Poker Bankroll Management

Many poker players with great potential, never manage to go up the stakes. They do not build a large enough poker bankroll.
A consistent and long-term approach is needed if you want not to go broke.
The lack of discipline and the construction of a proper strategy often is the main reason for failure or slack career development.

Variation in Poker

Variation is a big part of the game poker. You may be able to control things and make the right decision, but the factor of luck, no matter how small is, will not always be with you.

It is not uncommon for professional poker players to lose a small number of Buy-ins in a short time. 

If their bankroll management is not at a proper level, they are not able to continue playing.

How to Start?

There some rules shall be considered as standards for the management of the bankroll 

As we said a little above, the variation in the games you have chosen to play is the leading factor in determining your bankroll strategy.

To easier understand will take as an example a disappearing more and more in recent years SnG (Sit § Go) format.

We decided to use this format because the example is most understandable to most people.

If you play SNG tournaments with a slow structure and deeper stacks, you will need a significantly smaller amount of Buy-ins than if you play the same format but with a Turbo or Hyper turbo structure. 

Because with deeper stacks and the slow structure of blinds, the hands reaching a showdown are much smaller, and you have time and opportunity to choose the situations that are better for you.

In the turbo tournaments with fast increased blinds structure, you have to play much more aggressively and take a lot of marginal decisions. 

This leading to situations in which you either have to be ALl-IN or need to pay ALL- IN, due to the small number of Big Blinds you or your opponent have left

The examples we have given are made based on a more advanced player sure of his knowledge and the levels he plays.

You can use them as a foundation to build your strategy.

Tips for beginners

It is a fairly common mistake for many players to disperse across different formats, be it cash games,

Spin & Go or Multi-Level Tournaments.

As strange as it may seem, each format has different ranges to use and strategy of playing and adapting.

What we can advise you is to choose one format and focus your learning efforts entirely on it.

After gaining more experience and adapt faster and easier and you can play whatever you want.

Some mistakes to avoid for most played formats Multi-level tournaments and Cash Games.

Multi-Level Tournaments

One of the biggest mistakes that even more advanced players make is what tournaments and where to play.

If you want to be a professional poker player, you need to understand that poker is a long-term job. It’s in our nature to strive to be the best to earn big and to make it faster than we can. 

The seductive big prize pools that attract amateur players are the worst choice you can make if you don’t have a serious bankroll.

It’s funny how many players don’t realize that the variance in tournament poker is deadly.

The big guaranteed prize pools with hundreds of thousands of dollars are the biggest trap of variance. Don’t get me wrong!

You can play these tournaments, but only when you have a bankroll for them. I want to say that they are the worst choice you can make when you want to build your poker bank. Here is an example of why

Will take, for example, the daily tournament on Poker Stars The Big $11.

The Big 11 is one of the good for playing tournaments.

With the weak player field, a large prize pool, and $4000–$5,000 for first place.

Everything looks great, a lot of the players miss the fact that players participate in this tournament are more than 3000

On the other hand, we’ll take an $11 tournament in the smaller poker room like 888poker, where no more than 300 players participate. The 1st place is about $700-$800.

Now we want you to be careful about how many more hands you need to win, how many times you will have to flip in the tournament with 3000 players and more, and how much in a  tournament with 300 players. 

Think about how often would win the tournament with more than 3k players, and how often will win with 300 – 400 players. One has a large prize pool, but there are 10 times more people to beat, which is the trap called variation.

In summary, we would advise playing in small rooms in much as possible, and tournaments with a low number of players. 

Yes in the beginning the opportunity to win an amount of 5 – 10k $ will miss, but you will win tournaments more often, will increase your poker bankroll a lot easier, and the risk of failure will be at times lower. 

Not a small factor is also the role of the mental mindset and the motivation for development.

Cash Games

In cash games, things sit a little differently.

In Cash Games is important to be able to adapt to players at the appropriate levels and to implement in your plan the strategy called “Stop Loss”.

In the beginning, depending on your poker bankroll, you can set a Stop Loss of about 10% for the day.

Also, the RakeBack is not a small factor when choosing where to play and what bankroll strategy to use.

You can check out our Poker Deals section and even write to us, and we will advise you where is the best place for you to play according to us. On base what is the level of your skills and bankroll you have?

In many ways, Poker is a game based on skills, facts, and numbers. If you crush your stakes, and you are confident in your skills, you can use another strategy used by many to climb stakes.

The strategy is to define a certain number of Buy-Ins of the stakes you try to climb.

The most common number is 10 to 15 Buy-Ins that you can risk moving to the next limit.

Dedicated Poker Bankroll

If you want to have a poker career, even just to have some side income, the most important thing to do is to determine your poker bankroll.

Like any company, it has the capital to grow and operate in poker is the same.

If you want to succeed in determining poker capital and raising it over time is an inevitable factor.

Having a solid online poker bankroll will improve your game by decreasing the stress factor after falling into a downswing, and provide you with overall financial stability.

Conclusion

As a conclusion to everything written, we conclude that the secret to a successful bankroll strategy is discipline, a well-prepared plan, and, last but not least, hard work.