 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A sound money management strategy is comprised of several important principles. These include:
Playing Within Your Bankroll Playing Based on Poker Odds Making Use of Strategic Betting Getting Value for Your Hands Tracking Your Play Fine-tuning Your Play Based on Your Tracking Results Playing Within Your Bankroll
We advise novice level players to begin with Limit Hold'em. Limit Hold'em should result in less volatility in your bankroll (relative to Pot-Limit and No-Limit Hold'em). In addition, you are bound to make mistakes in the beginning, and Limit Hold'em is a good way to minimize the cost of those mistakes.
If you are already comfortable and familiar with Pot-Limit and No-Limit Hold'em, feel free to sit at those tables. However, if you find that you are losing money on an hourly basis, we recommend switching to Limit during this early phase.
When playing Limit Hold'em, it is generally advisable to follow the minimum bankroll guidelines in the table below.
Little Bet Big Bet Conservative Play Aggressive Play $.50 $1.00 $250 $300 $1.00 $2.00 $500 $600 $2.00 $4.00 $1,000 $1,200 $3.00 $6.00 $1,200 $1,800 $4.00 $8.00 $1,600 $2,400 $5.00 $10.00 $2,000 $3,000 $10.00 $20.00 $4,000 $5,000 $15.00 $30.00 $6,000 $7,500 $20.00 $40.00 $8,000 $10,000 $30.00 $60.00 $12,000 $15,000 Above these levels, you should already have a professional's grasp of the bankroll and how it relates to the stakes that you play. The important part is to increase and decrease the stakes that you play as your bankroll dictates. The exception to this rule will be when you are earning your bonus dollars on the various poker sites. During this stage, you will remain at the lower limits until the bonus is released.
Do The Math
There is a more precise, mathematical way to calculate how large your bankroll should be for a given level of stakes. In order to use this method, you must already know something about your performance when playing poker. Specifically, you need to know your hourly win rate. It would also be ideal to know your standard deviation from this win rate, but since that is too tedious for most people to calculate, we'll use 10 times the win rate as an estimate.
Bankroll needed = -(SD^2/(2*HWR))*ln(risk aversion)
SD = standard deviation of win rate (10 times win rate is a good estimate)
HWR = Hourly Win Rate
ln = natural log function
Risk Aversion = represents your willingness to accept risk. .1 corresponds to a 10% chance that you will go bust if you use the bankroll suggested.As an example:
Hourly win rate of 2 Big Bets (at $10/$20) = 40
SD = 400
Risk Aversion = 10%- ((400*400)/(80)) * ln(.1) = $4,605
This means that with a bankroll of $4,605, there will be a 10% chance that a player with these attributes will lose their entire bankroll.
If you had a 5% willingness to lose your whole bankroll, you would need a starting bankroll of: $5,991 (It's not an accident that this is approximately 300 times the BB at the $10/$20 stakes. This is where the 300x the big bet figure comes from.)
Copyright 2009, All rights reserved.