Bankroll Management

Having a good bankroll management will be an essential key to your survival in poker.

Let me explain what bankroll management means in graphics:

Imagine you have a 5cm wide and 5 meters long wooden board in front of you. You want to get to the other side. Easy. Even your kid who has just learnt to walk can do it. Do it again.

Fear will stop you from getting to the other side. You do not feel comfortable. This is the same in poker once the stakes get too much for the bankroll. The bankroll is basically the environmental setting around you. Yes, there are better players at the table. Yes, the blinds are bigger. Things change and you need a bankroll that can afford to lose while you are adjusting to those new things. Do things wrong. Lose. Learn. Improve. Never lose the bankroll.

 

I learned on pokerstrategy.com at the very beginning that 25 maximum buy ins is a healthy bankroll management.

This means when you are playing 1c/2c blinds a maximum buy in can be considered 100 big blinds, so 2$. I buy in for 250 big blinds at 5$, because Pokerstars lets you and I don't want people to have a bigger stack than me. That is one buy in, so at 50$ you have a very healthy bankroll for 1c/2c. This however does not mean you can move up to the 2c/5c game. Here you want to buy in for 5$. Pokerstars lets you buy in for 12.5$. Suddenly you need a bankroll of 125$ to make you feel as comfortable as the 1c/2c with 50$. Now it is up to you, can you improve your game here too to continue growing you bankroll?

 

My experience was that I had to move down quite often. It's easy when you are in that transition stage moving to higher blinds. You understand that you have to move up and down to get you game to the level so that you can beat the competition. It was hard going from 10c/25c to 5c/10c to 2c/5c to 1c/2c. It was killing my passion for poker. It was painful. It was frustrating. It made me play bad. From 950$ to 28$. I still had my bankroll. Believe me, on the way down I ignored bankroll management rules and it was an even worse experience. 5 tabling with 28$ left in my account and 5$ per table was actually not ignoring my bankroll management. Maybe it was even the first time in a long time I was exercising bankroll management. This is where I turned around.