Bankroll Management in Live Poker

In live poker, bankroll management is a special topic, because
it can’t really be compared to online poker. When you are
playing in brick and mortar poker rooms, you’ll be handling
real cash. You may not only need to bring thousands in cash with
you when you go to play, but you’ll also need to keep track of
how much is won, lost, and how much you have left to work with.

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a live poker
player is to simply play each day without any regard for how
much money you are winning or losing. Record keeping is
absolutely critical to your success. It’s very much a repeated
theme in poker that the small things will separate the long term
winners and losers. If you aren’t willing to put in the extra
work away from the felt, you should expect lessened returns on
your play.

Bankroll management in live poker doesn’t mean that you keep
a box somewhere and put money in it. You don’t need to grab wads
of cash and place it back away when you are done with a session
(though there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this.) Most
people will keep their significant amounts of cash safely in a
bank account. This won’t only prevent you from losing the
money, but it will also allow you to easily determine how much
money you have on hand at any given moment. After you have your
money carefully stored in a bank account, there are a handful of
other steps that you’ll need to take.

Separating Life and Poker Rolls

Your bankroll may be $3,000, but your total life
roll may very well be closer to $20,000. The important thing to
remember is that you should try to not make your life and poker
bankrolls one in the same thing. This is the type of situations
that will allow you to lose more money than you can truly
afford. Beyond this, taking shots shouldn’t be done if it means
that you’ll need to dip into money that is truly meant for
other expenses and uses.

Tracking Wins and Losses

We’re going to break this down into two very important parts:

How Much You Need

The biggest question that brick and mortar poker players have
in regards to bankroll management is the most obvious:

While this answer is hardly cut
and dry, it’s much easier to answer than it would be for online
players. There are three primary limits that most Texas Hold’em
players will be participating in:

• $1 / $2
• $2 / $5
• $5 / $10

As you move to higher and higher limits, the more buy ins that you
will need. This is one of the fundamental reasons why the player
pool thins out as you move to bigger games.

$1 / $2 Limits

No Limit games will typically carry buy ins that range from
$200 Max to $400 Max. There are always going to be the rare
games with no cap, but these are more of the exception than
the rule. In these games, provided you are a winning player,
$5,000 should be more than enough to play with. In online play,
this would be nowhere near enough due to the strong skill level
of most players at these limits. The difference is that $1/$2 is
low limit in live play whereas it’s mid limit in online play. If
you are bleeding off money and at risk of going broke with this
bankroll, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

$1 / $2 Limits

No Limit games will typically carry buy ins that range from
$200 Max to $400 Max. There are always going to be the rare
games with no cap, but these are more of the exception than
the rule. In these games, provided you are a winning player,
$5,000 should be more than enough to play with. In online play,
this would be nowhere near enough due to the strong skill level
of most players at these limits. The difference is that $1/$2 is
low limit in live play whereas it’s mid limit in online play. If
you are bleeding off money and at risk of going broke with this
bankroll, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

$2 / $5 Limits

No Limit tables have buy ins that are usually either
$500 or $1,000 Max. It’s more common to see uncommon or deep
stacked $2/$5 games than it is at lower limits. This is the
limit where skill level starts to pick up, but it’s not fair to
say that the games are difficult by any means. As a regular at
this limit, a $12,000 bankroll should be more than ample, and
many would argue that even $10,000 would be plenty.

$5 / $10 Limits

This is when you’ll start to run into a lot more
variance, tougher opponents, and fewer games to choose from.
This is really the limit where games drop off sharply. As a
result, you are going to be playing with a lot of the same
people over and over and will generally have a lower (bb/100)
winrate, though this should also create a higher hourly earn
which is all that really matters. For $5/$10 NLHE, nothing less
than $25,000 should really be considered. You’ll be at greater
risk of down swings, there are more deep stacked games, and
the destruction of your bankroll is much more likely if you aren’t
very careful.