What is bankroll management?
The skill of bankroll management in poker is almost as important as playing the game. Your bankroll is the money set aside for playing poker. Most inexperienced poker players don’t carefully manage it and put too much money at risk.
Even the most successful players go through downswings and it’s impossible to stay in the green every session. If players enter a poker cash game or multi-table tournament (MTT) with too much of their bankroll, they put immense pressure on themselves.
Even legendary high-stakes players make bankroll mistakes, which sometimes cost them their careers and lifestyle. Gus Hansen is an especially tragic example of a player who rose to the top, only to take a $20,000,000+ loss and almost leave the poker scene completely.
Managing your bankroll and creating a solid budget can help you play poker long-term.
This article teaches the fundamentals of bankroll management for cash games and MTTs, ways to track your bankroll, and other useful lessons.
Top 3 Tips to Improve Your Bankroll Management
Before we talk about specific bankroll management strategies for cash games and tournaments, we need to cover the most basic principles.
These three tips are guaranteed to improve the way you manage your poker funds.
1. Don’t break the bankroll rules that you set.
When you create a plan for managing your poker bankroll, it’s important to be disciplined. Don’t deviate and play higher stakes than you need to. If you play poker at a casino instead of online, be disciplined and decide on your bankroll limit before you arrive.
Bankroll management is supposed to minimize the effects of downswings (negative variance). If you jump up to higher stakes, you’ll be playing more difficult opponents and increase the cost of negative variance.
There will be a time to raise the stakes you are playing, but you don’t need to rush.
2. Carefully select the games you play.
In general, the higher the stakes are, the more skilled your opposition will be. Of course, there are exceptions, but this is a good rule of thumb.
You need to be playing at a level where you have as much advantage as possible. You might have a great win rate at $0.05/$0.10 tables, but that doesn’t mean it will be the same at $0.10/$0.25 or $025/$0.50.
Find a stake level where you are comfortable and showing sustained success. Some poker sites are softer than others, which can boost your win rate even more.
3. Remember, this is an investment.
Once you decide how much to use for poker, treat the amount with discipline. Don’t use it for expenses and make sure the account is only used for poker.
Choose an amount, but don’t intend to refill it any time soon. For example, don’t start a bankroll of $100 and tell yourself that if you lose it, you’ll add another $100. That’s not disciplined and you're essentially going outside of your bankroll every time you refill.
Choose a bankroll size and stick with it. If you are strategic, you can use almost any size of bankroll.
Instantly Increase Your Bankroll Size
Almost every poker site offers a bonus to new players, but not all bonuses are equal.
America’s Cardroom has one of the largest deposit bonuses in the world right now. If your bankroll size is $200, America's Cardroom will match it with another $200. You’ll get a boost to your bankroll, but not all at once. The bonus will be released as you play poker on the site, but that’s still extra money in your bankroll.
The maximum deposit size for this bonus is $2,000.
Bankroll Management for Cash Game Players
Players who prefer NLHE and PLO poker can easily create a bankroll management strategy by checking their win rates. This is shown by how many big blinds you win over 100 hands (EV bb/100).
Do some testing and find the stakes that give you the best win rate and returns.
No calculator is needed to find your win rate. The easiest way to see it is by downloading a tracking program like Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker. These tools clearly show you total winnings (or losses) and win rates over 100 hands, but there’s much more they can do.
Both poker programs are also fully-functional heads-up displays that give you real-time information about your opponents. All of the data your poker tool collects can be displayed in chart or statistic form. You can even make direct comparisons between your chart and another player’s.
There’s good news! Holdem Manager and Poker Tracker have free trials you can start right away.
You should have over 100 buy-ins for the stakes that you decide to play.
You can quickly find your bankroll size with a calculator. Find the buy-in amount, multiply it by 100, and you’ll see the minimum bankroll size you should be playing with. For $0.01/$0.02 games with a $2 buy-in, you should start with a bankroll of at least $200.
Bankroll Management for Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs)
Multi-table tournaments are poker events with more than one table of players online or in the casino.
MTT poker players need to consider two things that cash game players don’t:
- The size of the player pool (total player count for the event)
- Your expected win rate or edge over your opponents in the tournament
Winning poker tournaments can take time and there may be extended periods without cashing (collecting prize money).
You should start with a tournament bankroll size of 100-150 buy-ins, especially if you are new to bankroll management.
That may sound like a massive amount of buy-ins, but you need to be thinking long-term. A bankroll of 100 buy-ins gives you enough room to comfortably play poker, despite the variance in MTTs.
Note: Another good way to build up a bankroll without risk is to enter freeroll tournaments.
If you play $1.10 tournaments on PokerStars, you should start with a bankroll of $110-$165. Just so you know, the largest $1.10 tournament is the MicroMillions Knockout, with a $6,000 prize pool. That tournament is no-limit Texas Hold ‘em, but there are PLO events on PokerStars too.
