32Red Poker Blog

Bankroll management

It is not the most glamorous of poker skills, but even if your bluffing is well timed, your reading ability sharp and your courage ice-cold, poor bankroll management can bring you straight back down to earth.

Why is it important?

Imagine a player who plays without any care for managing his bankroll. He starts off on the smallest poker tournaments with $30 in his account. Incredibly, he reaches the final table on his first try, and wins $120. Full of confidence, he takes on the cash games, and builds up the levels. He is quickly becoming a great player, and has amazingly built up to $1000. He splits this between two different $4/8 tables, to see just how much he can make.

But suddenly, a disaster.  He is outclassed on one table by one of the sharks of the site, and picks up kings against aces on the other. He loses everything, even his original $30 stake.

However high our player gets, there will always come a point where this way of playing will become his downfall. He will either find himself playing above his level, or indeed could just have an awful run of luck. With no thoughts of bankroll management, any player will hit bust sooner than boom

The key to bankroll management

The most important figure to be aware of is the percentage of your bankroll you want to risk in any one session. I would recommend a figure of 5%, and would advise that you definitely never risk any more than 10% at any one time.

Of course, a session can refer to a number of different things. If you are playing online poker, this percentage of your bankroll is the amount you should be risking in total across all the tables.

Therefore, if you are lucky enough to have a roll of $5000 and are using the 10% rule, $500 is the total that you should be risking across all the tables. If you play for example 4 tables at the same time, this rule is telling you that there should never be more than 2.5% of your bankroll at any one table.

In off-line poker, this percentage is the amount that you should be risking in total on any one trip, including the total buy in to the events, travel and hotels.

Why these seemingly low percentages?

It is so important in poker that you are never putting down more money that you would want to lose. Not only must you be able to afford your losses, you should never be too unhappy to lose everything. Always imagine that a horrible bad beat is on its way, and test whether you would be able to deal with this.

As a key rule, I ensure that I can always stand up from the table with a smile on my face. For me, there are only two important things in any poker game; principally to have fun, and also to learn everything I can from the mistakes I have made, and the opportunities I have missed.

Protecting your bankroll

There are two times when your bankroll is in the most jeopardy. The first is when you have had an awful run of bad luck and bad beats, and have taken a hit. Even if you think you can avoid going on tilt, there are more subtle forms of tilt which can affect you.

You may start to lose confidence in your own ability, and play without the necessary courage to do well. Moreover, you may just simply lose confidence in your own luck. If you will shy away from calling, or playing a hand aggressively, because you are starting to believe that the cards are against you, your play has already been affected.

The less obvious time that you may begin to play badly is when you have done very well! You may become over-exuberant and take unnecessary risks, or just trust your own good luck in the cards, and start to play wrongly.

Enjoy the game

Even though you are going to treat the financial side carefully, make sure that your first aim with poker is to enjoy the game. It is a great social game, but also a wonderfully challenging tactical and psychological game. Let this be your motivation; there are too many cruel outdraws and too many crushed dreams for you to take this game too seriously

If you do work on this basis, you will become a better player, as you will be able to see your mistakes more clearly. Many players fall into a trap of feeling so frustrated about their moments of bad luck that they never come to query their own play.

Be honest with yourself

Two things are true about poker, and they combine to make a stark warning. Very few players make a living from the game, but many poker players think that they could. Never put any risk on this hope, as it is likely to lead to disappointment. Rather, enjoy the game and the challenges it brings.

Good luck at the tables, and, most of all, have fun!

32Red Poker encourages the practice of repsonsible gaming. For more information please visit our reponsible gaming website or contact our poker support team.