Poker Bankroll Management: The System That Keeps You in the Game
Talent is worthless if you go broke before variance turns around. How many buy-ins per format, when to move up, when to move down — and the mistakes that ruin even good players.
Lou · · 3 min
There are two ways to lose everything in poker: playing badly, or playing well with a bankroll that's too short. The second is crueler — the best player in the world goes broke playing above his means, mathematically guaranteed. Bankroll management is your game's life insurance: here are the rules, the numbers, and the traps.
Your bankroll: playing capital, nothing else
Your bankroll is money dedicated to poker — separate from your life, your rent, your savings. That separation isn't an accounting detail, it's THE foundation: it lets you absorb the game's normal losses without existential stress, and it forbids impulse “reloads” after a bad night. If losing your entire bankroll would change your life, it's too big. If one losing session keeps you up at night, you're playing too high.
How many buy-ins per format?
- MTTs (multi-table tournaments): 100 buy-ins minimum, 150-200 online in big fields — it's poker's highest-variance format, and long deserts are NORMAL.
- SNGs and regular formats: 50 to 75 buy-ins.
- Spin & Gos / jackpot formats: 100+ buy-ins — the jackpot structure amplifies variance.
- PKOs: count them like MTTs, though bounties smooth results slightly.
Do these numbers look huge? That's because they're honest. A good MTT player cashes about once every six or seven tournaments: twenty-tournament dry spells happen to EVERYONE, even playing perfectly.
Variance: why good players lose too
Your result in one tournament is almost entirely noise; your result over a thousand tournaments is almost entirely signal. In between, variance rules: a positive ROI hides easily behind three red months. The practical consequence: judge yourself on decision quality (which you can measure by training), never on short-term results. And size your bankroll to survive the worst plausible downswing — not the average one.
Moving up, moving down: the rules that work
- Moving up: when your bankroll reaches the required buy-in count AT THE HIGHER STAKE, take a shot with a defined budget (5-10 buy-ins).
- Shot fails? You move back down. Period. No ego, no “one more to get unstuck”.
- Moving down isn't defeat: it's the mechanism that makes going broke impossible.
Turn theory into reflexes
Solver ranges, ICM spots, instant feedback. Train 20 minutes a day on real hands.