Despite the amount of skill involved, poker is still a game where much is based on luck. In order to be successful over the long-term, proper bankroll management techniques must be used to weather losses and maximize winnings.
Variance
Sometime, despite making the perfect choice almost every time, the cards just don't seem to fall your way. Losing streaks are as much a part of poker as winning streaks; this is called variance. There are times when even professional poker players will lose 15 buy-ins in a row, or bust out of a tournament in the first ten minutes. In order for them to be able to keep playing and eventually win that money back, they practice bankroll management.
Guidelines
Here are "the rules" that most successful amateur and professional poker players follow regarding bankroll management. In order to play a table, they usually have the following multiples of money in their bankroll.
- 20x-30x the buy-in for every Full Ring and 6 Max NL Hold'em table.
- 40x-50x the buy-in for every Heads Up NL Hold'em table.
- 40x the buy-in for every Sit and Go tournament.
- 75x the buy-in for every Multi-table tournament, including Multi-Table Sit and Goes.
There are large differences in the level of variance depending on what kind of game is being played. Players who play Super Turbo Sit and Goes will want to have the upper range of buy-ins, as they will play far more hands and will win or lose much faster than a player who is playing regular speed deep stack Sit and Goes, who would only need the amount of buy-ins on the low end of the scale.
Moving Up
Every player eventually wants to win enough money to move up to higher-limit games. In that case, it is fine to put a little money to the side and use that to take a shot at a higher stakes tables. If you find that you win at higher levels, you can move up permanently to that level. However, just be sure that you have enough money to continue practicing bankroll management if it doesn't work out and you return to the states you were playing previously.
Bankroll Management Tools
While bankroll management is a very easy concept to understand, the thrill of playing poker means that some people have a hard time putting the theory into practice. There are tools which can help these kinds of players to no exceed their bankrolls such as TitlBreaker, which will automatically block a player from playing at a stakes level that is outside the range of their bankroll.
