4 Tips Bankroll Management in Poker

Bankroll Management in Poker

Part of becoming a master is learning the proper bankroll management in poker. Not only do you need to be skilled to be a pro player, but you also need discipline and money management skills. 

Top players leave their table with no money sometimes. However, what makes stories like them different from those about players who never reached the highest stakes?

Some potentially masters never move up in stakes as they never build a poker bankroll, and despite knowing how to manage their money, they lack the discipline to follow through. 

What is Poker Bankroll Management?

The concept of bankroll management in poker is to make a balance used for gambling. This is the amount of money you can afford to lose over a period of time, if you will. This works differently from bankroll in the real world in that you can only boost the balance if you win or deposit more money. 

By placing a bet within your means, you can navigate variance and manage the time you inevitably lose. Yes, managing a bankroll will take discipline as we already mentioned. You need only bet a small percentage of the total balance of your bankroll every time. It means that if you lose, you can continue to bet. 

How to Do Bankroll Management in Poker?

Before you can improve chances of winning, you need to start with the bankroll management in poker. Here are some straightforward tips for managing you poker balance effectively:

1. Split Your Personal and Poker Money

Experienced players treat it as a business. In the similar way that you will not use your personal savings account for a business expense, or vice versa. Therefore, don’t mix your personal money with your poker money. At best, you will struggle to stay in the game. At worst, you will struggle to pay your bills. 

2. Don’t Try to “Stop” Variance

On bankroll management in poker, one of the main differences between professional and new players is that the latter tend to change their game, when facing the inevitable downswing.

However, variance has no memory, you can’t break a losing streak by betting recklessly, just as you can’t extend the winning streak by playing conservatively. Instead, you can take every game one hand at a time. 

3. Move Down in Stakes When You Need to

If you move up in stakes and bad results, don’t be afraid to move back down again. Commonly, this process of bankroll management in poker will be repeated many times before a player moves up permanently. 

4. Prevent Unnecessary Expenses

The next tip of bankroll management in poker, if you are playing at a live casino Malaysia site, you might be tempted to use the bankroll to pay for the luxuries around you (drinks, food, massages, etc). Keep in mind that every Ringgit you will spend is potentially a big blind you can’t use later. 

Bankroll Management Strategies

As a player, you can also apply strategies to your bankroll management system that will allow you to not only make a buffer against variance, however, also move through the stakes or increase the betting amounts to win more money. 

Flat Betting Strategy

Flat betting is the easiest of the strategies. In this case, you are placing a bet per unit, regardless of the odds of the type of betting you are placing. Remove any outside noise like form, previous form, and success, and keep a flight bet throughout. It is one of the best ways to bankroll management in poker. 

You can use this in two ways: “win” or “risk”. They both will take the sportsbook juice into account. The “win” way will cover the juice. Thus, for a -110 bet, you will bet 1.1 unit. On the other hand, the “risk” will be where you bet 1 unit straight and win 0.91 units for these bets. 

Percentage Betting Strategy

Percentage betting is where you will take a fixed percentage of your bankroll to bet on every stake regardless of the odds or bet type. As the bankroll changes, so does your bet amount. 

For example on bankroll management in poker, if you have got a MYR 5000 bankroll and bet 1% every time, the first bet will be MYR 50. If you were to win that bet at odds +500, your bankroll will increase to MYR 5300. Then, your next bet at 1% will be MYR 53. 

This strategy will allow you to roll the good times and be more conservative when the things are not going as well. If you expect, you can interlink this and the flat betting strategy, targeting the higher percentage bets as you go well and dropping back to the flat bets if the bankroll starts to diminish. 

Confidence Model Strategy

The confidence model is placing bigger bets on the games that you think have a better chance of winning or offer more value. You bet based on how confident you are with the bet. The more confident you are about this bankroll management in poker strategy, the more you bet. 

That is the best way to make a points system from 1 to 3. The more confident you are, the higher number and, in turn, the highest the stake. For instance, you may decide to bet MYR 100 per point. You find two games you want to bet on, with game 1 ranked as a one (MYR 100) and game 2 ranked as a three (MYR 300). 

This way, you must track your bets and the amount you are betting. It will be more aggressive than most betting strategies as it needs much more skill to determine which bets offer the greater value. Moreover, you can see how your confidence levels fairs based on the returns. If you more confident picks have a bigger ROI, you can increase the bet sizes to reflect this. 

Final Words

An enough bankroll is necessary to act as a player against variance. A strategy of bankroll management in poker is the one aspect of this crazy game that you can control. While it requires discipline, it is a skill that needs to be learned if you are going to be a master at all types of poker.