Bankroll management

By Moroun Grinder

Bankroll management is one of the most important and frequently misunderstood concepts in poker. It is a uniquely important concept within the game, because a failure to understand and adhere to it effectively condemns you to lose in the long run, regardless of your actual ability at the tables.

Despite this, bankroll management changes in structure depending on exactly what you want from the game and your current situation, and here I want to look at how much total money you need to play; depending both on your exact situation, as well as the effect different games in poker have on these guidelines. The figures below assume your game of choice is hold'em.

The first group to look at probably accounts for the vast majority of recreational poker players. This assumes that poker is not your primary source of income, you are willing and able to deposit again if need be, and that going broke if the going gets tough for a while is not devastating for you. Although in the long run these figures carry a very high chance of going broke when you hit a particularly bad stretch, in the short and medium term they provide a working platform that enable you to play a lot of games.

In this situation you need roughly fifteen buy ins for no limit/pot limit cash games, 200 big bets for limit cash games, twenty buy ins for sit and goes, and around forty buy ins for multi table tournaments.

The second group worth looking at is where poker starts to account for a substantial part of a player's income. These numbers are higher, as if you are relying on poker for a large portion of your income; you need more capital to weather the swings if the going gets tough. These numbers should start to be used when your bankroll approaches numbers that would be difficult for you to replace.

Here you need around twenty five buy ins for no limit/pot limit cash games, 400 big bets for limit cash games, forty five buy ins for sit and goes, and at least a hundred buy ins for multi table tournaments.

The final group is that of professionals. This assumes that your sole source of income is poker, and that going broke due to running bad would be financially devastating. These are the highest of the numbers – but with good reason – as these figures typically give you less than 1% chance of going broke over a life time of playing, assuming you are a winning player – which is crucial when the consequences of going broke are so severe.

As a full time pro, you typically need at least forty five buy ins for no limit/pot limit cash games. 550 or more big bets for limit cash games, sixty five buy ins for sit and goes, and over two hundred buy ins for multi table tournaments.

With these figures in mind, it is worth taking a look at the effect that the games you choose to play have on these rules, as well as how your general playing style should modify them.

Very high variance games require you to up these numbers. If you play Pot Limit Omaha, you will need to add a decent extra percentage onto these figures because the swings in this game (and thus the chances of prolonged bad runs of form) are much greater than in hold'em, and so require greater capital to play. Conversely, high/low split games of poker – where the variance is much lower – can be played with smaller bank roll requirements, and this should be taken into account when looking at these figures.

A final point to consider when looking at the application of these numbers is your playing style. Very loose aggressive players need higher numbers than these, simply because their playing style makes the swings much larger, and just as in the case of the larger swings of Omaha, the chance of prolonged bad runs of form increases. This is not to say that you should not play loose aggressive (particularly if that style gives you a higher win rate in the games you play), just that you need to factor it in to the numbers outlined here. A loose aggressive Pot Limit Omaha player needs radically different bankroll management guidelines than a tight Stud Hi/Lo player, and factoring these points in will enable you to get to the optimum figures for you much quicker.

Bankroll management is one of the areas of poker that causes players to lose perhaps more than any other. You simply cannot fight the swings in poker, and regardless of ability if you not adhere to good bankroll guidelines you will go broke in the long run, and sticking to solid bankroll rules is critical to long term success.