Building A Poker Bankroll - Tips For Long Term Success

Bankroll management and how to build a bankroll is the most overlooked part of poker. There are millions of people playing online poker every day and in my opinion, I believe 99% of them are playing higher limits than may be practical. When you deposit money into an online poker room, you will see that the minimum deposit is $10-$20. If you deposit $20, do you know what levels you should be playing?

Millions of players are online every day playing poker, and in my opinion, 99% of them are playing beyond their bankrolls because they don’t have a bankroll management strategy. The rule of thumb for deciding your buy-in level should be 5% of your total bankroll for that session. Simply put, this means that if your bankroll is only $20, then you should play in the low-stakes tournaments and buy in at no more than $1.

If this sounds ridiculous to you, then perhaps you haven’t made any significant amount of money playing poker online. The reason for the 5% limit is that there will be times where you will go on losing streaks. A bad run of cards can really put your bankroll in a bind. This is especially true when you buy into tournaments with more than 5% of you bankroll.

If at this point you are thinking that is stupid and a waste of your time, that’s great, the rest of us will keep taking your money at the tables. What most amateurs don’t realize is that most professionals avid by a similar strategy.

They have plenty of stories of their own disappointments and discouraging sessions, but by learning good bankroll management strategy and using them, they have been able to weather the tough spots. The trick is to have enough of a bankroll to get you through spells of bad cards and still have something left to play with when your luck turns around.

In order to survive the long droughts of not winning use this as a rule of thumb: Don’t use more than 5 percent of your bankroll for any one buy-in.