Building Your Bankroll, Then Managing It

The whole purpose of playing poker online is to make money.  Visit any poker website or read any poker blog and you will learn that if you are unable to manage your bankroll, playing poker online will not be a profitable experience for you.  And if you are not making any money, that experience is no longer a fun one either.

It’s easy to manage your bankroll if you are able to develop some discipline in following the rules of bankroll management.   We are going to lay out a few simple rules and if you are able to stay within these simple guidelines, you should be able to deposit a certain amount of money and never have to deposit money again!

If you are a cash game player, your bankroll should have a  minimum of twenty buy-ins, regardless of your level of play.  Should you get to fifteen buy-ins or less, you should consider moving down a level until you can get back to a twenty level buy-in.   One buy-in is considered 100 big blinds. For instance, at .01/.02, a buy-in is $2 (100 x .02 = $2) and that is why .01/.02 is called $2NL.  So, if you deposit $50 and are determined to use good bankroll management, you should start out playing $2NL until you can work your way up to $100. When you get to $100 you can then start playing $5NL. If your play starts to spiral at the $5NL and your bankroll drops back down to $75 (15 buy-ins), then you might consider dropping down to $2NL and work it back up.  Remember, the only people that don’t move down are the the players that eventually go broke.

If you are able to develop some good bankroll management skills, soon these skills will become second nature and it doesn’t have to be difficult!  Managing your bankroll will only help your game as you grind from one level to the next.  The above scenario may be seen by many as a minimum ‘guideline’, but experts will agree that for a micro-stakes player, it is an acceptable way to gain an edge in a competitive environment where skill, patience and luck are the name of the game.

Taking The “Blinds” Strategy Seriously

In Texas Hold’em there is no ante, instead there are blinds that serve the same purpose. Big and small blinds are forced bets that rotate around the table getting the action started. Without the blinds, everyone would just wait until they had a perfect hand to play, which would bring the action to a screeching halt.  There are two blinds: a small blind and a big blind.

The big blind is typically set as the amount of the pre-flop bet and the small blind is usually half of the big blind. For example, in a $10-20 limit poker game, the big blind is $10 and the small blind is $5.

If you want to win at poker, it is important to understand the blinds and take the notion of blind strategy seriously. Every round you’re forced to play both a big blind and a small blind. In online poker, you’ll receive between 60 and 70 hands per hour. (More if you’re multi-tabling.) At a full table, this means you’ll be posting blinds 6 or 7 times per hour. In a $10/$20 game, that’s between $90 and $105 each hour.

Use the simple poker blinds formula below to try and figure out how much money you put in the pot for blinds each hour:

(Rounds per hour x big blind post amount) + (Rounds per hour x small blind post amount) = Total dollars put in the pot from blinds.

In my opinion, there are two perspectives to consider when thinking about the blinds:

• Defensive – You want to protect your blinds when you’re in the blinds.
• Offensive – You want to steal the other players’ blinds when you can.

Being able to steal blinds is necessary to be a winning player in a tough game. Stealing blinds in the tough games become more important because players are usually playing tighter.  Take advantage of your table position and play aggressively, raising pre-flop.  If you succeed and the blinds fold, you’ve won a free hand of poker. And of course you have the advantage of stealing a blind from any position if you’re holding a premium starting hand.

You’ll need to defend your blinds from this strategy from other players as well. Good poker players know when to be selective about the hands they play. But if your blinds are stolen every round by a raise, then you’re losing a significant amount of money. The bottom line is that dealing with the blinds is something you’ll have to learn how to do to be a successful player. Especially in tournament play.