The way to manage your bankroll is to do the following:

Only ever play with 5% of your bankroll on the table. So if you start with $100 and play a $5+50 SNG then you now have $94.50 left in your bankroll.

This means you now have to drop down a limit as your bankroll can not support the $5 buy in and you play at the $3 buy in until you have built up your bankroll again.

If you follow this system of bankroll management you will never have to reload again and everybody is happy.

Now, let’s take a short discourse and discuss a myth about playing low limit tables.

Many people believe that by moving up through the limits you encounter a better quality of player and thus have to endure a fewer amount of bad beats or people hitting a miracle card on the river to make their gutshot.

Yes in general the quality of player is better as you move to a higher limit but you still get a high percentage of players who want to play for fun and their disposable income supports this hobby.

So even as you move up limits you still get bad players who deliver spectacular bad beats on you and if you are playing outside your bankroll this really hurts.

When you play within your bankroll it’s just a normal occurrence and you don’t have to sweat it.

If you follow the basic poker principles on this website then you'll notice that 90% of the time you are on the receiving end of the "beat". That's how you want it.

In poker bad beats are to be embraced. If you didn't get callers for your premium hands then there wouldn't be a game would there?

What's the point in getting upset about a bad beat anyway? When you catch a set on the turn after calling a large bet you just delivered a nice beat. How do you feel?

That feeling is what action junkies play for and why you need to be sufficiently bankrolled to play the game.

The nice thing about using a bankroll management system is that you never have to be reloading your account with fresh money and once you start to become a winning player you can take your bankroll from one casino to another and take advantage of their reload bonuses.

Your poker bankroll needs to be completely separate from all of your other finances. For a poker player their bankroll is the only tool they have to work with – no bankroll means no way of playing the game and many top pros have had to give up the game because they lost their bankroll playing outside of their means.

To keep your poker bankroll completely separate you need to open a moneybookers or neteller account so that you can use this to move your bankroll from casino to casino.

Now. Here is an important point about bankroll management. Once you become a winning player your bankroll obviously starts to increase.

Once you get to $500 or so then you have a tidy sum that you will or should never have to use.

This is because at any one time you will only be playing with 5% of your total roll so 5% of 500 is $25 and the rest of your money is not working for you. You should put $200 or so in a safe place.

At it’s very simplest you can deposit a large chunk into a simple savings account but whatever you do don’t put the money at risk unless you can afford to lose it.

One day you may need it if you go on a horrible run of cards.

So now we have our bankroll management sorted out let's take an overview of the shorthanded six player Sit and go.

Last update: 20-06-2008 12:01