One of the most important concepts when playing poker, especially cash games, is your poker bankroll management strategy. This is very important to any poker player’s game and playing future. Knowing how to properly manage and control your bankroll allows you to play the game and keeps you from going into debt while playing the cash games. Many people have recently started playing cash games online as well as in the bricks and mortar casinos, and have questions regarding the proper way to manage their bankroll to ensure the maximum chance of leaving a game without losing their shirt.

Many people are usually looking for some particular formula to help them maintain their bankroll, but there is not any one simple formula that will work for everyone. However, there are some basic strategies that will increase a person’s ability to keep from going broke playing cash games.

There are three categories of players, so a persons bankroll will need to correspond to that category of player. The first category is the “Pro” players. These people make their incomes from playing poker and they would experience a financial hardship should they lose their bankroll because they had a bad run when playing cards. In this particular level of play a person would have less of a chance of actually going broke, because they usually have a system of bankroll management by the time they reach this level of game play.

The next group, which are usually known as the “Protected” players are those who are attempting to make a living from playing, but maintain other forms of income. Usually however these people need to have some sort of bankroll management system, as it would be hard to replace their bankroll as well should they lose it.

The last group, called the “Unprotected” players are those who are trying to build a bankroll, or have a way or replacing their bankroll easily should they lose it. These players are more likely to play looser with their bankroll than those who are career or “Pro” players. They will most probably stand a much bigger chance of going broke, and many often do so because of their lack of understanding and appreciation for this aspect of the game.

There are some ideas of what kind of bankroll numbers you should keep should have enough money to make these particular games. You will want to have enough to play a specific numbers of Big Bets, or No Limits, Sit-and-Go or Multi-Table Tournaments.

With these numbers all you will need to know is how to make them work for you. It is very important that you learn to use these numbers and how to modify your bankroll whenever you need to. With bankroll management you will need to learn “variance” and the aspects of gaming that may affect this concept. This term is a way of describing the many different averages from the ups and downs you are sure to experience as you play the game for a short term. Most people use this term when describing their losing sessions.

There are many different things that may increase your variance or may even decrease your variance. The most important of course being your own particular win rate. A solid win rate is will quite possibly decrease your variance or the amount of times you will lose money. This comes from studying and improving your game. Another thing that affects your level of variance is how stable you are mentally, when you are losing. If you let it beat you instead of getting away from the game, you will have a higher amount of variance.

Playing styles, both yours and your opponents may affect your variance. If your style is loose and aggressive, chances are you will see more of a variance. Your wins and losses will go up and down on a regular basis. If you play this way you will definitely need a larger bankroll so that you can adequately deal with the large number of bankroll swings. If you are a tight solid player, you will win more often because you don’t play without thinking about what you do next which means your variance will be a lot lower. Your opponent may also affect how you win or lose and the variance of your bankroll. If they are aggressive and loose players you stand a good chance of your variance rising, however usually this is evened out by the fact that really loose player are losers who will eventually give you all of their money.

One of the largest affects to your variance will be the multi-table tournament, because it is less likely during a really large tournament that you will win your way to the three top spots where you can win a lot of money. When you play this type of game a lot but only win occasionally, you will have a much higher variance. If the tournament payout structure is very steep the variance is really high even if you are a great player, especially if the winner is the only player to get paid in the game.

When you are playing ring or cash games, you will find that the number of players have the most effect on your variance. If you are playing heads-up you will see that your variance may increase because the players may play the game in a more aggressive and oft times looser style, whereas if you are playing in a 10-handed game you may see a much lower variance. Sit-and-go’s are the largest drag on your variance but heads up Sit-and-go's are a variance monster.

Once you have an understanding of your variance, you will then be able to find out how much risk to take with your bankroll and what to do to keep your bankroll building up steadily whilst controlling the magnitude of the swings in your bankroll. When looking at the three levels of players and adjusting your bankroll to fit, you will want to use a “rolling bankroll”. With this type of bankroll you will decide on how much money you should have in order to move up on the list (e.g. moving up from “Protected” to “Pro”) or how much money you need to loose before you need to play at a lower level. Lastly you should know when you should get out.

Many people fail to do this because they have that feeling that they need to play until they have won that big payday. They want to be the biggest winner just once. However once they start losing they tend to forget that they can walk away and preserve their bankroll, so that they can live to play another day when the cards are falling the right way.

Sam @ Power Poker Course.




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