You make a 10% ROI on the $50 tournament so you profit $5/game. Your 50% ROI on the $10 tournament nets you the same $5/game, but now you’re making those $5 with a great deal less variance. It’s not fancy and the potential for bigger scores is minimised, but bankroll management isn’t a gambler’s game, it’s an investor’s game. Poker Bankroll Management Tools & Apps Luckily, nowadays there are tools to help with proper bankroll management. We no longer have to bring out the pen and paper! Poker Charts (picture above), for instance, is a online service that allows players to manage their bankroll and analyze results through their website.

1. Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Chart
2. Bankroll Management Tournament Poker Odds
3. Bankroll Management Tournament Poker Rules

• A poker bankroll is the amount of money a player has set aside to play with at the poker table. You should only ever add discretionary or recreational funds to your bankroll. Proper bankroll management means that if you were to lose your entire bankroll, you’d still be able to pay rent, afford bills, and sustain yourself.
• Tournament bankroll management: Why have a bankroll? It goes without saying — a 'poker bankroll' refers to money set aside for poker only, and should not overlap with living expenses or other funds.

Bankroll management is one of the most talked-about topics in poker, and yet nobody takes it seriously. If you are not managing your bankroll well, you will probably end up with none. Defining your bankroll helps you to have a clear goal on how much money you are willing to invest in poker and what you can expect out of that investment. And, managing that bankroll will make sure that you never run out of it.

What is Poker Bankroll Management?

In order to understand bankroll management, you need to first understand the term ‘poker bankroll’. Poker bankroll is the total amount of money you want to use for playing poker. It is the amount that you have set aside for the sole purpose of playing poker. It does not include the money you have in your bank account or the salary you receive every month. It also doesn’t include the every-now-and-then deposits you make on poker sites or the occasional money you bring to offline poker games.

Poker bankroll is the overall sum of money you are prepared to risk for playing poker. For example, if you earn $1,000 a month and you decide to put $200 each month for playing poker – That will be your poker bankroll. So, $200 is your poker bankroll, and the rest of $800 is safely stashed for your rent, daily expenses, savings, etc. You need to strictly define your poker bankroll. No matter what happens, you will not add an extra buck to your poker bankroll. So, it is vital to have a strict limitation on how much money you are willing to risk in poker.

With that strict restriction, comes the important role of managing your poker bankroll. This is broadly defined as poker bankroll management. It is the management where you put fixed and certain limits on your bankroll to avoid losing all of your money. Poker is a game of skill, but there are instances where you can lose money due to a bad run of cards. You must be prepared for that. If you manage your bankroll well, you will never run out of your entire bankroll. It’s as simple as that!

Why is Bankroll Management So Important?

If you are a casual player, don’t think that bankroll management is not important for you. Even if you are a casual player, you will still need to put a certain amount of money to play cash games. If you don’t set a limit to your casual play, you will never have a track of how much money you had spent in poker.

Poker Bankroll is an Investment

Playing poker is just like running a business. In business, you need an investment. Once you invest, you will definitely expect a Return of Investment (ROI). If you don’t know how much you have invested, you will never know if you are incurring losses or gaining a positive ROI. So, if you consider playing poker as running a business, you will be serious about the investment and play your best game to gain a good ROI.

Bankroll Management Controls Your Variance

If you play with optimal poker strategies, you can make a good profit. However, things may not always go in your way. Although you played your best game, you may have a bad run of cards and end up losing money. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose! These “ups and downs” and “profits and losses” are part and parcel of poker. Such fluctuation is called variance. So, you need to have proper bankroll management to absorb the variances. Effective management will help you to deal with such variance so that you don’t lose your entire bankroll.

How to Manage Your Poker Bankroll?

Good management starts with setting your bankroll limits. So, what is the ideal bankroll limit? The answer depends on the type of player. Some devote more time and money to the game, while others opt for casual play. Therefore, the amount varies from player to player.

The first step in managing your bankroll is to find out which cash table and tournament suit you the best. You need to find that sweet spot where you are most comfortable. Once you finalize the table limit where you are most comfortable to play both tight and loose, you need to put a limit to your bankroll.

Setting Up Your Bankroll Limits

As mentioned above, there is no ideal bankroll limit. However, it is recommended to have a bankroll of at least 20X the full buy-in of your preferred tables. So, if you are comfortable playing at $2/$5 tables ($ is a variable), you should have a bankroll of at least $10,000.

Here’s the math: At a $2/$5 table, the Big Blind is of $5. A full buy-in is usually 100 Big Blinds.

$5 (Big Blind) X 100 = $500 (full buy-in)

20 X $500 = $10,000

Why You Should Have at Least 20X the Full Buy-in?

You must be wondering, “Isn’t it too much?” Actually, it’s not. Remember that poker bankroll is the amount you are solely keeping for the purpose of playing poker. If you are playing at $2/$5 tables, you are dedicatedly keeping $10,000 for poker. So, when you sit at a table with $500 (full buy-in), you are risking only 5% of your total bankroll.

There is also a psychological aspect. If you have 10X full buy-in, the bankroll will be $5000. If you lose 5 full buy-ins, your bankroll will deplete from $5000 to $2500. On the other hand, if you have 20X full buy-in and lose 5 full buy-ins, your bankroll will deplete from $10,000 to $7500. Although you have lost the same amount, the psychological impact is different. Losing 5 full buy-ins out of a bankroll of 10 full buy-in looks like a huge loss and might force you to change your playing style.

Poker Bankroll Management Chart

For your quick reference, check out the bankroll management chart below for cash games. We have not added any currency. You can add the currency according to your own country.

Track Your Poker Bankroll

An equally important aspect of bankroll management is to keep track of your profits and losses on the days you play poker. Note down the profit and loss made during the gaming sessions. You can create a Google spreadsheet and update it at the end of the day to keep track of your bankroll. Add as many categories you want to add to make a comprehensive poker tracking sheet. An example is shown below.

Tips to Avoid Losing Your Poker Bankroll

There are hundreds of tips on how to avoid losing your bankroll. However, the best tips are the ones that come from experience. You are the master of your own bankroll. So, with experience, you will formulate new strategies to avoid losing your bankroll. We can teach you some of the tips, and you can apply them in your games.

Select Your Tables Carefully

This is the foremost strategy to apply before deciding on your bankroll amount. Play at different tables and find out which tables suit you the best. You should be comfortable enough to risk the full buy-in at the selected tables. Even if you lose the full buy-in, it shouldn’t burn a hole in your pocket. You should be comfortable enough to 3 bet, c bet, bluff and even go all-in at your preferred table.

Choose the Right Tournaments

Another similar caution is to be selective of the tournaments you enter. Most of the online tournaments have very low buy-ins with attractive prize pools. However, these tournaments give you a very low starting stack with a re-buy option. Most of the players gamble and keep going all-in preflop to double their stacks. This can tempt you to go all-in, and you will end up losing your stack. You tend to re-buy and keep gambling by going all-in again. So, avoid these tournaments and join the ones that have a decent starting stack. Keep a limit on the number of re-buys and always play your best game in tournaments. You can check out the best online poker tournaments in our tournament review section.

Move Up with Caution

If you are making good profits and thinking of moving up a level, have a clear plan on how much bankroll you are willing to put at stake. When you are moving up or “taking a shot”, your bankroll might be comparatively smaller to support at the higher tables. Don’t sit at a higher table with a full buy-in. Play a few hands to see how you fare against those players. If you lose a significant amount of money, consider dropping down a level and play at your usual tables.

Conclusion

Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Chart

Always be realistic with your expectations. Don’t have unrealistic goals like turning $50 into $1000 on the first day. Focus on making steady profits, however big or small, and play within your bankroll. If you make good profits, don’t move up too much and risk losing all of your profits. Always play within your bankroll and have utmost discipline in bankroll management. The game of poker can have a lot of variances. However, with strict bankroll management, you can absorb all the downswings and play ahead to catch big upswings!

Proper bankroll management is one of the most important concepts in poker if your aim is to become a profitable player. The term implies that you always stick to strict guidelines and play within your limits with regards to the amount of money in your poker account, whether you are playing cash games or tournaments/sit & go’s.

The reason why bankroll management is so important in poker, is due to the luck factor of the game. Even if you are the best poker player in the world and always get your money in with the best hand, there are still going to be times when you lose big pots, even though you were a favorite to win. Furthermore, every poker player will eventually hit a bad streak during which he might go for days or even weeks without playing a profitable session. The key to overcoming these ‘swings’, is to always play within the limits of your bankroll to avoid going broke.

Bankroll Management Tournament Poker Odds

One important thing to remember when it comes to bankroll management is the different guidelines for cash games and poker tournaments. When playing no-limit poker cash games, the general rule of thumb is to have 20 buy-ins for the limits you choose to play. For example, let’s say you’re playing stakes of $0.01/$0.02; a standard buy-in for this table would be $2 (100 x big blind), so in order to play at these tables you need a bankroll of at least $40. Once you get your bankroll up to $100 , you can move up to the $0.02/$0.05 tables. However, when things don’t go as well at the higher stakes, it is important to have the discipline to move back down to the lower stakes as soon as you fall under 15 table buy-ins, in this case $75.

Bankroll Management Tournament Poker Rules

When playing sit & go’s (1-table, 9-10 players), you should make sure to have a minimum of 40 buy-ins in your poker account. The reason why this number is higher than for cash games is because of the higher variance (due to increasing blind levels) you experience when playing tournaments. Often, these sit & go’s will only pay out the top 3 finishers, so it is not unlikely that you might have periods where you don’t cash for 10-20 sit & go’s in a row. This variance becomes even greater when playingmulti-table tournaments (MTTs), because the more players there are in the field, the greater the luck factor of the game becomes. The general suggestion for MTTs is a minimum of 100 buy-ins, so, with a bankroll of $100, you should be sticking to $1 tournaments.