This poker bankroll calculator allows you to work out which limits you should be playing at in poker depending on how much money you have in your bankroll.
Poker money management is an important skill which you will have to learn on your own, as poker books don’t deal too much with that particular topic. A topic that I feel is often overlooked in poker strategy literature is money management. After all, where are you in poker without a dependable bankroll? Poker Bankroll Management (BRM) is one of the key pillars of being a successful poker player. It involves setting aside money you have designated for playing poker. Poker has a high degrees of variance. So, knowing and following proper BRM is imperative. Luckily, nowadays there are tools to help with proper bankroll management. We no longer have to bring out the pen and paper! Poker Charts (picture above), for instance, is a online service that allows players to manage their bankroll and analyze results through their website. Keep in mind this is a paid service with a free trial option. There’s really no risk if you utilize proper bankroll management. Bankroll management might sound like a rather simple strategy but it can help accomplish amazing things. Back in the mid-2000s, Full Tilt Poker pro Chris “Jesus” Ferguson was able to turn $0 into $10,000 using strict bankroll management. Bankroll Management The amateur does not need to make money playing poker and so can afford to take shots more aggressively than can someone who depends on poker income.
This calculator is based around the rules of basic no limit Texas Holdem bankroll management, which are:
- You should have at least 20 times the buy in for cash games.
- You should have at least 40 buy ins for SnG tournaments.
This bankroll calculator will tell you; which limits you should be playing at, how many buyins you have for that level, how much more money you need to win to move up to the next level and advice on how to approach the games at your limit.
The bankroll calculator.
| Quick Stats |
| Advice |
How to use the bankroll calculator.
Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Chart
- Enter your bankroll to the nearest Dollar (no decimals).
- Choose your game type (only works for NL Holdem cash games at the moment).
- Click 'Calculate'!
Make the calculator better.
Poker Bankroll Management Mtt
If you have any comments about the calculator or would like to offer advice on how it can be improved, I would love for you to shoot me an email at greg[at]thepokerbank[dot]com. I would really appreciate any feedback that you can give to help improve the bankroll calculator.
Go back to the handy Texas Hold'em tools.
Poker is a fun game, but in order to keep playing, let alone make a living from it, you must learn to manage your money responsibly.
Paul Phua explains why you must be a rock with your ’roll
Last week one of my readers emailed the Paul Phua Poker site with a question: “Paul Phua, please tell me: how can someone make a living from poker, how much cash and/or income would they need, and what stakes should they be playing?”
This is a great question. In fact, I will soon be releasing a video of tips from top players including Phil Ivey, and he says in it that managing your money is one of the most important things for beginners to learn. I hope the following insights will be helpful to players wishing to take poker seriously:
Bankroll management
When poker players talk of their “bankroll”, it means a sum of money they have set aside exclusively for poker. It is very important that this money, whether it grows or shrinks through playing, is kept separate from all your other funds and financial dealings. One reason is so that you don’t start dipping into money you should be using to pay important bills. Another is that it enables you to tell whether you are making or losing money at poker.
Equally importantly, your bankroll should be money you can afford to lose without giving you problems in your daily life. We all hope to win, but no one can guarantee to make money at poker – even the world’s best players can simply have a run of bad luck.
How big should your bankroll be? It could be $500 or it could be $5 million. The principle is the same: it’s money you feel you can afford to risk at poker. The only thing that will change, according to the size, is what stakes you are able to play at.
Poker Bankroll Management Guide
Choosing the stakes
Poker Bankroll Management Chart
The bigger the bankroll you have, the higher the stakes you can afford to play. This doesn’t mean you have to play at the highest possible stakes – billionaire Bill Gates supposedly enjoys a bit of poker, but only plays at $1-$2 blinds – but it does mean you shouldn’t play at stakes that are too big for your roll. For one reason, you may be playing scared, and that never results in the best decisions. For another, if you play for too large a proportion of your bankroll, just a few unlucky games could wipe you out.
Poker is a marathon, not a sprint. Only once you are making money consistently at one level should you consider moving up to the next.
So where do you start? Typically, the cheapest live cash games you will find in casinos are $1-$2. Since it is recommended that, in No-Limit Hold ’Em cash games, you sit down with 100x the big blind (some might say 200x is preferable in order to maximise your potential winnings from big hands), you would need $200 to play each time; with another $200 in reserve in case you need to rebuy. And since you may lose in that game no matter how well you play, your total bankroll will need to be several times bigger than $400.
Tournaments are a superficially cheaper option. Though entry to one-off tournaments can be anything from a few hundred dollars to many thousands, regular casino tournaments can be found for $50 or so. Bear in mind, however, that only the top 15% or so of players get paid anything at all, and only the top 5% or so get back a significant return; so again, you will need to have enough in your bankroll for many tournaments.
If your bankroll is not big enough for the above stakes, you will find every possible size of cash game and tournament in online poker sites.
Can you make a living from poker?
There’s an old saying about poker: “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.” And that’s never been truer than today, when so many players have understood that they need to read up on strategy. All the same, it is at least possible to make a living from poker. There is no such thing as a professional roulette player, but there are professional poker players!
Most people will start out losing money, until they develop the experience to become winning players. My advice at that level, when you are still likely to lose, would be to spend no more on a session of poker than you would spend on a typical night out. Poker is, after all, a fun game. A lot more fun, in my view, than most forms of entertainment!
Whether you can then convert that experience into making a living from poker, that will depend on you. You will need skill, strategy, an understanding of the odds and of psychology, a calm temperament, the ability to learn from your mistakes. A good start is to follow the above rules on money management – and to keep reading my strategy blogs on Paul Phua Poker, and watching the videos on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel.
— Paul Phua