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As a poker player, your bankroll is your lifeblood. Without
it you can’t play – it doesn’t get any simpler than that. Despite this
simple truth, many people don’t see bankroll management as a skill of the
same importance as being able to calculate pot odds or read your opponents.
All the skills you can wield in the game don’t mean anything, though, if you
blow all the money as soon as you win it. For a purely recreational player,
learning to protect your bankroll can be the difference between enjoying
freerolling and paying for your hobby. For a player who wants to move up in
limits, it’s one of the most important skills you can have.
The first thing to do is to establish a definition of what your bankroll is:
it’s money you can afford to lose. Don’t put any money into your poker
bankroll that you can’t comfortably part with if worst comes to worst.
Paying rent, putting food in your stomach, taking care of your health, and
paying your bills should always come before poker. If they don’t, you’ve got
much larger problems than an article like this could ever address and you
probably won’t be playing poker for very long.
Second, let your bankroll dictate what limit you’ll be playing. A
standard rule of thumb is that a good player should have 300 big bets (BB)
at his regular level of play, e.g. $3000 for a 5-10 hold’em game. That’s an
amount large enough to cover 95% of the swings you’ll experience. If you go
on a horrible run you might lose all 300 BB, but in most cases the
downswings you experience will just be normal fluctuations. (There’s a
caveat here for multi-tablers: you should have 300 BB for the average number
of tables you play.) If you drop under 300 BB total in your bankroll you’ll
be endangering one of two things: your ability to keep playing solid
aggressive poker as you naturally become more protective of your money, or
your ability to play poker at all if you continue to play an aggressive game
and your bad run doesn’t end. It’s for this reason that I like to have a
cushion of 100-200 BB above what I actually need for the limit I’m regularly
playing – normal downswings aren’t going to affect my ability to play my
regular game.
Third, don’t be too proud to move down in limits if your bankroll’s in bad
shape. If your bankroll dips below 300 BB for the limit you’re playing
after you finish your session, you need to be absolutely certain that your
next session is at a limit your bankroll can support. Otherwise you’re
leaving your ability to play poker to chance. One of the benefits of poker,
as compared to other forms of gambling, is that you can minimize the effects
of chance over the long run through the application of skill – so why
sacrifice that advantage voluntarily? Chances are you can beat the next
level down relatively easily, so take the step down for a bit and rebuild
your bankroll. As Marsellus Wallace told Butch Coolidge in Pulp Fiction,
“Pride only hurts...it never helps.” Don’t be too proud to keep your
bankroll in good repair.
Last, don’t make a habit of using your bankroll for anything but poker.
Many people feel that their bankroll is money that can be tossed around, and
that’s fine if you don’t plan on playing your current game forever. If you
don’t plan on playing 2-4 hold’em for the rest of your life, though, you
need to limit your bankroll to poker. That means no –EV gambling (craps,
blackjack, roulette, slots, etc.) and no lavish dinners every time you have
a solid session. There’s nothing wrong with taking money out for a small
reward for yourself from time to time, but that only holds true as long as
you make this the exception rather than the rule. If it does become the
rule, you should probably have a lot more than 300 BB to play your regular
game.
Managing your bankroll really boils down to discipline. There are many players
who could play higher limits than they do if they were simply to place a few
limits on themselves. If moving up is a goal of yours, you should take
careful stock of how you treat your bankroll. Managing it wisely is best
insurance a poker player can have.
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