It is extremely easy to keep track of your money when you play poker online. At any time you can pull up your account information and look at the current size of your bankroll, and you can also track your tournament win/loss record to get a good idea of whether investing in playing in tournaments is paying off, or if you should just stick with cash games for a while.
Proper money management is vital for both the amateur and professional player alike, because in a very real sense it is the only way you will be able to see if you are actually improving your game and turning a consistent profit.
Money Management Is Not Just For The Pros
If you are one of the vast majority of online poker players who can be classified as a casual enthusiast (versus someone that plays purely as a means of earning income), you still need to understand how money management applies to you.
Ideally, you want to be keeping track of your money, tournament buy-ins and ‘swings’, starting with your initial deposit; however, if that opportunity has passed you can just start from where you are now.
Never Put Your Entire Bankroll At Risk
Managing your poker money doesn’t mean you are just keeping a record of how much is in your online card room account at any given time. It also involves setting and keeping a limit in regards to buying into cash games and tournaments.
For example, you never want to sit down at a cash game with all the cash you have in your account, as you are then putting your entire bankroll at risk.
If you suffer an extremely bad beat in a no limit game, or even just a string of awful cards, you run the very real risk of losing all of your money in a single sitting; this is never an acceptable situation to put yourself in.
The 10% Rule
Many experts would suggest that you never put more than 10% of your bankroll at risk at any one time. Following this advice, if you have $100 in your account, your buy-in limit for a cash game would be $10.00.
This makes it very easy to decide which games to play in as well, as with cash games you normally want to buy-in for about 100 times the big blind, so you should be looking for the $.05 – $.10 tables.
Now if you have a bad session, you have minimized how big of a loss you can take. You still have 90% of your bankroll available, which can be used at a table with easier opponents and lower limits.
By setting and keeping limits, you will gradually build the financial discipline required to take poker seriously enough to pursue it as a form of generating true income.
Key Points
• Manage your money to track profit and loss
• Never put your entire bankroll at risk
• Never risk more than 10% of your bankroll at any given time
Chris
- Chris Laquinta is a magazine editor, content specialist and poker fanatic with 10+ years writing experience and over 1,500 published articles. Chris is a naitive of Southern California, where he spent his entire life learning gaming concepts and theories from relatives that had been former professional gamblers. He currently resides in Torrance, CA where he works as a professional content writer and part-time SNG professional.
