Bankroll Management is a key part of poker that every long-term player should be aware of. Bankroll Management basically involves controlling your poker finances well so that you can continue to play poker and win money without the risk of going broke. Being able to play within your bankroll is fundamental to becoming a winning poker player, because without it, it would be impossible to make money from the game.
If you are playing in cash games, you should try and have 20 full buy-ins for the limit that you would like to play at. Or in other words, you should only be sitting down at a table with 5% of your bankroll at most. Therefore if you would like to play at the $1/$2 no limit tables, which have a buy-in of $200, you should ideally have at least $4000 in your bankroll. Alternatively, if you prefer playing in tournaments, you should be looking to have 40 buy-ins for the entry of the tournaments you wish to play in.
At first this may seem like a larger amount of money than you might need, but it is necessary to have a good bankroll like this to absorb the effects of variance. Variance is something that causes bad players to have winning streaks, and good players to have losing streaks. In poker there is an element of skill along with an element of luck, as we cannot control what cards we are dealt or what cards will come out on the board. Therefore even the best players in the world will have bad runs due to variance, which is why we need to have a good bankroll so that we can continue to play even after losing a substantial amount of money.
In addition to having a large enough bankroll to absorb the effects of variance, a good bankroll will help with the mental effects that a losing streak can impose on your game. Say for example we are playing $0.50/$1 no limit with a good $2000 bankroll. If we lose 5 buy-ins, we are brought down to $1500, which although it is a sizeable chunk of our poker bankroll, we can still keep a positive frame of mind and battle on. However, if we are playing with a $1000 bankroll, a $500 loss will leave us with $500, which can be detrimental to our game. The thought of having lost half of your bankroll can cause a player to go on tilt and throw away the rest of their bankroll hoping to get lucky. Therefore a good bankroll will help us to keep control of our emotions and play well when in the middle of a losing streak.
It is important to remember that no matter how good you may be at poker, you can never become a long-term winning player if you do not exercise good bankroll management. Once you know the general rules, it shouldn’t be too hard to keep control of your money and set yourself on the right track to winning some money. However, this will only apply if you know you have a winning game, as no amount of bankroll management will be able to help you to win money if you are a losing player.
