Poker Bankroll Management Advice For Beginners in 2025 by Jonathan Little

Can I Make Great Money In Poker From The First Day?

The hard truth is that at the beginning you can make good money only if you’re lucky enough to catch an upswing. For fresh blood, becoming profitable from the first day isn’t a realistic goal — they need to become skilled players first, as Jonathan explains:

“Whenever you’re new to poker and you’re starting playing poker — your goal is not to make money. Your goal is to get good at poker because when you’re new to poker you have not found a game you can beat yet. You must study a ton to the point you can find a game you can beat. That’s a lot of the struggle in poker is finding the game you can beat. So, in the beginning you’re not going to make a lot of money. If you are not playing poker because you at least enjoy it some, I would tell you to do something else.”

If you’re adamant about continuing your poker career even after this motivational piece, Jonathan has the following tips for you.

Determine A Proper Bankroll Amount And…Increase It

Remember that in poker if you are out of money, you are out of action — so the main reason for consistent bankroll management is to always have some money to keep going. It isn’t about never losing your money but about having a proper bankroll to avoid losing profitable opportunities for playing.

But how to decide when you have enough money? First of all, you need to choose your game — Cash Game or Tournament — because requirements there are very different.

How to Determine Bankroll for Cash Games

How much money do you need for proper bankroll in cash games? It depends on the type of the game, your stakes and the win rate there. For example, Jonathan recommends the following amount for NL200:

Long story short: the higher your win rate, the lower bankroll requirements will be.  And if you are shocked to see $20,000 for NL200 for 3 bb/100, Jonathan explains this simply:

“You need about 10,000 big blinds that is about 100 buy-ins or in NLH about $20,000. That may sound like a lot but it is what is required if you don’t want to go broke all that often.”

This amount of bankroll gives you a chance to move down at stakes if things ever get to a point where you may not even need 100 buy-ins but only 50:

“Because if you move down to the point you’re playing half the stakes you were, you take that 50 and say you lose down to 40 — now you actually have 80 again. And presumably the smaller stakes game is going to be softer. So as you’re more willing to move down you can keep a smaller bankroll.

Also, if you have a job and you’re consistently adding money to yourbank roll you don’t actually need all the money on hand. You’re not just going to lose 10,000 big blinds over the course of a week or a month — this is a big bankroll for you. But if you can replenish it with a 1,000 big blinds every month and you know you’re going to do this for a year — well it’s like you have 12,000 big blinds coming to you from your job, from a disposable income.”

How to Determine Bankroll for Tournaments

Unlike in cash games, tournament bankroll requirements are based not on stakes and win rate but on number of players and your ROI. You can see examples of different amounts with 30% ROI on this screenshot:

If your ROI is smaller — that is totally fine because even Little himself has 5-10% in his tournaments — you just need to increase the requirement for your bankroll proportionally. Jonathan shares a curious observation: the bigger the field of tournament is, the larger your ROI can be because of ecology if you are at least okay-ish poker player:

“As there are more players in the tournament, usually the players who get added are not all that good at poker. There’s only so many good poker players in the world. Consider your local games: imagine there’s 50 good players where you live in your city. And they play the big monthly tournament that gets 500 people. That means 450 of those players are probably not all that good. Whereas if the tournament only has 100 players probably 50 of them are not all that good. So which one’s going to be softer: the one with 450 bad players or the one with 50 bad players? Obviously, with 50 bad players going be way tougher than the other one.”

However, more crowded tournaments have higher variance, so you obliged to have much higher bankroll for them then for small once to create a slight opportunity of return at least something from your investments:

“I can guarantee you: almost no one has this and they wonder why they go on big downswings and why they eventually go broke. It’s because they thought they needed 70 buy-ins. for a game where they need 400 buy-ins. That’s exactly why I recommend keeping more than the “required” bankroll amounts.” 

Quit Game Earlier When It’s Required

Bankroll management isn’t only about spending money wisely. It is also about saving it in a bad moment by stopping yourself from continuing to play, as Jonathan explains:

“When you’re winning it presumes the game is softer than normal. And if the game is softer than normal and you’re winning — why would you quit? But if you’re losing and the game is tougher than normal — why would you play? So, the answer on: “when should you quit a cash game session early” is — when you’re losing, that’s it.

I realize sometimes the game is going to be tough and it’s just okay because you don’t get to play that much or whatever but if there ever is a time to quit it’s when the game is tougher than normal.”

Interestingly, Little dismisses that you need to quit every time you aren’t playing your A-game because: “If your C-game your worst poker is way better than your opponent’s best poker — you should not quit”. And he also adds:

“If I ever lost $4,500 — three $1,500 buy-in — I would usually quit assuming I’m losing the money in rough-ish spots and I don’t have a game that is very clearly soft. But if I was losing because I got on with Aces three times and lost it to 97o that’s perfectly fine. I don’t care about getting unlucky and you should not care about getting unlucky too. Having a big bankroll hopefully will make you not care about inevitable swings.”

For MTT Players: Choose Events With Satellite Qualifiers 

While satellites can be seen as a cheap way to take a big shot, in reality they help to win a life-changing money for a lucky few — others just pay over and over for mastering the skill of surviving in this type of tournaments.

That’s why Jonathan loves chronic satelliters and strongly recommends you follow this types of players in events but without ever becoming one of them:

“You want to play with satellite players because satellite players are good at minimum cashing — they’re not good at winning.

If you spend all your time playing satellites — you’re probably pretty good at satellites. And then you’re going to suck at Main Events. 

When you’re used to playing $10 buy-in satellites or even $100 buy-in satellites and you’re good at that structure and that’s all you do and then one in 500 times or one in 80 times or whatever the number is depending on where you started you go and you play a Main Event for $10,000 either a 100 or a thousand times — what you’re used to to playing you’re probably going to be a little outmatched. Because if you’re a $10 player and you’re playing against $10,000 players that’s not good for you, that’s really bad.

I love playing against players who are playing for a hundred times what they’re used to. But don’t play satellites. You got to have discipline. If you play out of your bankroll consistently in games you cannot beat — you will not win at poker. Simple as that. There is no rush to get rich quick.”

Read more:

• Poker Bankroll Management Strategy