The Best Bankroll Management Rules for Poker Players
A gentleman arrived at our table with two million euros in an attaché case and lost it all before sunrise. He had no particular system. Most players do not. The ones who remain, season after season, have something the others lack.
The deal
There was a period, some years ago now, when a certain oil trader from Stavanger sat at our highest table every Thursday evening without fail. He dressed impeccably. He never raised his voice. He lost, on average, thirty thousand euros per session and returned the following week as though nothing had happened. I inquired, once, through his host, whether he had a system. His host replied, with the particular discretion of his profession, that the gentleman had a very clear system. He allocated a fixed sum monthly to entertainment and the table was simply where he spent it.
That, I realized, is bankroll management in its purest form. A defined loss that can be absorbed without consequence.
Round 1: The Rules That Actually Hold
The question of how much is enough for a poker bankroll has a specific answer, not a vague one. The standard figure cited for cash game players at a given stake level is twenty full buy-ins. A player who regularly sits at €1/€2 with a €200 maximum buy-in requires €4,000 dedicated to that game. Not £4,000 total savings. Four thousand in funds set aside exclusively for poker.
This is not an arbitrary convention. Twenty buy-ins reflects the probability of encountering a downswing severe enough to deplete a smaller reserve before variance corrects. Run the simulation: a player with a genuine positive expected value of 5 big blinds per 100 hands will still face sessions where they lose two or three buy-ins through no fault of their own.
For tournament play the numbers are more severe.
- Multi-table tournaments with high variance require a minimum of 100 buy-ins at your average field size. Winning a single tournament more than doubles your stack from a starting point of zero, but tournament series run in streaks and droughts that cash games smooth out.
- Sit-and-go players at the $11 to $22 level typically work with 50 buy-ins as a floor.
- Live tournament players who travel to events need to account for travel and accommodation as a percentage of their total bankroll, not separately. A £200 event that costs £500 to attend is a £700 commitment.
Round 2: Moving Up and Moving Down
A gentleman from Lyon, whose textile business had done exceptionally well one particular year, arrived at our room with a request to sit at the €5/€10 table directly, without having played €2/€5 previously. We accommodated him. He lasted four sessions before returning to a lower stake.
This is not unusual. The rules around moving up in stakes are practical, not aspirational. Most professional players set a threshold of reaching 30 buy-ins for the higher stake before making the jump, and a stop-loss at 20 buy-ins that triggers a move back down. A player with €6,000 moves from €1/€2 to €2/€5 when that bankroll reaches €15,000 (30 buy-ins at €500). If it drops to €10,000 (20 buy-ins at €500), they move back.
The discipline required is not mathematical. The mathematics is simple. The discipline is in executing the move back down when the threshold is reached, which requires a kind of self-awareness that is not uniformly distributed among those who sit at poker tables.
Round 3: On Shot-Taking
There is a concept in the professional game called a shot. A player who is properly rolled for €2/€5 takes a single session at €5/€10 using funds they can afford to lose entirely without disrupting their normal game. This is not irresponsible speculation. It is controlled reconnaissance.
A lady from Taipei, whose play I had observed for some months at modest stakes, once took a shot at a considerably higher game during a festival event. She lost her allocated amount, departed before the evening session, and returned to her regular game the following morning. I heard later that she had been at that higher game within eighteen months on a full roll. The shot gave her information about player tendencies at that level that she could not have obtained any other way.
The bankroll is, in the end, not just a reserve against variance. It is the medium in which the player's skill develops. Protecting it is not caution. It is the condition of continued participation.
