The main use of a poker bankroll

There are many reasons as to why you need a bankroll in Texas Hold em poker and the first and most obvious reason is to withstand variance. This is absolutely critical when you have only a set amount of money to put to one side for the purpose of playing poker. So if you can only afford to spend $2000 on your poker career then you have a duty of care to that money to protect it as much as possible. So if you had $2000 then what levels should you play at? Well that is not easy to answer but much of what the correct level is isn’t easy to quantify because there are several important factors involved.

Firstly we have your attitude to risk which is entirely individual in nature. If you have a fair amount of experience then you may want to play something like NL50 to begin with and allow yourself a nice and safe forty buy-ins. If you were playing limit hold’em then I would advise on not playing any higher than $2-$4 which is 500 big bets. This is high but I always advise on the side of caution. However there is an even more important reason to have a big bankroll relative to the number of buy-ins or big bets and it is to allow yourself more room to manoeuvre.

In no-limit hold’em then bankroll size can be a very formidable weapon. Let us look at two individuals who set about playing $25-$50 no-limit. These games have $5000 buy-ins and one player went into this with a $50,000 bankroll. This is a very small bankroll for such a level but this guy does not to play any lower because he has issues with his own ego. However a top pro plays the same level and has 100 buy-ins which is $500,000. What we need to look at here is not just the respective size bankrolls but the mindset as well.

There would be absolutely nothing to prevent the player with the $50k bankroll from going on a huge heater and amassing a lot of money playing that level by being on the right side of variance very early. However because he only has ten buy-ins then he may have a very defensive style of play when he starts out. Defensive styles and fear can be sniffed out by strong players and our hero with his $50k bankroll is going to be faced with some very tough decisions by the pro. If he wants to play a $500 pot then the pro can ask him a serious question by inferring that he wants to play a $5000 pot.

The pro is only risking a mere 1% by his ultra aggressive play while getting involved in highly marginal situations for our hero is risking 10% and so he needs to be sure before he commits. There is a name for this and it is called playing on scared money. In fact the saying is that “scared money never wins” and there is no truer word spoken in poker than this.