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How to manage your poker bankroll

Your poker bankroll is your lifeline in poker, if you lose it, it is the same as being rivered, your money has gone. Without your poker bankroll you can't play. Therefore managing your bankroll is essential in the game of poker.

To manage your bankroll and keep you in the game you must remember a few basic points:

Always Know your bankroll

Know the exact amount of your bankroll before you play. If you don't know your bankroll then you can't make the correct decisions of what games you play. Your bankroll allows you to play games and not necessarily cash for a sustained period of time without going broke, because you can't always win at poker even if you are the best player in the world. Your bankroll allows you to take these losses over time but allow you to remain a winning poker player in the long run, which is how poker success is measured, over the long run, not two or three poker sessions.

Don't play above what you can afford to lose

This technique of managing your bankroll applies to both cash and tournament play. If you are playing cash then you need a bankroll of 2000 times the big blind in order to sustain loses over time. Therefore if you bankroll is $1000 really you should be playing in $0.25/$0.50 games. Once your bankroll then hits $2000 you can then move up to $0.50/$1 etc. Managing your bankroll efficiently and effectively is crucial to poker. If you play tournaments rather than cash games then your bankroll is still crucial as you can't expect to win every tournament or finish in the money each time you play. I don't think there are any rules to what sort of buy ins you pay for tournaments, but if your poker bankroll is $1000 buying into a $100 rebuy tournament would not be a wise idea, maybe playing tournaments between $5 and $15 would be more advisable.

Don't chase your loses

Overtime all poker players go through losing patches, losing streaks or maybe even losing months. This is why your poker bankroll is so essential to you, your bankroll is your asset and like a tool to you, in the same way that a baker's oven is his asset, without his oven he cannot make bread and therefore he earns no money. So however big or small your bankroll is, if you are on a losing streak DO NOT CHASE YOUR LOSES, maybe move down a level for a while until you replenish you bankroll. Always play your best game, if you are a winning player then overtime you will make money.

Use your bankroll wisely, don't play above what you can afford to lose, don't chase your loses and lastly don't get rivered!

Article written by Rivered