Determining the appropriate size of your bankroll

• 30.06.2025 8:42 pm
• headhunter
• 0 Comments

This is the first part of a two parts article on how to determine the size of your bankroll. There is a lot of advice out there on bankrolls and it is not substantial enough to offer wisdom to the average poker player. There are a number of questions you need to have answers to if you are to clearly conclude on how big your bankroll should be. These questions revolve around the game and how you play it.

1. What does poker mean to you?

This is the very first question you need to answer. You need to know what poker really means to you; is it a hobby, a game, an obsession, or maybe a profession.

2. What is your way of playing poker?

If your answer to the first question was nothing close to profession or obsession, then this question will seem controversial to you. You need to determine whether you are LAG or TAG or anything else. You need to know whether you like gambling or you prefer waiting for the nuts. You need to know whether you play with your all your stacks and semi bluff or whether you prefer playing the made hands.

You also need to answer the king of games you play most between online poker and live poker. In case you play online games, you need to think of whether you are good at multi tabling.

3. What is the quality of your life?

This question will mostly be pointed at individuals who are professional poker players. You need to determine just how dependent you are at poker as a way of life. You need to size the loans you have, how much mortgage you pay. You need to determine the actual figure of your monthly needs and how much you need to sustain your lifestyle on monthly basis. You need to determine how happy you are with your lifestyle and any changes you would like to make to it.

Buy- ins (BIs) bases

In case you take poker as a diversion where you play every twice a year and you would not mind playing anything else in place of poker, then your effective bankroll would equals to 0BIs

Incase poker is a hobby which you take up a few times each month, you will need a bankroll, but not too much of it. You only need enough to help you make through you occasional two to three games each month. This is because you will most likely be spending only one buy in per every session you play. In this case, your effective bankroll will be equals to 2BIs to 5BIs.

If you play poker because you are obsessed with the game, you require a legitimate bankroll; this is because you will need to have enough bankroll to cover your occasional downswings. It is advisable to have a job as a back up plan, this way; it will be easy for you to take breaks when a downswing has the best of your poker game and manage to return after you have cleared your mind. When you play for obsession in a live poker game, your effective bankroll can be equal to 10BIs. Online poker players will require a higher bankroll for the same limits.

The reason you need a higher bankroll for online poker is because you take part in more hands playing against worse players. This means that downswings are also larger than in live games. Your effective bankroll for online poker on a single table should equal 15BIs.

Online multi tabling means that you have more money playing; this increases your risks, but also lowers the variances. It is unusual, but possible to have stacks on eight tables that are only a few hands from one another. This will put your risk of loss equal to over 81BIs in split minutes.

It is also possible for you to have twice your stacks equal to 81BIs within the same time. You need an increased bankroll to cater for increased variances. Your roll should be as large as the number of tables you play. For two to eight tables, it is recommended that your effective bankroll should be equal to 25BIs or more.

You need to always remember the rule thumb on bankroll that states that you should never have more than 5% of your bankroll playing at a single table. This will mean that with your 25BIs will put 4% on each table meaning you are playing within the rule on the table limit.

Playing poker as a profession has its own classification on the bankroll and it will be talked about later.

Poker math for better understanding

If you are an aggressive player, you will need a larger hold bankroll. By having 4BIs on a table, you will need a bankroll to match up to that. For the obsessed poker players, they started with 10BIs of their bankroll in live poker, this will equal to 2BIs per session.

This will mean you will need to add 5BIs to every 1BI per session. This means, a player will have to go 4BIs deep and should be having a bankroll of 20BIs.

To determine how aggressive or how much of a gambler you are, you need to evaluate the number of BIs you put in a session; the more it is the more of a gambler and the more aggressive you are. This kind of play can prove to be profitable, or a conservative approach, but you can only maintain this kind of play with an equally big bankroll.

The very same idea will apply in online poker. You need a big bankroll to facilitate your 4BIs on each table. This will mean that you will need to have at least twice the BI of live poker, putting you at 50BIs per session in the eight online tables you play. The table below will explain the concept better:

The whole idea revolves around having enough bankroll to facilitate your winnings. It is always advisable fro great winning poker players to have more bankroll that little bankroll as little bankroll can make you broke easily.