Poker Player, Know Your Bankroll
What is a bankroll?
A bankroll, is the total amount of money that a player has to his or her availability to play for. In this case I will talk about a bankroll in poker, and a bankroll in poker is the amount of funds you have available to play for at the poker tables. Not the amount of money you have to pay bills or your wife's overconsumption when she wants to buy new shoes. Of course you need to allow her to buy new shoes once and a while, if that's the reason why she allows you to play poker all night, but that has nothing to do with a bankroll. A bankroll is the money you have that says 'poker' on it.
I will give you an example: Alan has deposited $60 at Full Tilt Poker, and he remembered of course to use a Full Tilt Poker referral code, so that after a while his bankroll will enlarge more than he wins, these $60 is his bankroll, since he has decided that he will use these to nothing but poker. That is his budget or bankroll. After a while he had lost some of his money in a Sit & Go Tournament, but he was lucky to win some of them back in the two following tournaments and actually won a bit more than he lost. Meanwhile his bonus at Full Tilt Poker was beginning to release, and after six hours he had $84 in his Full Tilt Poker account. Still he considers the money to be spend on poker, which means his bankroll is now $84. After a week his bank account has grown to $340 and his girlfriend's birthday is coming up, so he decides to withdraw $150 to buy her new shoes (a hint: always let your girlfriend decide which shoes to buy) and the bankroll is now $190.
What now, if you play at Full Tilt Poker, but also have $500 on your PKR account? If we for instance say that Alan from last example wanted to play at PKR and signed up with a PKR bonus code and deposited $500, then he would have $500 at PKR and $190 at Full Tilt Poker. That makes his bankroll $690 since he has that amount of money, which is marked 'poker', it's simple math.
How big a bankroll do I need?
It is necessary that your bankroll is higher than the amount you need to pay to enter a tournament, and much higher is much better. If you have $100 in your bankroll, and the buy-in is $105 you can't afford it. If the buy-in is $100 you can barely afford it, but if you don't end in the money, you're bankroll is empty. If the buy-in is $95 you can afford it, but will only have $5 left, if you don't win any money, so my advice is to search for a low-stake buy-in, that won't effect your bankroll very much. If a bankroll is $100, I will recommend to go for lower than $10 buy-ins, actually I would go for the $5 buy-ins. Of course there's not that much money as in a $50 buy-in, but if you are a good player, you will win in the long term, without risking the whole bankroll in just one game.
It is important, if you wan to build up a bankroll, that you keep an eye on how big it is. If you have decided to use about 5% of the bankroll when you choose stakes, you have to change stakes at some time, unless you win as much as you lose. Another good advice is to see the different stakes as steps. For instance, if your bankroll is $40 and you decide you will use 5%, your table will be NL$1/$2. After a while you have doubled your bankroll because you have a very good and lucky day. Your bankroll is now $80 and it's time to change to a NL$2/$4 table, because the big bet is 5% of $80. The same rule applies if you have a bad day and your bankroll is down to $20, you should change to a NL$.50/$1 table.
What if I keep losing and my bankroll keeps decreasing, and my bankroll isn't big enough to play the stakes I want to? Then I will either consider finding a table with lower stakes until my bankroll has re-increased, or I will look for alternative sources that I can feed my bankroll with, such as another deposit to the poker account.
If you only play poker as entertainment and have no intentions of using the money you win to either pay for your bills or your girlfriend's new shoes, you don't need to worry about you bankroll. When the money is gone, they are gone and you have been entertained for some time. It is exactly as if you buy a ticket to a musical or a movie, when the play is over, that's it. In this case, your size of bankroll depends on how much money you want to spend on entertainment.
A legendary bankroll achievement
When you have control over your bankroll, like I have tried to mention above, you can take the bankroll management to a higher level and do like Team Full Tilt member Chris Ferguson did some time ago. Chris started with a zero on his Full Tilt Poker account, and sat a goal to build up a bankroll higher than $10,000 and donate the whole bankroll of his to Save the Children Foundation. He named this challenge 'The Chris Ferguson Challenge.'
Chris gave himself three guidelines.
1) He would never buy himself into a cash game or a Sit & Go Tournament for more than 5% of his total bankroll, but with a single exception to buy himself into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less, so he could get started.
2) He would only use maximum 2% of his bankroll on buy-in fees on multi-table tournaments, unless it was a $1 multi-table tournament.
3) If the money on the table represented more than 10% of his total bankroll, he would leave when the blinds reach him.
It took him several months to get started, but when he won $104 in a $1 tournament, he took a giant step forward to his goal, which he reached 9 months later.
I hope this will help you, if you have any kinds of trouble managing your bankroll. To maintain control over your own bankroll is essential in poker and probably more important than most poker players think. I know players who I admit are better than I am, but they can't manage their bankroll and show the world how good they really are, and that is just bad for them. Control you bankroll, and go make some profit.
What is a bankroll?
A bankroll, is the total amount of money that a player has to his or her availability to play for. In this case I will talk about a bankroll in poker, and a bankroll in poker is the amount of funds you have available to play for at the poker tables. Not the amount of money you have to pay bills or your wife's overconsumption when she wants to buy new shoes. Of course you need to allow her to buy new shoes once and a while, if that's the reason why she allows you to play poker all night, but that has nothing to do with a bankroll. A bankroll is the money you have that says 'poker' on it.
I will give you an example: Alan has deposited $60 at Full Tilt Poker, and he remembered of course to use a Full Tilt Poker referral code, so that after a while his bankroll will enlarge more than he wins, these $60 is his bankroll, since he has decided that he will use these to nothing but poker. That is his budget or bankroll. After a while he had lost some of his money in a Sit & Go Tournament, but he was lucky to win some of them back in the two following tournaments and actually won a bit more than he lost. Meanwhile his bonus at Full Tilt Poker was beginning to release, and after six hours he had $84 in his Full Tilt Poker account. Still he considers the money to be spend on poker, which means his bankroll is now $84. After a week his bank account has grown to $340 and his girlfriend's birthday is coming up, so he decides to withdraw $150 to buy her new shoes (a hint: always let your girlfriend decide which shoes to buy) and the bankroll is now $190.
What now, if you play at Full Tilt Poker, but also have $500 on your PKR account? If we for instance say that Alan from last example wanted to play at PKR and signed up with a PKR bonus code and deposited $500, then he would have $500 at PKR and $190 at Full Tilt Poker. That makes his bankroll $690 since he has that amount of money, which is marked 'poker', it's simple math.
How big a bankroll do I need?
It is necessary that your bankroll is higher than the amount you need to pay to enter a tournament, and much higher is much better. If you have $100 in your bankroll, and the buy-in is $105 you can't afford it. If the buy-in is $100 you can barely afford it, but if you don't end in the money, you're bankroll is empty. If the buy-in is $95 you can afford it, but will only have $5 left, if you don't win any money, so my advice is to search for a low-stake buy-in, that won't effect your bankroll very much. If a bankroll is $100, I will recommend to go for lower than $10 buy-ins, actually I would go for the $5 buy-ins. Of course there's not that much money as in a $50 buy-in, but if you are a good player, you will win in the long term, without risking the whole bankroll in just one game.
It is important, if you wan to build up a bankroll, that you keep an eye on how big it is. If you have decided to use about 5% of the bankroll when you choose stakes, you have to change stakes at some time, unless you win as much as you lose. Another good advice is to see the different stakes as steps. For instance, if your bankroll is $40 and you decide you will use 5%, your table will be NL$1/$2. After a while you have doubled your bankroll because you have a very good and lucky day. Your bankroll is now $80 and it's time to change to a NL$2/$4 table, because the big bet is 5% of $80. The same rule applies if you have a bad day and your bankroll is down to $20, you should change to a NL$.50/$1 table.
What if I keep losing and my bankroll keeps decreasing, and my bankroll isn't big enough to play the stakes I want to? Then I will either consider finding a table with lower stakes until my bankroll has re-increased, or I will look for alternative sources that I can feed my bankroll with, such as another deposit to the poker account.
If you only play poker as entertainment and have no intentions of using the money you win to either pay for your bills or your girlfriend's new shoes, you don't need to worry about you bankroll. When the money is gone, they are gone and you have been entertained for some time. It is exactly as if you buy a ticket to a musical or a movie, when the play is over, that's it. In this case, your size of bankroll depends on how much money you want to spend on entertainment.
A legendary bankroll achievement
When you have control over your bankroll, like I have tried to mention above, you can take the bankroll management to a higher level and do like Team Full Tilt member Chris Ferguson did some time ago. Chris started with a zero on his Full Tilt Poker account, and sat a goal to build up a bankroll higher than $10,000 and donate the whole bankroll of his to Save the Children Foundation. He named this challenge 'The Chris Ferguson Challenge.'
Chris gave himself three guidelines.
1) He would never buy himself into a cash game or a Sit & Go Tournament for more than 5% of his total bankroll, but with a single exception to buy himself into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less, so he could get started.
2) He would only use maximum 2% of his bankroll on buy-in fees on multi-table tournaments, unless it was a $1 multi-table tournament.
3) If the money on the table represented more than 10% of his total bankroll, he would leave when the blinds reach him.
It took him several months to get started, but when he won $104 in a $1 tournament, he took a giant step forward to his goal, which he reached 9 months later.
I hope this will help you, if you have any kinds of trouble managing your bankroll. To maintain control over your own bankroll is essential in poker and probably more important than most poker players think. I know players who I admit are better than I am, but they can't manage their bankroll and show the world how good they really are, and that is just bad for them. Control you bankroll, and go make some profit.
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