Learning to manage your poker bankroll is a critical step to assuring profitability and minimizing your risk of going broke. Poker is a game of short term luck and long term skill. What this means is that you will need to have enough poker money to withstand some short term setbacks. No matter how good you are at the game, there will be days that you lose, simply because luck will not be on your side. Over time however, your skill will prevail and luck will only be a short term inconvenience. This article will give you the information you need to properly maintain your poker bankroll and how to stay in the game even when things get bad.

Total Poker Bankroll

There are two things to take into considerations when it comes to managing your poker bankroll. The first is your actual poker bankroll value which represents how much poker money you have that you are willing to devote to poker. You should use this money solely for poker and nothing else. Rent money is not a good source for your poker bankroll! You never want to play with “scared money” this is money you are afraid to lose and will adversely influence your play. Instead, make a dedicated pile of money just for poker and stick to it. Generally speaking you will want your bankroll to be three hundred times the size of the large bet in the game you are choosing to play. For example, if you are going to start with $1.00/$2.00 Texas Hold’em you should strive to have a bankroll of at least $600 ($2 X 300). At the lower limits there is some flexibility to this. To say that you absolutely must have a poker bankroll of $600 to play $1/$2 Hold’em is a little absurd, but you should strive to follow these bankroll recommendations. You will be able to handle the swings and learn the game much better because you will not constantly be worrying about going broke. Below is a chart of poker bankroll requirements for selected low limit Hold’em games:

• $0.25/$0.50 = $150
• $0.50/$1.00 = $300
• $1.00/$2.00 = $600
• $2.00/$4.00 = $1200
• $3.00/$6.00 = $1800

Your Poker Money and Table Stakes

Another consideration you will need to make when playing poker is how much money to bring to the table for an individual session. This number is not quite as important as your total poker bankroll, but it is still crucial to your overall success. If you routinely bring next to little poker money to the table, you can put yourself in a bad position and your play will suffer because of it. A general rule of thumb is to have at least 25 times the large bet of the game you’re playing. So for our game of $1.00/$2.00 Hold’em, it would be wise to sit down with at least $50.00. This amount will give you enough to handle some losses or swings that might occur in the case of a normal session. It will also allow you enough poker money to properly play your hands to the maximum when you are in a good position.

If you can stick to these poker bankroll rules as you venture into the world of Texas Hold’em, you will be way ahead of the competition and setting yourself up for success. The best way to go broke in Hold’em is to play at limits that you have no business playing at and that’s because you will lose your poker money faster than you can blink. If you don’t have enough poker money to play a certain limit, don’t play it! Play at limits that your bankroll can support and soon you will have more than enough to move up in limits.

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