Bankroll Management
When you are playing poker online, there are a great number of things that must be understood in order for the ability to play properly to take hold. In addition to knowledge about how to play the game from any position at the table and the hands you should be playing, there are other ideas and strategies that need to be understood. One such concept is the idea of bankroll management. All successful poker players understand the concept of bankroll management and how it is utilized to effectively improve their results at the poker table. There are number reasons that bankroll management is important and ways that it can be utilized by poker players from determining their risk appetite at the table to changing their play style depending on the size of the player’s chip stack. In simple terms, bankroll management is the concept where a player makes his or her decisions on how to bet based on the amount of chips that they have and the overall size of their bankroll.
A primary reason that bankroll management is so important is that it adds a degree of security to your play and helps to prevent you from losing all of your chips. For example, if you have a $100 bankroll and you decide to play in a $2/$4 no-limit game, the total size of your chip stack is equivalent to 25 big blinds which is very low number of blinds. The chances are extremely good that if you lose a few hands you will be in either an extremely short stacked position with little ability to make a move or entirely out of chips. If, however, you were to take that same chip stack and play in a $.50/$1.00 no-limit game you would have 100 big blinds worth of chips to start with which is a much more conservative number. You could play in a great number of hands, lose a few large pots and still be in a position where you can make a move and rebuild your stack. You would have to lose 75% of your stack to be in the same dire position that you started in if you were to play at the 2/4 table.
Making the decision of how you want to manage your bankroll is almost entirely dependent on how you choose to play and what suits your personality. Not every player plays in the same style because everyone is different. Some players opt for a more aggressive poker playing style and high-risk approach and for them playing with a chip stack of fifty to seventy big blinds might be what they are comfortable and happy to play with. For other more risk averse players, they may choose to play with a deeper stack of 120 or maybe more big blinds in their starting stack. As a general rule, however, it is important to avoid dropping below 50 big blinds as that will put you in an extremely dangerous position where the risk reward ratio is almost impossible to work with.
Using the concept of bankroll management will enable you to calculate how you are performing at the table and help you to make good decisions based on your financial position. By utilizing bankroll management, you will be able to greatly reduce your chance of blowing up at the table and increase your opportunity for making money.
