Live Poker Bankroll Management
- Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Chart
- Poker Bankroll App
- Live Poker Bankroll Management
- Poker Bankroll Management Cash Games
- Live Poker Bankroll Management Poker
- Live Poker Bankroll Management App
Poker Bankroll Management at its finest
Discounting a lack of skill, the number one reason a poker player goes broke is due to poor poker bankroll management. Ask any professional poker player for one tip about how to get started in poker and almost all will advise you to practice bankroll management. That is fine, but what exactly is “bankroll management”?
Re: Poker & Ideal bankroll for LIVE poker? Depends if the money is replaceable. If it's not then play 2/5 until your roll is down to about $3-4k, then play 1/2 until you're back up to $5k or so. So, we thought it was time to write up a bankroll management guide. In all honesty, it should’ve been the first thing we published. Because managing a bankroll is one of the most important skills a poker player can learn – sort of like the life-skill of knowing how to balance a checkbook.
Practicing sound poker bankroll management involves recognizing that the amount of money you have in your poker bankroll should always be dictating the stakes for which you play. That’s easy enough to understand in theory, but for some being able to put that idea into practice can be easier said than done.
Over the next three articles, I’ll be sharing tips regarding how to think about and manage your poker bankroll, including offering some specific strategies to help you with decisions about game selection, moving up in stakes, and cashing out.
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Play NowYour POKER Bankroll is For POKER Only
Let’s get one thing straight immediately: only use money that you can afford to lose to make up your bankroll. That is the golden rule. This means that the money in your bankroll is only needed to fund your poker playing. If you think you have a $2,000 bankroll but will need to use $1,500 from it this month or next to pay an important bill, then you do not have a $2,000 bankroll — you have a $500 one!
It is crucial that none of your bankroll is required elsewhere, not a single cent of it, because as soon as it is, you are gambling with money you cannot afford to lose and that can lead to you playing scared or less than optimally as you try to prevent any losses.
Your Bankroll Allows You to Play Your A-Game
Another consideration to make is whether or not this particular poker bankroll with which you are currently playing is the only one you will ever have. By that I mean if you were to lose it, would you have to take a break from playing or could you reload your account with another bankroll?
If you have a well-paid full-time job, losing $500 may not be a big deal to you. But if losing that $500 means you will not be able to play poker for a long time while you replenish your funds, then you may want to be a more cautious with it.
One purpose of our bankroll is to act as a cushion for when we lose, which will happen sometimes, even to the best players. If you sit down online at a $0.10/$0.25 cash game table with just $25 as a bankroll, then all you need to do is lose that one buy-in and you are out of the game. Have several $25 buy-ins behind you, however, and you can stay in the game and try to win back your money.
Your Bankroll Dictates Your Game Selection
How much of a poker bankroll you should have depends on a number of factors. These include the format of the game you play, your playing style, and your tolerance for swings (good and bad). For example, a short-handed (6-max.) no-limit hold’em cash game player can play from a smaller bankroll than can a pot-limit Omaha cash game player because PLO tends to have wider swings (or “variance”). Similarly, PLO cash game players can play from a lesser bankroll than can multi-table tournament players.
The table below shows the number of buy-ins I would recommend for the most common game types currently played online. (Note: bankroll recommendations for online games differ from those for live games.)
In the case of tournaments, the numbers listed below refer to the number of tourney buy-ins. Thus if you like to play $5 multi-table tournaments, a number of 100 (as a minimum) refers to having $500 in your bankroll with which to play. Meanwhile for cash games, the numbers refer to the number of buy-ins into the game wherein a buy-in represents the maximum amount allowed in the game. In other words, if the $0.10/$0.25 NLHE game you like to play allows a maximum buy-in of $25, a figure of 100 refers to having $2,500 in your bankroll with which to play.
Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Chart
| Game (Online) | Minimum | Medium | Cautious |
|---|---|---|---|
| No-Limit Hold’em (6-max.), cash game | 30 buy-ins | 50 buy-ins | 100 buy-ins |
| No-Limit Hold’em (full ring), cash game | 25 | 40 | 75 |
| Pot-Limit Omaha (6-max.), cash game | 50 | 100 | 150 |
| Pot-Limit Omaha (full ring), cash game | 30 | 50 | 100 |
| No-Limit Hold’em, 9-player sit-n-gos | 30 | 50 | 100 |
| No-Limit Hold’em, 45-player sit-n-gos | 50 | 100 | 150 |
| No-Limit Hold’em, 180-player sit-n-gos | 100 | 200 | 500 |
| No-Limit Hold’em, multi-table tournaments | 100 | 200 | 500 |
| No-Limit Hold’em, multi-table tournaments (large field) | 200 | 400 | 600 |
You may be surprised at the figures you are seeing in the above table, but those are the recommendations often given in response to players asking how large their bankrolls should be. Feel free to play around with the numbers and find an amount that suits you and your current situation.
Find Your Comfort Zone
I personally prefer to play with a larger bankroll because I do not want to have to drop down in stakes at any point. Others may want to play with a smaller bankroll in an attempt to climb the stakes faster, but this increases the risk of your needing to move down levels or maybe even going broke. It’s all about personal preference.
Poker Bankroll App
There’s more to bankroll management than simply knowing how much you should have in your bankroll before sitting down in a given game. In the next two articles I will talk about some of these other considerations, including taking shots at higher stakes and cashing out strategies — so stay tuned!
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In live poker, bankroll management is a special topic, because it can’t really be compared to online poker. When you are playing in brick and mortar poker rooms, you’ll be handling real cash. You may not only need to bring thousands in cash with you when you go to play, but you’ll also need to keep track of how much is won, lost, and how much you have left to work with.
One of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a live poker player is to simply play each day without any regard for how much money you are winning or losing. Record keeping is absolutely critical to your success. It’s very much a repeated theme in poker that the small things will separate the long term winners and losers. If you aren’t willing to put in the extra work away from the felt, you should expect lessened returns on your play.
Bankroll management in live poker doesn’t mean that you keep a box somewhere and put money in it. You don’t need to grab wads of cash and place it back away when you are done with a session (though there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this.) Most people will keep their significant amounts of cash safely in a bank account. This won’t only prevent you from losing the money, but it will also allow you to easily determine how much money you have on hand at any given moment. After you have your money carefully stored in a bank account, there are a handful of other steps that you’ll need to take.
Separating Life and Poker Rolls
A term that poker players like to use is “life roll,” which is in reference to how much money they have access to altogether.
Your bankroll may be $3,000, but your total life roll may very well be closer to $20,000. The important thing to remember is that you should try to not make your life and poker bankrolls one in the same thing. This is the type of situations that will allow you to lose more money than you can truly afford. Beyond this, taking shots shouldn’t be done if it means that you’ll need to dip into money that is truly meant for other expenses and uses.
Separating Your Two BankrollsThe easiest, although not always the most practical, way to separate your two bankrolls is to have two different bank accounts. Many serious live poker players find that this makes for very easy accounting. It will also help to ensure that you aren’t pulling money from your normal checking that’s intended to be used elsewhere. This is a very simple way to ensure that your money is kept apart from itself, but it also requires that you have the will power to not break your own rules.
Tracking Wins and Losses
We’re going to break this down into two very important parts:
#1 – Only way to know if you’re a long term winner or loserThere are many poker players who trick themselves into thinking that they are winning players, but this isn’t based on anything other than their own personal recollection. The truth is much more than the majority of poker players are indeed losing players. Anyone can win for a day, a week, even a month, but a weak player will ultimately lose to their stronger opponents if they play enough hands. No matter how sure you are that you win money playing poker, only accurate and honest record keeping will be able to absolutely prove it.
#2 – Way to know when you should move up (or down) another limitA heater isn’t a reason to be taking big and risky shots in bigger games, but a 200 hour sample with a solid win rate can be enough motivation to take your game to the next level. This isn’t necessarily an element of live poker that’s directly involved in bankroll management, but it will make it that much easier to ensure that your wins are maximized and that your losses are minimized.
How Much You Need
The biggest question that brick and mortar poker players have in regards to bankroll management is the most obvious:
While this answer is hardly cut and dry, it’s much easier to answer than it would be for online players. There are three primary limits that most Texas Hold’em players will be participating in:
- $1 / $2
- $2 / $5
- $5 / $10
As you move to higher and higher limits, the more buy ins that you will need. This is one of the fundamental reasons why the player pool thins out as you move to bigger games.
Live Poker Bankroll Management
$1 / $2 Limits
No Limit games will typically carry buy ins that range from $200 Max to $400 Max. There are always going to be the rare games with no cap, but these are more of the exception than the rule. In these games, provided you are a winning player, $5,000 should be more than enough to play with. In online play, this would be nowhere near enough due to the strong skill level of most players at these limits. The difference is that $1/$2 is low limit in live play whereas it’s mid limit in online play. If you are bleeding off money and at risk of going broke with this bankroll, it’s time to rethink your strategy.
$1 / $2 Limits
No Limit games will typically carry buy ins that range from $200 Max to $400 Max. There are always going to be the rare games with no cap, but these are more of the exception than the rule. In these games, provided you are a winning player, $5,000 should be more than enough to play with. In online play, this would be nowhere near enough due to the strong skill level of most players at these limits. The difference is that $1/$2 is low limit in live play whereas it’s mid limit in online play. If you are bleeding off money and at risk of going broke with this bankroll, it’s time to rethink your strategy.
Poker Bankroll Management Cash Games
$2 / $5 Limits
Live Poker Bankroll Management Poker
No Limit tables have buy ins that are usually either $500 or $1,000 Max. It’s more common to see uncommon or deep stacked $2/$5 games than it is at lower limits. This is the limit where skill level starts to pick up, but it’s not fair to say that the games are difficult by any means. As a regular at this limit, a $12,000 bankroll should be more than ample, and many would argue that even $10,000 would be plenty.
$5 / $10 Limits
This is when you’ll start to run into a lot more variance, tougher opponents, and fewer games to choose from. This is really the limit where games drop off sharply. As a result, you are going to be playing with a lot of the same people over and over and will generally have a lower (bb/100) winrate, though this should also create a higher hourly earn which is all that really matters. For $5/$10 NLHE, nothing less than $25,000 should really be considered. You’ll be at greater risk of down swings, there are more deep stacked games, and the destruction of your bankroll is much more likely if you aren’t very careful.
Live Poker Bankroll Management App
Source of: https://www.gamblingsites.org/poker-strategy/bankroll-management-live-poker/