Required Bankroll for Video Poker One of the keys to giving your self the best chance of success when playing video poker or any gambling game for that matter is bankroll management. This section covers a range of information that you can use to make sure you get the most out of your gambling cash and not go over your budget. Online Poker Bankroll Guide. As a beginner in the world of poker, most people will just load up with chips on their credit card, and steam straight into the nearest game. With the growth of online poker this has become ridiculously easy – you don’t even need to plan a trip to a casino.

1. Best Poker Bankroll Offers
2. Live Poker Bankroll Management
3. Poker Cash Game Bankroll
4. Poker Comment Monster Sa Bankroll Lyrics

Poker Bankroll Management at its finest

Discounting a lack of skill, the number one reason a poker player goes broke is due to poor poker bankroll management. Ask any professional poker player for one tip about how to get started in poker and almost all will advise you to practice bankroll management. That is fine, but what exactly is “bankroll management”?

Practicing sound poker bankroll management involves recognizing that the amount of money you have in your poker bankroll should always be dictating the stakes for which you play. That’s easy enough to understand in theory, but for some being able to put that idea into practice can be easier said than done.

Over the next three articles, I’ll be sharing tips regarding how to think about and manage your poker bankroll, including offering some specific strategies to help you with decisions about game selection, moving up in stakes, and cashing out.

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Best Poker Bankroll Offers

Your POKER Bankroll is For POKER Only

Let’s get one thing straight immediately: only use money that you can afford to lose to make up your bankroll. That is the golden rule. This means that the money in your bankroll is only needed to fund your poker playing. If you think you have a $2,000 bankroll but will need to use $1,500 from it this month or next to pay an important bill, then you do not have a $2,000 bankroll — you have a $500 one!

It is crucial that none of your bankroll is required elsewhere, not a single cent of it, because as soon as it is, you are gambling with money you cannot afford to lose and that can lead to you playing scared or less than optimally as you try to prevent any losses.

Live Poker Bankroll Management

Your Bankroll Allows You to Play Your A-Game

Another consideration to make is whether or not this particular poker bankroll with which you are currently playing is the only one you will ever have. By that I mean if you were to lose it, would you have to take a break from playing or could you reload your account with another bankroll?

If you have a well-paid full-time job, losing $500 may not be a big deal to you. But if losing that $500 means you will not be able to play poker for a long time while you replenish your funds, then you may want to be a more cautious with it.

One purpose of our bankroll is to act as a cushion for when we lose, which will happen sometimes, even to the best players. If you sit down online at a $0.10/$0.25 cash game table with just $25 as a bankroll, then all you need to do is lose that one buy-in and you are out of the game. Have several $25 buy-ins behind you, however, and you can stay in the game and try to win back your money.

Your Bankroll Dictates Your Game Selection

How much of a poker bankroll you should have depends on a number of factors. These include the format of the game you play, your playing style, and your tolerance for swings (good and bad). For example, a short-handed (6-max.) no-limit hold’em cash game player can play from a smaller bankroll than can a pot-limit Omaha cash game player because PLO tends to have wider swings (or “variance”). Similarly, PLO cash game players can play from a lesser bankroll than can multi-table tournament players.

The table below shows the number of buy-ins I would recommend for the most common game types currently played online. (Note: bankroll recommendations for online games differ from those for live games.)

In the case of tournaments, the numbers listed below refer to the number of tourney buy-ins. Thus if you like to play $5 multi-table tournaments, a number of 100 (as a minimum) refers to having $500 in your bankroll with which to play. Meanwhile for cash games, the numbers refer to the number of buy-ins into the game wherein a buy-in represents the maximum amount allowed in the game. In other words, if the $0.10/$0.25 NLHE game you like to play allows a maximum buy-in of $25, a figure of 100 refers to having $2,500 in your bankroll with which to play.

You may be surprised at the figures you are seeing in the above table, but those are the recommendations often given in response to players asking how large their bankrolls should be. Feel free to play around with the numbers and find an amount that suits you and your current situation.

Find Your Comfort Zone

I personally prefer to play with a larger bankroll because I do not want to have to drop down in stakes at any point. Others may want to play with a smaller bankroll in an attempt to climb the stakes faster, but this increases the risk of your needing to move down levels or maybe even going broke. It’s all about personal preference.

There’s more to bankroll management than simply knowing how much you should have in your bankroll before sitting down in a given game. In the next two articles I will talk about some of these other considerations, including taking shots at higher stakes and cashing out strategies — so stay tuned!

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Poker Cash Game Bankroll

By John Grochowski
My friend Mark isn’t a casino regular, but he likes to play a little video poker now and then. His goal is just to have a good time and stay in action for a couple of hours.
“Do you have a guide to how much cash I need to last a couple of hours?” he asked.
I showed him the bankroll calculator on Video Poker for Winners software, and assumed expert play for 1,000 hands --- about two hours play for an average player.
First up was Jacks or Better on three pay tables --- the full-pay 9-6 game, paying 9-for-1 on full houses and 6-for-1 on flushes, which returns 99.54 percent with expert play; the 8-5 game (97.30 percent); and the 7-5 game (96.15 percent) that’s becoming all too common on quarter games.
Jacks or Better is the least volatile of common video poker games, a game that’s designed to keep you in your seat. There are no big four-of-a-kind bonuses that are going to make your day. All quads pay 125 coins for a five-coin wager. But the 2-for-1 payoff on two pairs packs a different kind of wallop, one that will keep you going for extra chances at the bigger pays.
The average loss for two hours of betting $1.25 a hand on a quarter machine is $5.75 with a 9-6 pay table, $34.75 at 8-5 and $48.12 at 7-5 --- which ought to tell you why I’m always harping on finding the best pay tables. In the days when each video poker machine had just one game --- no touching the screen to try a different game --- I once found a long row of 18 machines that alternated between 9-6 and 8-5 pay tables. There were as many players at the low-payers as at the 9-6ers. Ugh.
The required bankroll is much higher than the average loss if you want to give yourself enough for a 5 percent risk of ruin --- a 95 percent chance of surviving two hours without losing it all. That takes $165 on 9-6 Jacks, $185 at 8-5 and $195 at 7-5.
Your chances of having a winning session after two hours are 34.54 percent at 9-6, 22.35 percent at 8-5 and 17.19 percent at 7-5. Settling for a 7-5 pay table instead of 9-6 cuts your chances of winning in half.
Then I checked probably the most popular video poker game: Double Double Bonus Poker. With a 9-6 pay table, it’s a 98.98 percent return, $12.75 average loss in two hours on a quarter machine, with a $300 bankroll for a 5 percent risk of ruin and a 35.46 percent chance of a winning session. On the 8-5 version that’s become all too common, the payback percentage falls to 96.79 percent, average two-hour loss increases to $40.12, the bankroll requirement rises to $320, and the chance of a winning session drops to 30.75 percent.
Double Double Bonus Poker is the more volatile game, with more of its payback concentrated into relatively rare four-of-a-kind hands. Most quads pay 250 for a five-coin wager, and the reward rises to 400 on four 2s, 3s or 4s; 800 if those low quads are accompanied by an Ace, 2, 3 or 4 kicker; 800 on four Aces; and 2,000 on four Aces with a 2, 3 or 4 kicker. The two-pairs return is reduced to 1-for-1 ---- you just get your money back.
That’s why Double Double Bonus bankroll requirements are higher than in Jacks or Better. But in any game, cuts in the pay table slash your chances of winning. Be wary.
LONGER SESSIONS: Two-hour sessions are extremely volatile. Just about anything can happen in any session as short as a couple of hours. But I’ve had many a two-hour session back when that was the length of a riverboat casino cruise, and still often go to a local casino to play for a couple of hours and have lunch or dinner.
But what if you’re going to play longer? What if you’re going on an overnight stay and figure to get in, say, 10 hours of play? Do you have to multiply two-hour bankroll requirements by five?
No, you don’t. Longer sessions smooth things out a bit. For 10 hours of quarter play on 9-6 Jacks or Better, the bankroll for a 5 percent risk of ruin doesn’t quintuple from $165 to $825. Instead, it’s less than tripled, at $450, while the bankroll requirement for 8-5 Jacks rises to $570.
On the more volatile Double Double Bonus Poker, that $300 bankroll for a 5 percent risk or ruin for two hours rises to $885. That’s a big chunk of cash, but at least it’s not the $1,500 you get when multiplying the $300 by five. On the 8-5 version, the bankroll needed for 10 hours is $1,010, and that’s one reason I just won’t play 8-5 Double Double Bonus Poker.

Poker Comment Monster Sa Bankroll Lyrics

John Grochowski writes about casino games and the gambling industry in his weekly 'Gaming' column, which is syndicated in newspapers and Web sites across the United States. John is also the author of six books on casinos and casino games.