Why Bankroll Management Is Good For You

Its not as fun playing low stakes as it is playing for big money. A one dollar tournament is not going to give you the adrenaline rush of a big $1,000,000 guaranteed MTT. However there are specific reasons why you should be playing lower stakes than you want to. Firstly though, it is really really important to establish an initial bankroll. An amount of money you can set aside to play poker with, without worrying about in during the game or when the mortgage payments due. Its very tempting to deposit twenty pounds, spend it, deposit fifty, then top up another ten when you take a bad loss etc....this is a very bad way to manage your money in poker.You will quickly lose much more than you intend to, play with little direction and often be down worse than you realise. The right way to do things is to deposit exactly what money you have to play poker with, no more, no less. This means you can clearly see your progress from a starting point and it is much easier to manage your bankroll.

Reason One: You can quickly see how up or down you are from your initial investment. If you are playing through your bankroll at a rate of knots you know you need to start playing smaller stake games. And you wont go broke.

Reason Two: Its easier to manage what stakes you should be playing. If you have one hundred dollars in your account, play one or two dollar tournaments or SNGs, then when it gets to 200 dollars, step up to two or five dollar tournaments, and if it starts to drop down...you know what to do.

Reason Three:You can go through the levels properly. If it you start at the lowest stakes and make money, you can move up and try the next level up, if you get owned then you know you are not ready for that play yet. It is a good way to accurately and honestly assess your ability, rather than taking stabs at different levels and hoping for good cards.

Reason Four: you can play a more consistent poker style. Players in a $20 Sit n Go tournament play differently to players in a $2 SNG. By staying at the same stakes you can focus easier on beating the game you are playing, rather than trying to make advanced moves that will just be called down against weaker players. For example continuation betting in a one dollar buy in game is pretty much pointless because the other player probably hasnt even thought about what hand range you may be representing, whereas in the $20 game it is more important to disguise your range and continuation betting a flop when you raised preflop is something you should be doing more often than not.


Reason Five: You are playing for an edge, to realise that edge against the short term variance(or luck) you need to play a lot of hands, and you need to be able to afford to play a lot of hands. For example if you run AA against KJ five times, it is possible you are gonna lose to two pair or straights or backdoor flushes or flopped fullhouses, you might even lose more times than you win in those five despite being big favourite when you called the all in (completely correctly). However if you run that scenario a hundred times or better thousands of times the Aces are going to beat the King Jack a large majority of the time, and you are gonig to win that race no matter how lucky some of the opponents get, in the long term. So you have to play lots and lots of hands/tournaments to realise the advantage you have set up for yourself.

Taking all this into consideration, what it comes down to is I dont take this advice, and im a losing player. If you take it onboard, you could be a winning player :-)