Bankroll guide
Poker bankroll management basics: use your own data to pick your stakes
Poker bankroll management means keeping money for poker apart from living expenses and choosing stakes by how big that bankroll is. A common conservative rule is 20 to 30 buy-ins or more for cash games and 100 or more for tournaments, adjusted with the average profit and standard deviation from your own records.
What is poker bankroll management?
Bankroll management means setting aside money only for poker and letting its size decide which stakes you play. It should be money you can afford to set aside, kept fully apart from rent and living costs, and every win or loss goes in or out of that one pot.
Bankrolls are usually measured in buy-ins. In a cash game, one buy-in is the standard stack you sit down with; in a tournament, it is the entry fee. Thinking in buy-ins means your rules still work when you change stakes.
Why do poker players need bankroll management?
Because even good players can lose many sessions in a row. Poker results carry a lot of randomness, and the size of the swings can be measured by the standard deviation of your session results. With too small a bankroll, a perfectly normal downswing can force you to stop or drop to very low stakes.
Bankroll management also protects your decisions. When one losing session does not touch your living money, you are far less likely to chase losses, play on tilt or jump into stakes above your level.
How many buy-ins do you need for cash games and tournaments?
The table shows conservative rules commonly used among poker players. They are starting points, not guarantees. Tournaments cash rarely and pay most of the prize pool to the top few places, so long stretches without a cash are normal and you need many more buy-ins than for cash games.
| Format | Common conservative rule | Why |
|---|---|---|
| No-limit cash games | 20 to 30 buy-ins or more; 40 to 50 for extra safety | Big swings per session, but many sessions and lower variance than tournaments |
| SNG | 50 to 100 buy-ins | Prizes concentrated in a few places; variance in between |
| Multi-table tournaments | 100 to 200 buy-ins or more | Low cash rate, top-heavy prizes, long dry spells are common |
Take NL 50/100 with a buy-in of 10,000: 20 to 30 buy-ins is 200,000 to 300,000. If you mostly play tournaments with a 3,000 entry, 100 buy-ins is 300,000. If your bankroll is below that, start one level lower.
How do you work out a suggested bankroll from your records?
A fixed number of buy-ins is a rule of thumb. A more precise approach uses your own data to estimate the risk of ruin: the chance of losing the whole bankroll, assuming your average profit and standard deviation per session stay the same. A common approximation is RoR = exp(−2μB / σ²), where μ is average profit per session, σ is the standard deviation per session and B is the bankroll.
- Solving for the bankrollB = σ² × ln(1 / RoR) ÷ (2μ). The lower the risk you accept, the bigger the bankroll you need.
- Where μ and σ come fromBoth come from your own session records, and they get more reliable the more you log.
- When average profit is zero or belowThe formula does not apply: any bankroll wears away over time, so work on your game first.
A hypothetical example: playing NL 50/100, assume an average profit μ of 1,000 per session and a standard deviation σ of 12,000. Keeping the risk of ruin under 5% needs about 215,700, roughly 21.6 buy-ins; under 1% needs about 331,600, roughly 33 buy-ins. If average profit is only half that (500), the 5% bankroll doubles to about 431,400. The smaller your edge, the more money you need.
The formula assumes session results are close to normally distributed and that your average result never changes. Neither is fully true, so treat the output as a guide. For the theory, see Wikipedia's Risk of ruin article.
When should you move up or move down in stakes?
The simplest way is to write down your thresholds in advance and follow them, instead of deciding on feel in the moment. Here is a sample set of rules for cash games; adjust the numbers to your own data.
- Move upWhen your bankroll reaches 30 buy-ins of the next stake and your average profit at the current stake is positive.
- Move downWhen your bankroll drops below 20 buy-ins of the current stake; move back up once it is above the threshold again.
- Session stop-lossLeave the table once you lose a set number of buy-ins in one session (for example 3), so a bad day does not keep growing.
Tag your session state while you log, such as tired, tilted or distracted. After a while, check which states have a clearly worse average result, and you will know when to leave early.
Should cash game and tournament bankrolls be tracked separately?
If you play both regularly, yes. Cash games and tournaments swing very differently and need different numbers of buy-ins; mixing them gives an average and standard deviation that fit neither, so the suggested bankroll is off for both. Log the game type clearly and you can split the stats and set stakes for each.
What are the most common bankroll management mistakes?
Most bankroll problems come from not following the rules, not from the rules themselves. These 6 are the most common; check whether any of them sound familiar.
- Mixing poker money with living money, so losses hit everyday spending.
- Moving up after one or two good sessions, before the bankroll reaches the threshold.
- Trying to win it all back at once and playing bigger while on tilt.
- Looking only at total profit and ignoring standard deviation and max drawdown.
- Trusting a suggested bankroll worked out from only a dozen sessions.
- Lumping cash game and tournament money and results together.
How do you manage your bankroll with POKERHERO?
POKERHERO's advanced stats work out average profit per session, standard deviation, max drawdown and suggested bankrolls at 5% and 1% risk of ruin for you, so there is no formula to set up. Follow these 4 steps.
- Log every sessionTap the + on the tracker to log buy-in, cash-out and hours, plus buy-in per bullet and bullets for tournaments. Log losing sessions too.
- Check advanced statsSwitch to all time and look at average profit per session, standard deviation per session and max drawdown to see your edge and your swings.
- Compare the suggested bankrollLook at the suggested bankrolls at 5% and 1% risk of ruin, compare them with what you have, and decide which stakes to play now.
- Review once a monthUse the monthly report for profit and hours, and behavior analysis to find session states with poor results, then adjust your thresholds.
Advanced stats, the monthly report and behavior analysis are Pro features; Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. The free version logs 10 sessions and shows total profit, ROI and hourly rate. See the POKERHERO poker bankroll tracker for details, and how to track poker sessions for the basic math.
Poker bankroll management FAQ
Does good bankroll management stop you from losing?
No. It cannot change the result of any session; it keeps normal swings from wiping out your bankroll and spares you from being forced to stop during a downswing. Long-term results still depend on how you play.
How much money do I need to start?
Pick the stakes you want to play, then multiply by the number of buy-ins. At NL 50/100 with a 10,000 buy-in, the conservative 20 to 30 buy-in rule means 200,000 to 300,000; with less, start at lower stakes.
How is the suggested bankroll calculated?
It comes from solving the risk of ruin formula RoR = exp(−2μB / σ²) for B, where μ is average profit per session and σ the standard deviation per session. Pick the risk you accept, such as 5% or 1%, and you get the B you need.
After several losing sessions, should I move down right away?
Go by whether the bankroll has dropped below your move-down threshold, not by the losing streak. If you are still above it, stick to the plan; if the losses came from fatigue or tilt, a break matters more than a lower stake.
Does my poker bankroll really need to be separate from living money?
Yes. Keeping it separate shows your real results clearly and means a loss never touches rent or everyday spending. Your bankroll should be money you can afford to set aside.
This guide describes general bankroll planning principles. All numbers are examples and no result is guaranteed.
Poker bankroll tracker
Let your records work out the bankroll
POKERHERO works out average profit per session, standard deviation, max drawdown and a suggested bankroll from your own records. Free to download, no sign-up, on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and the web.
