• What Should My Poker Bankroll Be
• Live Poker Bankroll Management
• Poker Bankroll Calculator
• Poker Cash Game Bankroll
• How Big Should My Poker Bankroll Be A Girl

How big should my poker bankroll be If you, or the Shooter, roll a how big should my poker bankroll be 7 before rolling the point number, you lose.If these names don't ring any bells, then you're probably here to pick a trick or two before your next beer-and-Blackjack session with the guys. Or the previous answer could have meant 100 big blinds. Which in this case would be $5000. However, your buy in is typically not your bankroll. Also in bigger stakes games, people often sit deeper (with more chips per big blind) than lower stakes games.

By John Grochowski
My friend Mark isn’t a casino regular, but he likes to play a little video poker now and then. His goal is just to have a good time and stay in action for a couple of hours.
“Do you have a guide to how much cash I need to last a couple of hours?” he asked.
I showed him the bankroll calculator on Video Poker for Winners software, and assumed expert play for 1,000 hands --- about two hours play for an average player.
First up was Jacks or Better on three pay tables --- the full-pay 9-6 game, paying 9-for-1 on full houses and 6-for-1 on flushes, which returns 99.54 percent with expert play; the 8-5 game (97.30 percent); and the 7-5 game (96.15 percent) that’s becoming all too common on quarter games.
Jacks or Better is the least volatile of common video poker games, a game that’s designed to keep you in your seat. There are no big four-of-a-kind bonuses that are going to make your day. All quads pay 125 coins for a five-coin wager. But the 2-for-1 payoff on two pairs packs a different kind of wallop, one that will keep you going for extra chances at the bigger pays.
The average loss for two hours of betting $1.25 a hand on a quarter machine is $5.75 with a 9-6 pay table, $34.75 at 8-5 and $48.12 at 7-5 --- which ought to tell you why I’m always harping on finding the best pay tables. In the days when each video poker machine had just one game --- no touching the screen to try a different game --- I once found a long row of 18 machines that alternated between 9-6 and 8-5 pay tables. There were as many players at the low-payers as at the 9-6ers. Ugh.
The required bankroll is much higher than the average loss if you want to give yourself enough for a 5 percent risk of ruin --- a 95 percent chance of surviving two hours without losing it all. That takes $165 on 9-6 Jacks, $185 at 8-5 and $195 at 7-5.
Your chances of having a winning session after two hours are 34.54 percent at 9-6, 22.35 percent at 8-5 and 17.19 percent at 7-5. Settling for a 7-5 pay table instead of 9-6 cuts your chances of winning in half.
Then I checked probably the most popular video poker game: Double Double Bonus Poker. With a 9-6 pay table, it’s a 98.98 percent return, $12.75 average loss in two hours on a quarter machine, with a $300 bankroll for a 5 percent risk of ruin and a 35.46 percent chance of a winning session. On the 8-5 version that’s become all too common, the payback percentage falls to 96.79 percent, average two-hour loss increases to $40.12, the bankroll requirement rises to $320, and the chance of a winning session drops to 30.75 percent.
Double Double Bonus Poker is the more volatile game, with more of its payback concentrated into relatively rare four-of-a-kind hands. Most quads pay 250 for a five-coin wager, and the reward rises to 400 on four 2s, 3s or 4s; 800 if those low quads are accompanied by an Ace, 2, 3 or 4 kicker; 800 on four Aces; and 2,000 on four Aces with a 2, 3 or 4 kicker. The two-pairs return is reduced to 1-for-1 ---- you just get your money back.
That’s why Double Double Bonus bankroll requirements are higher than in Jacks or Better. But in any game, cuts in the pay table slash your chances of winning. Be wary.
LONGER SESSIONS: Two-hour sessions are extremely volatile. Just about anything can happen in any session as short as a couple of hours. But I’ve had many a two-hour session back when that was the length of a riverboat casino cruise, and still often go to a local casino to play for a couple of hours and have lunch or dinner.
But what if you’re going to play longer? What if you’re going on an overnight stay and figure to get in, say, 10 hours of play? Do you have to multiply two-hour bankroll requirements by five?
No, you don’t. Longer sessions smooth things out a bit. For 10 hours of quarter play on 9-6 Jacks or Better, the bankroll for a 5 percent risk of ruin doesn’t quintuple from $165 to $825. Instead, it’s less than tripled, at $450, while the bankroll requirement for 8-5 Jacks rises to $570.
On the more volatile Double Double Bonus Poker, that $300 bankroll for a 5 percent risk or ruin for two hours rises to $885. That’s a big chunk of cash, but at least it’s not the $1,500 you get when multiplying the $300 by five. On the 8-5 version, the bankroll needed for 10 hours is $1,010, and that’s one reason I just won’t play 8-5 Double Double Bonus Poker.

Best black hawk casino. Casinos in Blackhawk, ColoradoBlack Hawk is an historic gold mining town in Colorado. It was founded in 1859 and is located just a mile from Central City.

John Grochowski writes about casino games and the gambling industry in his weekly 'Gaming' column, which is syndicated in newspapers and Web sites across the United States. John is also the author of six books on casinos and casino games.

My sister was always the one who was careful with her money when we were growing up. She was the one who had an ever-growing savings account balance while I had pocketfuls of discarded sweet wrappers and more magazines under my bed than WH Smiths had on their shelves.

I have to admit to having endured some serious money issues during my early 20s, but that all changed when I discovered poker and poker bankroll management in particular. Despite having been frivolous with money in my past, I can say with great pride that I have never gone broke playing poker, even if I have suffered some horrific downswings in my time.

The main reason for me never busting in poker is that I follow strict bankroll management, possibly too strict if I think about it, yet it is a practice that every poker players from $0.01/$0.02 stakes up to $10,000 buy-in tournaments should follow. Many don’t, but they should.

What is poker bankroll management?

What Should My Poker Bankroll Be

As the name suggests, bankroll management is the management of your bankroll; this is the amount of money you have available to play poker. It is money that you are prepared to lose, that is not needed for any other expense in your life.

If you think that you have a $1,000 bankroll but you need $600 of that to pay for little Johnny’s school skiing trip next month you have a $400 bankroll. Be honest with yourself, never gamble with money that you cannot afford to lose. Even the most elite poker players in the world go on long losing stretches, yet these players can still play their usual stakes because they have built a financial cushion to help soften the blow. They follow bankroll management.

To wrap up what bankroll management is in a sentence or two, I would say bankroll management is allowing the money you have available for poker dictate the stakes you play for and not the other way around.

Why is poker bankroll management so important?

I’ve already mentioned that even the best poker players on the planet can go on long losing stretches, sometimes tens of thousands of cash game hands or hundreds of tournaments. A few years ago, I was playing a lot of 180-man turbo tournaments where I was a long-term winning player. While I was never going to get rich from them, I was making money playing them until one day no matter what I did was wrong. I couldn’t win to save my life. A long story made short; I went on a downswing that spanned 1,200 games and cost me around 150 buy-ins.

It stung, yet I was able to continue playing because I am a bankroll nit and had a large enough poker bankroll behind me to allow me to continue playing. The downswing turned around eventually, and I resumed the slow and often painful task of rebuilding my decimated bankroll.

Another reason for having a decent bankroll behind you is that it allows you to play your A-game with more ease. Having a $50 bankroll and playing in a $0.25/$0.50 game where you buy in for $50 means you have one shot and one shot only. Inevitably, you’ll play a more timid style of poker where you don’t take lines that yield the most value because you’ll be scared of losing. Then you get , get your stack in versus and lose your entire bankroll when a lands on the river, taking you out of the game. Having several buy-ins behind you would allow you to keep playing, absorb those inevitable losses and try to win your money back.

How big should your poker bankroll be?

Live Poker Bankroll Management

The answer to this question, like many in poker, is it depends. Everyone is different, which is why this great game of ours is exactly that, great. When deciding what size your bankroll should be, make the following considerations:

• Are you willing to move down in stakes if you hit a significant losing stretch?
• Do you want to take a more risky approach to try and move up in stakes faster?
• If you somehow lost all of your bankroll would you be able to afford to replenish it?
• Does your game and format of choice have high variance?

Some games have more variance than others and, therefore, require a larger bankroll. Six-Max Pot Limit Omaha, for example, needs a larger bankroll than full-ring no limit Hold’em due to the nature of the game.

Poker Bankroll Calculator

I’ve created a table below for some cash games and tournaments – the games I play mostly – as a guide to what a poker bankroll’s size should be. The information is a mixture of data found in books, poker forums and training videos I’ve seen over the years, plus some of my recommendations.

Royal palace casino online slots. For cash games, buy-ins refer to the maximum you can buy into a game. If the stakes are $0.25/$0.50, and you can buy in for $50, then one buy-in is $50. For tournaments, if a tournament costs $11 ($10+$1) then $11 is one buy-in.

For multi-table tournaments, I follow a system that works on an average buy-in system. Say my bankroll at the time is $1,000, according to the table I should only play tournaments with a maximum buy-in of $10. However, I’ll sometimes play a $50 buy-in but then offset the difference by playing a few $1, $2 or $5 tournaments. When calculated at the end of the week or month (total cost of buy-ins divided by the number of tournaments played) my average buy-in will fit into my bankroll constraints as snug as a dog in front of the fire on Christmas morning.The numbers may seem excessively large if you’re not used to following bankroll management or have run so well in the early stage of your career that you’ve never seen a downswing – lucky you! – but I fall somewhere in the middle of Minimum and Medium and have never gone broke.

Poker Cash Game Bankroll

Play around with the figures, look at your personal circumstances and come up with a figure that suits you. I play better knowing I have a large bankroll behind me; you may play better if the risk of going broke increases. Feel free to share your bankroll recommendations in the comments box below or via our social media channels.

Keep up to date with all things partypoker!

How Big Should My Poker Bankroll Be A Girl

Get all the latest partypoker updates from your favourite social media outlets. You can Follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook