Building a Poker Bankroll

Follow the advice of our poker bankroll infographic and let it lead you to success at the tables on PokerStars!

When things are going well at the cash game tables it can be very tempting to immediately move up in stakes and try your hand out in a bigger game. After all, the more you move up the more you can potentially win. Of course, the opposite is also true in that the higher stakes you play the more you can potentially lose too. It’s crucial in poker to always play for stakes that you can afford to lose, and having a fixed bankroll management strategy will help you to easily move up and down through the levels (depending on if you are winning or losing!) while always keeping some cash in reserve for a bad run.

The infographic above has tons of useful information on it that you can use as a guide to determine when you should move up in stakes, when you should move down and – just as important – when you should make a cash withdrawal and treat yourself!

Take a look and you’ll notice that we are prescribing a very conservative 60 cash game buy-ins for each level. There’s a good reason for this. When you have a conservative strategy such as this, so long as you’re a player that is good enough to beat the games, you should in theory never go broke. This will protect you in the event of a very unfortunate series of bad beats.

Another great aspect of using solid bankroll management is that you will be able to keep playing you best game in the middle of a bad run. If you are aware that you have plenty of buy-ins in reserve then you won’t be worried about pulling the trigger on that bold bluff or making a hero call. That may not be the same if you play out of your comfort zone, worried about making mistakes.