Bankroll management
Written by dbirider 11/04/05
Next to playing winning poker and sometimes more important is bankroll management. When talking about poker the term bankroll refers to the amount of money you have set aside for the game. Knowing how much you need and how much of it you should use is one of the first steps to making money playing poker.
Here’s an example which happens all the time to new players. A player makes his first deposit of $300 and takes a step into the world of online poker. He doesn’t know where to start and decides to play 5/10 limit holdem. The first day he ends up crushing the game. He makes $400 profit in three hours and calls it a day. The next day he decides he has the game figured out and moves up to 10/20 limit holdem. Again he crushes the game for another $1000. Now this player that started with $300 has $1700 after a total of 6 hours of work. The next day he plays 30/60 and goes broke in two hours. Still thinking he is good and that he just has a bad run he continues to deposit over and over again losing $200 – $500 at a time.
This player’s first mistake was playing 5/10. With $300 you should be playing no higher then .5/1 limit poker. The general rule in limit poker is you need 300 big bets for the stakes you’re playing. This is good for someone starting out with a small deposit but as your poker bankroll bets bigger you should probably play safer with 500-600 big bets per level. Some seasoned players go as far as 1000+ big bets. But if you’re willing to drop down when you have a losing streak of over 100BB’s you’ll be okay.
Here’s a chart you can use to see the minimumyou should have for each level. Try and tackle it form the begenning!
| |
|
|---|---|
| .25/.50 | $150 - $300 |
| .50/1.00 | $300 - $600 |
| 1.00/2.00 | $600 - $1,200 |
| 2.00/4.00 | $1,200 - $1,800 |
| 3.00/6.00 | $1,800 - $3,000 |
| 5.00/10.00 | $3,000 - 6,000 |
| 10.00/20.00 | $6,000 - 9,000 |
| 15.00/30.00 | $9,000 - 18,000 |
| 30.00/60.00 | $18,000 and up |
The next two big mistakes this guy made is having an ego and being results oriented. He thinks since he won a lot of money one week that he will win a lot of money every following week. He’s not thinking about the long term; just about the new car he’s going to buy after 4 weeks of playing poker. Then when the variance does its job and he loses his money his ego kicks in tells him that he’s still better then everyone else. He immediately deposits more money, and immediately loses it. Then he deposits his paycheck and loses that.
You’ll see these players all over the place when you play online poker. They can usually be found rail-tarding the high limit games asking questions like, “Can someone loan me $10? I’ll pay back triple!” It might not be as fun but play by the basic strategy and you’ll slowly but surely end up taking those type of players money.
