How to build a poker bankroll.
So you have got the basics of the game down and you are a winning player (however marginal) at the 10 handed ring tables.
How can you begin to build a meaningful bankroll that will let you keep playing the game we all love so much whilst minimizing your risk and boredom threshold?
The first thing for you to understand is that as you move up through the limits the standard of player becomes higher and higher. There are still fish at all levels of poker but generally the higher you go the more proficient the player.
In addition to this you need to be able to play your game without ever considering your bankroll whilst you play that particular game. If you are playing in a game where you are making decisions based on the amount you have in your bankroll then you are playing at a limit too high for that roll!
If you are a losing player then obviously the first thing to do is to reverse that trend.
The reason you are losing is because you are playing a game that you don't understand properly (Limit is completely different to No limit which is completely different from NL tournament play etc, etc.)
Get it into your head that poker is a game of skill and take one particular discipline of the game and begin to focus on beating that game.
Stop jumping from Limit to No Limit and back again and then jumping into an SNG because you got bored or took some beats. This is why you are losing or breaking even because you are not taking one particular game type and learning how to beat it.
To become a winning player is actually very simple to do. In a ten handed Limit game you tighten up your starting hand requirements text book style and raise and re raise when you have a hand, folding when you miss, however good your hand looks.
Don't go chasing draws or flushes unless you are last to act and lots of money is going in the pot. It is these hands that will make you the most money.
At all levels of Limit poker this style of play will be a winning style.
Of course you will get your Aces or kings cracked now and again and this is the reason that you play within your bankroll so that you can absorb the bad beats inflicted on you.
So let's start off with a $100 bankroll and look at how we can go about building it up over time.
We know that we can only play with 5% of our bankroll at any one time. So how do we make the best use of this?
(If you haven't done so already then how about checking out the sixhanded.com bankroll management guide).
5% of $100 is $5 so this means we are not going to get rich any time soon. However if you follow a meaningful and purposeful plan then you can accelerate the rate at which you build your bankroll.
The way to start out is this.
Use your $5 to play the ten handed hold em Limit ring game. Keep playing this game until you are winning three out of every four sessions you play. Once you are coming out ahead three out of every four times then you are ready for stage two. You should be able to find plenty of games with blinds of .10/.20 that will suit this perfectly.
Do not under any circumstances be tempted to play any other game. For example if you jump into a six handed limit game thinking you will get more action then you most definitely will! And you will lose your 5% very quickly.
Build your roll up to $110 which, depending on how tight you play (how good you are) could take a few hours if you get lucky or a week if you get unlucky.
Remember that ring game poker is all about expectancy over thousands of hands. Sometimes you will play a session where everything goes your way and you can do no wrong hitting sets and flushes everytime you play a hand and other times nothing you do will go right including getting your Aces cracked multiple times by a rivered draw.
It is accepting these “beats” as part of bankroll building that will allow you to grow your roll over time. 85% of poker players are estimated to be losing players and so joining the winning set of players requires a special focus that the other players do not have.
Got up to $110?
Let's move on to the next stage.
Playing ring game poker is particularly boring and that's partly the reason that you found this site.
Six handed play is so much more entertaining and you are involved in hands so much more regularly that it eliminates the boredom. Grinding it out at a ten handed ring game is tedious work.
However playing at six handed tables is not for beginners building a roll. A six handed limit table is ideal for an experienced player to add to their bankroll very quickly but because they play these games very aggressively there is also a huge amount of variance involved.
Beginners should stay away from six handed limit tables until they are completely comfortable with the ideas of position, stealing blinds and raising with 56 suited under the gun!
Now that you are a winning player at limit hold em does not mean you should move “up” to playing No Limit ring games.
For the purposes of bankroll building No limit ring games are the games to be steered well clear of simply because they require much better player reading skills for the beginning player.
The SNG is where it is at to build a bankroll more quickly than grinding it out at the limit tables.
The idea now is to take the money we have made from our ring games and invest it into some SNG play. On many sites you can play six handed $1 SNG's and these will give you a start on playing the game.
If you lose your $10 then stop playing and go back to your limit tables to make some more money, come back when you another $10 to invest in learning how to play the six handed SNG. With the advice on the sixhanded.com site you should have no trouble getting a positive return in a very short time.
Six handed SNG's are full of fish. They usually suck at No Limit ring games and come to the SNG for a breather. You'll be there waiting for them armed with expert knowledge and ready to take them out with their pathetic bluff attempts.
Once you can begin to beat the six handed SNG game then it's time to move on to stage 3.
You still have your original $100 as a safety net. This safety net is there to make you more money at the low limit game if you need to generate it.
Hopefully by now you are a winning player at the six handed SNG.
Once you can consistently place in the money then it's time to start moving up through the levels. You can do this far more rapidly once you are a winning player at the six handed SNG than you ever can grinding it out at the ten handed ring tables. The trick is to always work within your bankroll so that you are not putting your original $100 at any risk at all.
You need to make the jumps from $1 to $2 to $5 SNG's as quickly as possible. The reason being that the rake at this level is usually a bigger percentage of the prize pool and there is no discernible difference in play between these levels.
Once you get to the $5 six handed SNG level you are now starting to see some serious potential in your bankroll. It's at this point that you need to stay at a level that you are beating comfortably before you make your next move up.
Playing at $1 and $2 tables is not giving you any meaningful revenue at this point, however once you can beat the game easily and you have enough in your bankroll to support the next level you should do so as fast as possible.
Once you get to $5 then you need to take a breather in your race up the limits and stay where you are.
By the time you get to the $5 limit you should have a bankroll of around $200. If you are a good player this is easily achievable in just a few weeks. Far quicker than ring game play.
You should now consolidate and keep building your roll at the $5 level. You are beating the game quite comfortably and have no need to move up. Now you can build your bankroll quickly without having to do crazy stuff like multi tabling five tables of ring game and all the other stuff you read about .
At this point many people will encourage you to move up to the $10 level and this is where many people come off of the rails and car crash.
There is very little difference in the standard of play between the $5 and $10 game. In fact if anything the $5 game can sometimes be more difficult to beat because you get more fish with disposable income at the $10 level.
However your goal now is not to have to move back down when you do eventually make the decision to move up.
Unlike ring game poker where you can take “shots” at a higher limit and easily move back down if it doesn't work out, in the SNG you should not do this.
Once you move up to $10 then you are leaving the $5 behind forever. You are never going to move back down to the $5 limit. You are now a $10 SNG player.
The reason for this is that you now need to start focusing on your game statistics and studying harder moves.
ABC poker will win the six seat SNG simply because there are so many fish. But at this point you need experience of the game to keep making progress.
If you keep moving up and down levels then you won't know if it's your bad play that caused a losing streak or simply that you came up against better players.
The same goes when it is time to move up to $20 and $30 and above.
In addition now that you can consistently make money from the SNG you are ready to start playing the larger tournaments. Use your SNG winnings to fund your tournament buy ins. If you are a winning player at the $5 level and have a bankroll of around $300 then you have enough to make the occasional buy in to the $1 or $2 MTT where a cash can give you a big bankroll boost.
So that's the basic mechanics of building a bankroll. Give yourself a good foundation in limit poker on which to build and take your winnings to the SNG game. If you lose it all at the SNG go back to playing the limit game until you have built up enough to give it another go.
If you simply put your $100 into playing SNG's then you will more than likely go through your roll quickly and have nothing to fall back on.
$100 is really the minimum you should start with. If it's a big chunk of your earnings then consider saving up to give yourself a starting bankroll. If you start with a bankroll of say $20 then using a failsafe 5% system it is going to take you years to build a sizeable war chest.
Lastly, the strange thing about building a bank roll is that the bigger it gets the more careful you have to be about protecting it. If you build your roll up to $1000 then for most players it's an irreplaceable asset. It's simply not feasible to replace it from wages or other income without doing major damage to your personal finances.
And in closing let's reflect that whilst poker is a hugely enjoyable game it makes it even more enjoyable if you know you are playing within your limits and that you never have to reload with fresh cash ever again.
Best of luck at the tables!
Last update: 11-07-2008 10:04
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