How To Master Poker Bankroll Management

OK, we admit it…‘Bankroll’ and ‘Management’ aren’t the most exciting words in the dictionary. In fact, outside of the world of online poker it’s a word combo that usually causes involuntary yawns to crawl out of the faces of everyone who hears. When it comes to Internet poker though, bankroll management is one of the keystones of any decent player’s game.

Bankroll management is something beginners often don’t even bother with and that damages their first poker experiences because they land up basically giving money away to their opponents. No one wants to do that.

If you want to really enjoy popping your poker cherry, you can check out the basics of bankroll management below.

What Is Bankroll Management?

In online poker your bankroll is the amount of cash you have to play with. Bankroll management is the art of looking after your money and making your cash work as hard as it possibly can for you.

Separate Your Cash

Splitting the cash you plan to spend on poker from your general bank balance and putting it to one side, in one online poker account or in several is always a good idea. Doing this will mean you can keep track of your winnings and loses much more easily.

What Kind Of Player Are You?

The two basic types of bankroll management for beginners are aggressive and conservative. The aggressive bankroll style requires more money but the winnings can add up quickly, while the conservative option needs a smaller bankroll, winnings are smaller too but so are the losses! To work out whether you fall into the conservative or aggressive bankroll style, you’ll need to ask yourself some home truths: Would you be happy to ‘reinvest’ even after a series of losses? A major part of the aggressive bankroll tactic is filling your account back up when you run out of money. Are you at the poker table for fun or to make a living? If you’re looking to turn poker into a lucrative career, you’ll need to be strict with yourself and play for long sessions. That means smaller buy-ins and a more conservative bankroll strategy. The idea behind using the conservative bankroll management model is that you can amass winnings little by little over prolonged periods of time.

Pick Your Game Variant

Different types of poker game and poker buy-ins need different amounts of cash pumped into them for optimum play. So pick a game and make sure you adjust your bankroll when you switch game variants or buy in sizes. You can work out what level of buy-ins you should be playing at by using this handy chart. It shows you how many buy-ins you should ideally be able to purchase with your bankroll in order to maximise your winning potential. In the chart below, CG stands for Cash Game. SnG stands for Sit and Go games.

Game	Aggressive	Conservative
No-Limit Hold’em (6 players.), CG	30 buy-ins	100 buy-ins
No-Limit Hold’em (full ring), CG	25	75
Pot-Limit Omaha (6-max.), CG	50	150
Pot-Limit Omaha (full ring), CG	30	100
No-Limit Hold’em, 9-player SnG	30	100
No-Limit Hold’em, 45-player SnG	50	150
No-Limit Hold’em, 180-player s SnG	100	500

So as an example, on a conservative bankroll strategy for No Limit cash games with 6 players, your bankroll needs to stretch across 100 buy-ins. If the buy in is $5 that means you’ll need 100 x $5. This comes to $500.

Roll With It!

Now you can see it’s not just sheer chance that gave poker its slightly geeky image in the first place, it’s the maths formulas that can be used to express the game strategy! Poker isn’t like lots of the other types of online gambling either because it’s a skill-based game, although luck decides the cards you’re dealt. That means you can learn how to play it in an optimum way and be sure that if you follow the maths and study poker theory, you’ll at least break even!