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At this point, he’s stuck at about $100 which isn’t too shabby. Doubling one’s bankroll in 11 days is pretty cool. On to $200!

For simplicity’s sake, Texas hold’em will be used in all examples, seeing as how this is now the most popular poker variant by far. When attempting to establish a bankroll, the first thing you must do is “pick your poison”; that is, choose one game that you would like to play and stick almost exclusively to that game. If you want to play only multi-table tournaments, do so; if you prefer shorthanded limit games, partake in them and them alone. This approach makes bankroll management easier, as each variation requires modifications to your strategy. Moreover, it also allows you to specialize in one game, hopefully maximizing your win rate.

Once you’ve decided if you want to play tournaments or cash games, you then need to figure out what stakes you intend to play at. If you choose to stake your claim in no-limit hold’em, you need to view your bankroll in terms of ‘buy-ins,’ the maximum amount of money that you can sit down with. The buy-in is usually 100x the big blind, so in a 1-2 game with a big blind of $2, you would have a buy-in of $200. In turn, your bankroll should consist of 100 buy-ins initially, so $2000. This may seem like a lot for a relatively cheap game like 1-2, but it is necessary to have enough money to cover the negative swings, which invariably happen to all poker players over time. Bankrolls for tournament players are also measured in buy-ins. A player who wants to play in $10 sit-and-go tournaments should start with a bankroll of at least $800, or 80x more than the buy-in for one tournament.

If you decide that you prefer limit hold’em, you must use a slightly different method of bankroll management, in which you are concerned with big bets (or BB, not to be confused with the big blind described above) instead of buy-ins. For example, in a 3-6 game of limit hold’em, the big blind is $3 while the big bet (BB) is $6. Two hundred BBs is considered a standard bankroll for a limit player, so a 3-6 player would need $1200 to start.

The managing comes in when the player either starts winning or losing. Just because you start off hot doesn’t mean that you need to immediately jump up to the next limit; make sure that your bankroll can handle the move and that you have the skills to compete at a higher level. In addition, you may want to cash out some of your money; a good rule that I read is to cash you half of your bankroll every time you double through it. So if you are a 1-2 no limit player and you start with $2000, cash out $1000 when you get to $4000, and only move up to 2-4 once you are secure that you can continue winning. On the other hand, you do not necessarily need to move down once your bankroll falls below a certain threshold. Make your decision based on whether you think your losses have been based on skill or just bad luck, and whether your remaining bankroll can handle a continued losing streak.