Bankroll Management Guide for Serious Players

In the first bankroll management article I gave some suggestions for casual players. In this article, geared towards pro, semi-pro, and serious amateur players, you’ll see some very different material.

There are two key factors in determining proper bankroll size for a serious poker player. The most important factor is your edge, your true win rate. We will use “big bets per 100 hands” (bb/100h) as our measure of win rate. Basically, variance (how big your swings will be from your true win rate) increases as win rate goes down, and decreases as win rate goes up. Even a seemingly small dip in win rate can produce much larger ups and downs. The second factor is how big a chance of going broke you are willing to take. This is called “risk of ruin.” The smaller you want your risk of ruin to be, the higher your bankroll will have to be.

Other considerations, such as whether you are playing high stakes or low stakes, and whether your opponents are aggressive or passive, are mostly already taken into account with the win rate.

Estimating our true win rate and determining a risk of ruin number are difficult tasks, and there’s no perfect methodology or answer. Estimating your win rate starts with knowing what it is right now. To do this, keep track of how many hands you play and how many bets you win or lose. Adding up and averaging these numbers will give you your current win rate. Your current win rate is only indicative of your true win rate; if you have been unlucky, improved significantly, or begun playing worse opponents, your true win rate will be higher than your current win rate. Having an idea of typical win rates can also help you estimate:

0.5 bb/100h A typical win rate, especially in a tough game.
1 bb/100h Good win rate in higher stakes games.
1.5 bb/100h Good win rate in middle stakes games, excellent win rate in higher ones.
2.0 bb/100h Good win rate at lower stakes, excellent at middle or higher.
2.5+ bb/100h Fantastic, very difficult for even the best to maintain a rate this high, especially if multi-tabling.

So, averege these standards with your current rate and you will come up with something reasonable for your true win rate. For a risk of ruin guess, a serious high stakes pro will pick a number between 0.1% and 1.0%, while others may go as high as 5%, depending on how risk-averse they are. The lower your risk of ruin is, the higher your bankroll requirement will be.

No Limit

In No Limit the same principles of win rate and risk of ruin apply, but it is more difficult to get a numerical solution. Most authors and players agree that a normal bankroll requirement would be 20 buy ins. However, if you want less risk of ruin or have a smaller edge, you need a larger bankroll. The range is 10-70 buy ins.

Here is a table I’ve made up. It uses an equation invented by BruceZ. This equation is very good, maybe a tad conservative. (I’ve assumed a standard deviation of 17bb/100h, which is typical for most games).