Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Bankroll management (Beginners)

Bankroll management is probably the most important subject to be a winning player in poker.
In the long run a good player will be successfull and will make a profit, but in the short run he might actually be loosing due to bad luck.
To be sure that theese downswings won't eat up your entire poker money endangering your poker carreer you should manage your bankroll and never play too much money in a single tournament or cash game.
Invest wisely your poker money, no matter how little it is.
So how much should you invest?
Lets make an example:

Jimmy starts playing poker with 100 $.
What limits can he play?
For Sit n Goes i like the 50 buy ins rule.
So Jimmy can play Sit n Goes up to 2 $.
In Multi Table Tounaments (MTT) he should instead have 100 buy ins because variance (alternation of good and bad luck) is higher.
So Jimmy can play MTTs up to 1 $.
And cash games?
For cash games 25 buy ins are enough.
So Jimmy can play 0.02 $ - 0.05 $ called NL 5 (even if slightly out of our requirement).
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Even if this money seems ridicously little, it is the only way for a player to have almost no risk of going broke.
Now I'll talk about doing level up or down.
Let's see Jimmy's case again.

In Sit N Goes Jimmy should move to the 5 $ ones when he has made 50 buy ins for the higher level, so when he has made 250 $.
In MTTs Jimmy can move up to the 2$ ones when he has 100 buy ins for the higher level, so 200$.
In Cash Games Jimmy should move up to NL 10 (0.05 $ - 0.10$) when he has made 25 buy ins for that level, so 250 $.

And what about level down?

In Sit N Goes Jimmy should level down to the 1 $ ones when he has only 50 buy ins for that lower level, so 50 $.
In Mtts he should play the 0.50 $ ones when he has 100 buy ins for the lower level, so 50 $.
In Cash Games Jimmy shoud level down when he has only 25 buy ins for the lower level, so 50 $.

Levelling down is especially important because playing low limits with a bigger than requested bakroll is even safer, instead with a smaller bakroll going broke is much easier.

When is bakroll management not fundamental?
- If you are a losing player, in fact you will eventually lose money in the long run, so bankroll management is useless.
-If the money you are playing is not that important compared to your income.
In this case I still suggest you to use it, but if going broke is not a problem to you, then you can actually play higher limits.

Hope you liked this article, and remember that this concept is fundamental in becoming a successfull player.

1 comment:

  1. Saw your post in Ubuntu forums. Ugly colors overkilled topic & lack of information on how successful you are at poker. People wanna learn from another successful player.
    Sorry to rag. Just trying to help mate.

    ReplyDelete

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