What Is a Poker Bankroll? How Much You Need and How to Manage It

A poker bankroll is money set aside only for playing poker, separate from the money you live on. It is counted in buy-ins of the game you play, and its size decides which stakes you can afford without a normal losing streak knocking you out of the game.

That is the whole idea. The rest of this article is about the two questions that follow from it: how big the bankroll has to be, and how to manage it once you have one.

Key takeaways

• A bankroll is poker-only money. Rent, savings and "money I could deposit if needed" are not part of it.
• Count it in buy-ins, not in money. The same $2,000 is 200 buy-ins at NL10 and 20 at NL100.
• How many buy-ins you need depends on your format, your edge and how much risk you accept. Tournaments need several times more than cash games.
• Beginners do not know their edge yet, so they should keep more buy-ins than any rule of thumb suggests.
• Decide in advance when you move down and when you withdraw.

What counts as your bankroll

Your bankroll is the money you have decided to use for poker and nothing else. In practice it is the sum of a few places:

• balances on the poker sites you play;
• cash you keep for live games;
• a separate bank account or wallet where poker money waits between sessions.

What it is not: money you need for living, money you could top up from your salary if things go badly, or winnings you have already spent in your head. The second one matters most. A bankroll that can be refilled from income whenever it runs low is not a bankroll at all, and it is how recreational players end up losing more than they meant to.

Some players keep one bankroll for everything; others keep a separate one for live and online play, or per currency. Either works, as long as the total you count is the total you would actually risk.

Why you count it in buy-ins

A bankroll only means something relative to the game you play. $2,000 is a large bankroll for NL10, where a buy-in is $10, and a thin one for NL100, where it is $100. Counting in buy-ins makes the number comparable across stakes and formats:

• Cash games: one buy-in is 100 big blinds, even if you buy in for less.
• Tournaments and sit & gos: one buy-in is the entry fee, including the rake. Use your average buy-in if you play several.

So "I have a 50 buy-in bankroll for NL25" means $1,250, and it tells you more than "$1,250" does.

How many buy-ins you need

Published guides give rules of thumb: around 20 to 30 buy-ins for no-limit cash games, more for sit & gos, and 100 or more for multi-table tournaments. They are reasonable starting points, but the real answer depends on three things the rules leave out:

1. Your edge: win rate in bb/100 for cash games, ROI per tournament for the rest.
2. How much your results swing: the standard deviation, which depends mostly on the format. Big tournament fields swing far more than sit & gos, which swing more than cash games.
3. How much risk you accept: the chance of losing the whole bankroll at that stake, if you never move down.

Here is what those inputs give for typical players in each format:

Buy-ins needed by format and edge

Format	Edge	Typical standard deviation	Buy-ins for 5% risk	Buy-ins for 1% risk
Cash game	2 bb/100	90 bb/100	61	94
Cash game	5 bb/100	90 bb/100	25	38
Sit & go, 9 players	6% ROI	1.7 buy-ins	73	111
Tournaments, 100-200 players	20% ROI	4 buy-ins	120	185
Tournaments, 1,000+ players	20% ROI	7 buy-ins	367	565

Two things stand out. The edge matters as much as the format: a cash player winning 2 bb/100 needs more than twice the buy-ins of one winning 5. And tournament fields push the numbers into the hundreds, because most entries lose and a few pay many times over. A 20% ROI player in fields of a thousand or more needs several hundred buy-ins to hold a 5% risk.

Try your own numbers:

The calculator and the table use the risk of ruin formula, which poker bankroll management walks through together with the fixed-percentage and Kelly methods.

If you are new: assume a small edge

The numbers above assume you know your edge. Beginners do not, and neither do most experienced players until they have tracked tens of thousands of hands. The safe assumption is a small edge or none at all, which means:

• play stakes where your bankroll is at least 50 buy-ins for cash games and 100 or more for tournaments;
• move up only when the bankroll covers the next stake, not after a good week;
• if poker is a hobby, treat the bankroll as an entertainment budget: an amount per month you are happy to spend, with no top-ups when it runs out.

That last option is a perfectly good bankroll plan. It just answers a different question: not "how do I never go broke" but "how much is poker allowed to cost me".

How to build a bankroll

• Start where the bankroll is big. A small bankroll at low stakes grows; the same money at higher stakes usually disappears.
• Add money on a schedule, not after losses. A fixed monthly deposit keeps poker inside your budget. A deposit right after a bad session is chasing.
• Keep it separate. A dedicated account or wallet makes it obvious when the bankroll is down, and keeps poker money from quietly becoming living money, or the other way round.
• Move up and down by rule. Write down the bankroll at which you move up and the level at which you move back. When to move up in stakes covers the details, including how to take a shot.

Withdrawing from your bankroll

Taking money out is fine, and for anyone who plays seriously it is the point. The mistake is withdrawing in a way that forces a move down. Two simple rules avoid it:

• withdraw only what is above the bankroll your current stake needs; or
• withdraw a fixed share of each month's profit, and nothing in a losing month.

Either way, recalculate your buy-ins after every withdrawal.

Common bankroll mistakes

1. Counting money that is not really bankroll, such as next month's rent or a credit card.
2. Playing above the bankroll "just this once" because the game looks good or a friend is playing.
3. Moving up after a heater. A good week says almost nothing about the next stake.
4. Ignoring expenses. Travel, food, tips and hotel nights come out of the bankroll in live poker. Leave them out and your results look better than your bank account.
5. Not tracking. Without a record of every session, you do not know your edge, your swings or even whether you are winning, and every number in this article becomes a guess.

Keep track of it

A bankroll only works if you know where it stands. That can be a free poker bankroll spreadsheet or a bankroll tracker app; what matters is logging every session, including the losing ones. PokerRoll is a free bankroll tracker for live and online poker: you log sessions, deposits and withdrawals, and it keeps your bankroll, profit, hourly rate and ROI up to date, for cash games and tournaments separately.