Bankroll Management
This is the first chapter of this microstakesSmall buy-in games, typically between $2 and $100 guide for an important reason. Poker has a large elements elements of risk and chance, and being aware of this will make a massive difference to your longterm enjoyment and success. You may have seen or heard of players who make a lot of money through poker, and it's true that poker is a game of skill and that a good player can beat bad players.
The good player will always try to maximise their winnings while minimising their losses. They will bet big when they're sure they're ahead while fold when they believe they're beat. Of course things don't go to plan, and the bad players can hit their miracle card on the river and still win a pot - the 'bad beat' as it's called. Many bad beats are obvious, but most are subtle. As a beginner it will be hard to distinguish those situations where it was luck or bad play that lost you the hand, and the opposite is equally true - a beginner rarely knows whether he won a hand due to good play or not.
Because it's difficult to distinguish luck from good/bad play, the expectations of a new player can often be distorted. You could deposit $100 onto a site and start playing at NL25NL = No Limit, 25 indicates the stakes (ie $25 buy-in) (buying in at $25 a table), experience good luck and rapidly make a several hundred dollars. Believing that you're a good player you move to NL50, and then experience your first downswing. In a few hours you could easily lose $500 - the combination of being an inexperienced player and a run of bad luck can be devestating to a player's account. Downswings like this happen to all players, even the best.
So how can you start to distinguish between what's luck and what's good play? Frankly it's down to learning the game and playing lots and lots of hands. How can you play lots of hands without becoming a victim of a bad luck downswing? That's where bankroll management comes in.
The Bankroll
A poker bankroll is your money that you've fenced off from normal life - it's no longer cash, instead it's poker chips. These are your tools for making more chips, and often you'll need to lose a few to win more (if you only ever bet when you've a monster hand, everyone will know and just fold). You should expect your chips to move around the table a bit, however you've got to play so that you don't risk too many at one go. You often have to wield an entire stack with confidence to win more. Consequently the buy-in you choose to use at a table should be small percentage of your entire bankroll - that way you can risk the entire buy-in without too much concern. If you go on a downswing and lose multiple buy-inThe amount of money you join a game with. Typically 100 times the big blinds, reducing your bankroll drastically, then you have to change limits so that the buy-in is still the same percentage of the entire roll. Of course it goes the other way too - hopefully you'll build it up enough so that you can move up in limits.The 20 buy-in rule
The percentage of your bankroll you should play at a table is an arbitary number, but fortunately a lot of people have played enough poker to come up with a rule of thumb. How much you move away from this rule of thumb is down to your personal aversion to risk, but until you see for yourself how easily a 10 buy-in downswing can happen it's best to stick to the rule of thumb.The rule of thumb is 20 buy-ins at each limit (or in other words a buy-in should never be more than 5% of your bank roll). So for instance you have $100 in your account - 5% is $5 so you should play NL5NL = No Limit, 5 indicates the stakes (ie $5 buy-in). To many beginners this sounds a bit timid - $5 is the price of a burger, why not NL10? As we said, many beginners underestimate variancePoker is a game of skill and luck. Even if you play perfectly, your opponent may still hit his 1% chance and win. The swings of luck are referred to as variance - 10 buy-ins can be lost so easily, even for good players making every move absolutely correctly. This sounds depressing, but variance does go both ways, and you can win through luck too. Bankroll management is there as a straight and wide path to prevent luck running you into the walls and going bust.
So you start playing and things go well - you build your bankroll to $200, and you've now 'qualified' to move to NL10. Hopefully things will continue to go well, but a bit of bad luck can easily happen. You play a few NL10 sessions and one goes badly losing you $30 - your bankroll is down to $190. Continuing to play NL10 to get that $10 back is a mistake - it might seem easy when it's only one buy-in, but you must be strict with yourself and move back down to NL5. Without doing this your downswing could continue and now that you're playing over 5% of your bankroll you could be moving rapidly towards going completely bust.