrated while playing and lose your edge.