Poker Bankroll Management Strategy

Poker Bankroll Calculation

You need to be realistic about the money you can make, your actual results, and what you need to survive on a monthly basis. You need to assess:

1. Your monthly nut.
2. Your potential earnings.
3. The amount of money you have in reserve.

Your Monthly Nut

Your monthly expenditure is known as your “nut”. It includes living expenses, personal expenses, and poker expenses. This sum total is the amount you need to make from poker each month just to break even. In other words, it’s the bare minimum. So calculate your nut and then add 15 to 20% to see how much you need to make per month. This is your bankroll in poker – Don’t touch it for anything but poker. On top of that, you need at least three months saved up for emergencies. 

Your BB/100

To determine your profit per hour, calculate your big blinds per 100 hands (bb/100) using the following equations:

(winnings/big blind amount) / (number of hands/10)

In a live setting, you’ll probably see around 25-30 hands per hour. Online, a full-ring game will deal approximately 70 hands per hour, while six-max games race through around 100. In fast-fold cash games, you can play even 250 hands per hour. If you play multiple tables you can go up to 1,000 hands per hour. 

Minimum Bankroll for Live Poker vs Online

If you’re only playing live you can survive with an effective bankroll of 100 buy-ins. Once you start playing online you’re going to want a slightly larger bankroll for playing the same limit. Because while playing online, you’ll see more hands, and hence experience bigger swings and more variance. 

Your single-table online roll should be in the neighborhood of 120 buy-ins at least. If you’re multi-tabling online you’re putting more money in play, which helps to decrease variance, but you’re also increasing risk. The risk of increased variance requires an increased roll, so think of 150 buy-ins maybe if playing more than one table online. 

Poker Tournament Bankroll (Non Turbo): 150-300 buy-ins

This is tournament bankroll management for online events – for live you can do with less. 

Live Tournaments: 100-120 buy-ins

Online Heads-Up Sit&Go (Non Turbo): 20-40 buy-ins 

No-Limit Online Cash Games: 100+ buy-ins

Note that live cash games have less variance and thus do not require as many buy-ins as online cash games. But be prepared to move down in stakes if a downswing occurs.

No-Limit Live Cash Games: 20-40 buy-ins

Limit Cash Games

Short Deck (6+ Hold’em)

Short Deck, also known as 6+ Hold’em, is a variant where cards 2 through 5 are removed from the deck, resulting in a shorter deck of 36 cards. This changes hand rankings and increases the game’s aggressiveness.

Pot-Limit Omaha 5 (PLO5)

PLO5 is a variation of Omaha with five hole cards instead of the traditional four. 

Fast Poker (Fast-Fold Games)

Fast-Fold games allow players to quickly switch between tables, significantly increasing the number of hands played per hour.

All-in or Fold (AoF)

In AoF formats, players either go all-in or fold pre-flop, creating a high-variance, fast-paced environment that requires specific bankroll considerations.

Hyper-Turbo Tournaments

 Hyper-Turbo tournaments feature extremely fast blind structures and short durations, resulting in very high variance and rapid bankroll fluctuations.

Spin & Go

These are fast-paced, single-table tournaments with varying prize pools.

1. Your Poker Bankroll Must Sustain Losing Streaks

Poker players need a bankroll to avoid going completely bust. Regardless of how well you play, you’re going to have periods of time where you just can’t win. Even the world’s best players have endured months of straight losses. That’s why you need a bankroll large enough to sustain these losses and allow you to continue playing. So you can earn the money back on your next upswing.

Luckily, if you’re a winning player, you can expect a positive return on your investment. But you need to have enough money in your roll to make the swings and variance irrelevant. 

If you start to lose significantly the best thing you can do is to drop down in levels. That way, even though your BR is lower, the ratio of your roll to buy-ins for the game you’re playing stays healthy. If you still can’t win after dropping down in limits, it might be time to take a break. Clear your head and come back to the game fresh.

2. Max 5% of Your Bankroll in Play at a Time

The rule of thumb for a cash-game bankroll is to never have more than 5% of your entire roll in play at one time. This means a 20 buy-in minimum for single-table cash games, and more for multi-tabling. 

If you really want to be robust, drop that number as low as 1% or 2%. Some of the most profitable and serious online grinders play with rolls 10x that. 

In a tournament setting, you typically want over 100 buy-ins to the tournaments you want to play. So if you’re playing $5+50¢ tournaments, you want $550 as your roll. This almost ensures that (as long as you don’t suck) you’ll never go bust.

3. Building Your Poker Bankroll is Slow, Not a Race

Yes, the stories you’ve heard from your poker buddies are true. There are some people who deposited $100 online and within a couple of years had $1m+ bankrolls and were playing some of the highest-stakes available. Back in the early days of the online poker boom (2004-2006), this might have been a semi-common story. But nowadays, this isn’t the norm and isn’t likely to happen to you. 

Most players never even advance past micro-stakes. But there are ways you can build a nice, profitable poker bankroll over time with solid practice and good money management skills.

4. Don’t Obsess Over Your Poker Balance

If you’re following the above tips and likely recording your poker bankroll spreadsheet, don’t monitor it constantly. When you’re on an upswing, every time you check your balance you feel good. But it only takes one beat to make that number go down. And if you’re still checking your balance, seeing that smaller number will make you feel bad.This can lead to you “chasing your losses.” You’re going to start forcing your play to get back to where you think you should be. If you’re watching your balance you’ll fall into the depression of “a week’s work lost” or “It will take me a week to get back what I just lost in an hour.” The only way to get it back fast is to jump limits and take a shot at a big score. This breaks rule #1 and is the first step to going broke.

Read more:
• The Secret to Controlling Online Downswings

5. Treat Your Poker Game Seriously

When you’re playing online poker for real money, every session, pot, and decision matters. Even the smallest of mistakes costs you money. The more money you lose from mistakes, the harder it becomes to generate profit and keep from going broke.

Limit distractions: Honestly assess your ability to multi-task and set yourself up to play in an optimal poker environment. Also pay attention to anything that’s on your mind that’s affecting your play, or enhanced states while playing like drugs and booze. 

Don’t play bored or tired: If you play for fun, that’s fine, but if your goal is making money, don’t play if you legitimately don’t feel like it. Because this causes you to make dumb moves just for action and excitement. 

Fix Your Tilt: A bad beat can drive even the most measured player into a frenzy of ridiculous bets, raises, and calls. It’s time to get up for a breather or do something else.

Poker Bankroll Tracker 

Poker Bankroll Tracker is the app we would go for at PokerListings to stay on top of poker money. You can track your wins and losses, and time spent playing, among other poker stats, and even generate graphs. 

Poker Income Tracker

This app is very similar to Poker Bankroll Tracker, except it lets you add more info. Like stakes, locations, and times of your play, and you can generate more visuals too. It’s not as simple but can also be a good poker bankroll building guide, and allow you to see which games are more profitable for you. 

Live Poker Manager

This is also a good app to track your cash game and tournament buy-ins, locations, and overall profit. However, it will take you more time to enter all the info, so maybe less user-friendly.

Mapping Your Comfort Zone

Your bankroll has to reflect your personal tolerance for both monetary risk and psychological stress. If you hate the idea of losing even a fraction of your roll, maintain a bigger buffer. When GTO lines demand three-barrel bluffs in a high-leverage spot, you won’t hesitate if you know you’re bankrolled for the worst-case scenario.

• Online games might push you to adopt more rigid, math-based lines. Live tables might reward a looser, more exploitative approach. In both settings, give yourself breathing room.
• Online volume ramps up variance—more hands per hour means more swings. Incorporate that into your calculations, even if your skill edge is considerable.

The GTO Mindset

GTO insights can actually improve your bankroll management, not just your in-hand decisions. For instance, if your calculations show you only have a 1 BB/100 edge at a certain stake, consider moving down until you achieve a more sustainable win rate. Taking small hits with a narrow edge can steadily drain your bankroll when variance runs against you.

If you’re comfortable with a game’s skill level but feel uncertain about your mental game under pressure, drop stakes temporarily. It’s better to master your discipline and refine GTO spots at lower risk than to tilt away a bigger roll among tougher competition.

Avoid the Dangers of Playing Too High

Some players become aggressive after a big score. Either they play too high, play in games where they’re not a favorite, play negative EV games like blackjack and craps, or just spend too lavishly. Soon they’re out of a large amount and are left wondering “wtf did I do with all my money?!” We recommend finding the right medium (games and stakes) with a minimal amount of risk to maximize one’s profits with the new bankroll.