Good Poker Bankroll Management

The term bankroll management is used to describe a certain parameter or guideline to be used when playing poker. In simple terms, it is the amount of money one would need to buy in to a certain limit. Managing your money when it comes to poker is a very important skill. It can be overlooked by many players and these players often go broke. Not because they are bad players, but because they were buying into a game they could not afford. In poker everyone loses at some point. Even the best players in the world do not win all the time. Poker is a game of numbers and at times these numbers are not in our favor. In the long run they even out and the better players will survive as long as they use proper bankroll management. We call this variance or swings in the poker world. To avoid going broke when you experience a downswing, (which you will at one point) you need to know what proper bankroll management looks like. In a cash game or ring game, you will hear different rules from different players. A general rule of thumb which ensure you never go broke is to have 50 buy ins. This is a bit on the safe side, but it will most definitely keep you from going broke (as long as you are winning player), a losing player will go broke regardless of how much money they have at some point. For example if you plan to play a limit that has.25.50 blinds and a max buy in of $50, you would need to have $2,500 in your bankroll. Like I said this is a bit on the safe side, but it is highly recommended to follow a safer management scale when first starting out. If you are a SNG or MTT player then you would need a much larger amount of buy ins. The reasoning is because of the higher variance involved in these types of games. You can go a long time without winning a tournament and your bankroll will diminish before your eyes. There are two ways to determine a good bankroll for MTTs and SNGs. For MTTs I would recommend using a percentage scale. Since buy INS for tournaments vary all the time you buy in to a certain game based on what percentage of your bankroll it represents. A good rule for MTTs would 3% of your bankroll. What this means is that the buy in for any specific tournament must not exceed %3 of your bankroll. For example, if you have a $500 bankroll, the highest buy in you can play would be $15. This would include the fee a site charges. So, a 12+3 buy in will be the highest limit at this time. If you're like a lot of people who play multiple games at once then you must be vigilant in keeping track of where your money stands. If you buy into 10 tournaments at once your bankroll is already depleted greatly. Since we won't cash or win many of these, then the next set of games must be at a lower buy in to ensure our bankrolls survival. For SNGs, we can stick with a standard buy in rule as in cash games. We still need to go with a higher number of buy ins since there is more variance but it is much easier to keep track of. I recommend and most other professionals will as well, is to have 100 buy ins. This means if we have a $500 bankroll to start, we can play $5 buy in SNGs. One other important part of bankroll management is moving up in limits. In order for our roll to grow faster we should be playing higher limits where the money is higher obviously. We should set rules of when we can move up in limits. The same rule will apply to this. If we are playing $5 SNGs, then we will need $1,000 to start playing $10 SNGs. For cash games if we are playing 50 nl with a 50 buy in rule. We will need $5,000 to move up to 100nl. If you start losing a bunch it is smart to move down a limit until your losing streak subsides. Once you reach your rule of 100 buy ins for the limit you were playing then it is safe to move back up. It can be frustrating at times when you have to play a limit that is lower and you aren't making as much money. However this is what will separate us form the losers. I have seen many great players go broke due to poor bankroll management. It's the ones who use this skill wisely that survive for the long haul.

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