What Is Bankroll Management?

Published: November 14, 2019

Updated: February 4, 2020

You probably already know that bankroll management is important for poker players. And that it is extremely important for professional poker players. But what is bankroll management?

Definitions

Your bankroll is the amount of money you have to play poker. I go into depth on this in a section of The Definitive Guide to Minimum Bankroll Requirements.

To manage means to “handle or direct with a degree of skill.”

Results

Good bankroll management will make it more likely that you will have money to keep playing, and less likely that you will go bust.

Good bankroll management also allows you to put your bankroll to the best possible use, choosing the games that are most profitable for you.

With good bankroll management, you win more money with less stress.

How

That’s all fine and dandy but it’s useless if you do not know what good bankroll management is or how to do it.

Recording

Step one is to keep complete records. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

After every poker sessions, you should record

• the date,
• what game you played,
• at what stakes, and
• how much you won or lost.

Also, anytime you add money to your bankroll, or take money out of your bankroll, you should record that.

You can keep these records on paper, in a spreadsheet program, or in a specialized tool like Neverbust.

Understanding

Once you have records of what happens to your bankroll, you can use them to figure out how to best manage your bankroll.

With these records you can calculate

• your running total bankroll,
• your average hourly results,
• your variance, and
• your expected value for each hour of poker.

If you also know your risk tolerance, (i.e. the odds you are willing to accept that you will go bust) you can calculate how large a bankroll you need for your games.

The Definitive Guide to Minimum Bankroll Requirememts for Poker describes in exacting detail how to do all these calculations. But if you would rather have it done for you, you can sign up for Neverbust now.

If you have any questions or think I missed anything, send me a message.