Bankroll Management

Bankroll management is discussed at every poker site, and every pro tells you it's terribly important. But what do they mean exactly?

Right now I'm playing the .10/.20 stakes at Absolute Poker. I'm up to around 50 dollars, $45.45 at last count. From almost hitting the felt at around 8 dollars, I'm up about 37 in the last 4 weeks or so. So should I make the jump to the next level, which is a 2.5x increase in stakes (.25/.50)?

The experts are conflicted. Most would say no: you shouldn't be playing in a limit game where you don't have at least 300 times the big bet on hand. So until I make it to at least 150 dollars, I shouldn't even touch those "bigger" games. It must be even bigger for no-limit and pot-limit, since the minimum buy-in is usually twice as high and you can easily lose 100BB in one hand. The limit games I play are capped at four bets per street, so the maximum you can lose is 12 big bets or 2.40 (4 x .10 preflop, 4 x .10 on the flop, 4 x .20 on the turn, 4 x .20 on the turn). While that's a lot to lose on one hand, and I usually only buy in for 5 dollars, it's rare that you lose even that much.

The very reasonable argument behind this is simply variance; while it's entirely possible that you can beat the bigger game, it's also possible to lose your whole buy-in during a session. If you jump too quickly, you can get sent back to zero.

However, some experts say you should push yourself. Both Patrik Antonius and Brian Townsend suggest leveling up quickly, almost as soon as you have three good-sized buy-ins. The argument is that your game slackens playing at unchallenging stakes and that the per-hour reward should always be maximized. Also, your "moves" are less useful at the lower stakes, where it's all about showing down quality hands on the river (well, at least in limit it is).

At one point I did bump up to .25/.50, and the game changes quite a bit. Players are much tighter pre-flop, as in all tougher games, but I felt I was becoming way too tight myself. I would lay down the big blind with Q9 when someone raised in early position. While that's generally a fine play, it got quite boring; in one session I played, about 90% of the hands were blind steals: UTG player raises, everyone else folded. I think I made about 15 cents in an hour.

I'm willing to be patient. Recently I've been able to beat the .10/.20 games for about 5 dollars a day, so I'm six good days away from hitting 75 dollars. After that it's 25 more days to 150. The highest I've ever reached on this bankroll is 109, and then I foolishly took up tournaments and no-limit. That was a "learning experience" and I won't be doing it again. While I've done OK at the few live tournaments I've played, I've had no luck at the online ones. Aside from winning a few low-stakes sit-and-gos, I've never made the money at multi-table tournaments online.

I'm going to try to start posting with the new metrics I've seen. Rather than money per day, most experts seem to report their winnings in BB/100 - big bets won per 100 hands. I'm not sure what a good score is, I think around 8 is quite strong and at the higher level you only need to be around 1 to be making a pretty good margin.