BANKROLL MANAGEMENT IN POKER HOLDEM

If you are seriously interested in winning money on poker (or any other game for that matter), maybe even playing poker professionally, it is imperative that you manage your bankroll correctly and set aside a certain amount of money solely used for playing. This amount, the bankroll, must be managed in a mathematically sustainable way in order for you to make it as a player. This is because in all forms of games, there are unforeseen factors.

Give yourself room for bad luck

In poker, luck or chance are factors you cannot afford to ignore, and even in a game of skill like poker, they may affect your results during extended periods of time. Because of that, you need to give yourself room for bad luck. Bad luck that sometimes may extend over very long periods of time, without it breaking you. In the beginning, it may not be hugely important to have a good strategy for money management, but as soon as you have amassed a bankroll big enough to be worth protecting, you should ensure that you do not play for higher stakes than what is mathematically sustainable for your bankroll.

There is no way of completely protecting your bankroll. In the long run, you can always find yourself in trouble, no matter how careful you are, and lose everything. But you can minimise the risk of it happening and give yourself the chance to stop having bad luck.

A maximum of two percent in one single game

Everyone who writes about managing your bankroll suggest various sums that you should not exceed in one single game. So do we. The sum we suggest may be considered overly conservative by many. But poker players, in particular tournament players, have every reason to be conservative. We would suggest using no more than two percent of your bankroll on one single table or tournament. If you only play Sit & Go or cash games, you may increase that to five percent, but if you play tournaments with large numbers of players, two percent is a nice sum. It is not too little for a good place in a large tournament to boost your bankroll considerably, and you can afford to end up outside of the money in fifty tournaments in a row, if you keep playing at the same level until you are bankrupt. In the large tournaments on the Internet, often with 500 or even 1500 participants, it is easy, even for a highly skilled poker player, to miss the money over fifty tournaments in a row.
If you are having an extended bad period, you should lower your stakes so that they are the same in relation to the bankroll. If the bankroll falls below a level where it is not worth very much to you, you can play for higher shares of the bankroll, but it pays to be conservative. Many of the world’s best players have lost everything they own during their careers, and not just once either. At the same time, there are many, more conservative, players who have been able to live on poker for fifty years, with far more modest bankrolls, because they are not tempted by the glamour of risking their entire bankroll to get rich in one night.

Lower the limits when you cash out

When you cash out, remember to lower your stakes. Many, otherwise sensible players, complain of ”the cash-out curse”, that they always seem to lose large amounts after cashing out, without considering the fact that their bankrolls are more sensitive to fluctuations if they do not lower their stakes when reducing their available bankroll.

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