A complete bankroll guide
Most winning poker players still go broke. They're not bad at poker. They're bad at the math that sits underneath it — how much money you need behind a stake to survive variance long enough for skill to show up. That math is bankroll management. This page is the careful answer.
What are you playing?
Cash, MTT, SNG, PLO — they're four different sports for the same bankroll. The multipliers below are the gravity each one operates under. Pick yours and the rest of the page stops being abstract.
Cash NLHE
30 buy-ins standardLive cash and online 100bb full ring or 6-max. Your win-rate is the bb/100 you make against the games you actually play.
Pro-grade. Survives any reasonable downswing. The right number if poker pays the rent.
The textbook number. Solid for committed recreational players and aspiring grinders.
Shot-taking territory. Acceptable only if you have stable income outside poker — and the discipline to drop down on a loss.
MTT (Tournaments)
100 buy-ins standardMulti-table tournaments. Variance is the brutal kind — 100+ buy-in downswings are normal even for crushers because top-3 finishes carry your ROI.
Pro-grade. Survives any reasonable downswing. The right number if poker pays the rent.
The textbook number. Solid for committed recreational players and aspiring grinders.
Shot-taking territory. Acceptable only if you have stable income outside poker — and the discipline to drop down on a loss.
SNGs / Spin & Gos
50 buy-ins standardSingle-table tournaments and hyper-turbos. Variance sits between cash and MTTs — short fields cap upside but cap downswings too.
Pro-grade. Survives any reasonable downswing. The right number if poker pays the rent.
The textbook number. Solid for committed recreational players and aspiring grinders.
Shot-taking territory. Acceptable only if you have stable income outside poker — and the discipline to drop down on a loss.
PLO Cash
50 buy-ins standardPot Limit Omaha. Equities run closer than NLHE so variance is meaningfully higher. The same skill edge produces wider swings.
Pro-grade. Survives any reasonable downswing. The right number if poker pays the rent.
The textbook number. Solid for committed recreational players and aspiring grinders.
Shot-taking territory. Acceptable only if you have stable income outside poker — and the discipline to drop down on a loss.
Plug in your roll.
Type your bankroll, pick a format. The ladder shows every stake — green is comfortable, gold is shot territory, grey is don't-go-there. Your home stake is the highest green rung.
The variance simulator.
Twelve hypothetical players, all with identical skill. The spread between the best and worst line is pure luck — and it's why a 30-buy-in roll is the floor, not the ceiling.
Move up. Move down.
The four rules that separate climbing players from boom-bust players. The down-move is the half nobody talks about — and the half that keeps the up-move possible.
Trigger by roll, not by feel
Move up the moment your roll hits the buy-in count for the next stake. Don't wait until 'you feel ready' — feel is a lagging indicator. Don't move up because you ran hot — that's leading by noise.
Move up with a 3-buy-in shot
When you cross the threshold, take a defined shot: 3 buy-ins (cash) or 5 buy-ins (MTT) at the new stake. If you lose them, drop back. If you don't, keep playing and re-evaluate at the next threshold.
Move down on a 5-buy-in stop loss
If you drop below the standard buy-in count for your current stake, move down. Today. No 'one more session.' The drop-down is what keeps the climb-up possible.
Pay yourself, lock the rest
When the roll grows past your target stake's needs, sweep the excess. Pros run the bankroll like a closed system — overflow goes to savings, not to the next shot.
Stop-loss, and other ceilings.
The bankroll is the strategic budget. The stop-loss is the tactical one. Every pro has both — pre-committed, written down, non-negotiable.
The eight bankroll leaks.
Every player on this list is a winner at the table and a loser overall. Each leak below is the gap between those two facts.
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01
Treating the bankroll as 'extra money'
Fatal Game overIf you keep dipping into the roll for rent, dinners, or a night out, you don't have a bankroll — you have a slush fund. The bankroll is locked capital.
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02
Underestimating tournament variance
Fatal Bust within monthsMTT players who use cash-game roll sizing go broke. 30 buy-ins is suicide for tournaments. The number is 100+, even at 20% ROI.
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03
Refusing to move down when you're losing
Fatal Compounding bust riskEgo freezes players at stakes their roll no longer supports. Moving down is not failure — it's the protective mechanism that lets you climb back up.
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04
Moving up after one good session
Costly −15 buy-in swingA four-hour heater is not a sample. Move-up rules trigger on roll size, not feel. The opposite leak — refusing to move up when the roll demands it — is just as expensive.
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05
Ignoring rake & fees in the win-rate
Costly −3 to −8 bb/100Your 'win-rate' has to be the after-rake number. Live rooms taking $7 + $1 dealer toke per hand at $1/$2 is a hidden 5bb/100 leak that the math has to bake in.
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06
No stop-loss, no session ceiling
Costly −10 bb/100 long-runTilt costs more than rake. A pre-committed stop-loss (typically 3 buy-ins for cash) prevents the worst sessions from becoming bankroll-ending sessions.
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07
Mixing the bankroll across games
Sneaky Hidden variancePLO swings demolish a roll built for NLHE. If you play multiple formats, each gets its own roll size or you size to the highest-variance format.
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08
Confusing 'the roll' with net worth
Sneaky Strategic blindnessYour bankroll lives in its own account. Mixing it with savings makes both numbers lie to you — and tilts your decisions in both directions.
Eight spots. How many can you nail?
The eight bankroll questions every player gets wrong at least once. Get them right here and you'll save thousands in real life.
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1. You play 25NL ($25 buy-in cash). What's a sensible bankroll to play comfortably?
Answer $750 (30 buy-ins)Cash NLHE standard is 30 buy-ins. 10 or 20 is shot-taking territory and risks busting on a normal downswing. 100 is tournament sizing — overkill for cash.
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2. You're a $109 MTT regular with a 20% ROI. Bankroll for sustainable play?
Answer $11,000 (~100 buy-ins)MTT variance is the highest in poker — top finishes carry your ROI. 100 buy-ins is the textbook standard. 30–50 is suicide; 200 is conservative pro sizing.
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3. Your $3,000 cash roll has been stuck at $2,200 for two weeks at 50NL. What now?
Answer Move down to 25NL until the roll recovers$2,200 is 44 buy-ins at 50NL — still fine — but the move-down rule fires when you'd benefit from a rebuilding stake. Many pros use a hard 30-bi floor: drop the moment you cross it. Shots up while losing is the textbook way to bust.
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4. True or false: a bigger bankroll means you can be more aggressive in-game.
Answer False — bankroll size never changes correct in-game decisionsBankroll governs WHICH games you play, not HOW you play them. Once you're sitting in the game, every decision is independent of your bankroll — pot odds are pot odds whether you have $1k or $100k behind.
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5. You roll over from NLHE to PLO with the same $5,000 bankroll, planning to play the same stakes. Smart move?
Answer No — PLO needs roughly 50% more roll for the same stakePLO equities run closer than NLHE so the same skill edge produces wider swings. The standard PLO multiplier is 50 buy-ins vs 30 for NLHE — about 65% more roll for the same nominal stake.
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6. Your win-rate is 5bb/100. How many hands until you can be 95% confident you're a winner?
Answer ~100,000+ handsWith 100bb/100 standard deviation, 100k hands is the rough threshold for 95% confidence at a 5bb/100 win-rate. Below that, your sample is genuinely indistinguishable from luck — which is exactly why bankroll discipline matters so much.
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7. You sit down at $1/$2 with $400 (your last $400). You're a winning player at this stake. EV?
Answer Massively negative — under-rolled play distorts decisionsTheoretical EV is positive. Real-world EV is destroyed: you'll fold profitable spots out of fear, miss thin value bets, and tilt under any normal swing. Under-rolled play is the single biggest leak in low-stakes live poker.
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8. You hit a $3,000 score in an MTT — your roll is now $8,000. You usually play $33 MTTs. What's reasonable?
Answer Take selective shots at $55–$109 MTTs while staying $33-rolled$8,000 is ~75 buy-ins at $109 — borderline. The disciplined play is shot-selection: a few well-chosen $55s and $109s, with the bulk of volume still at $33s where you're properly rolled. Jumping straight to $215 is the classic post-score blow-up.
Three rules. That’s it.
Internalize these three lines and the rest of the page is just decoration.
Multiply by format
30× for cash. 100× for MTTs. 50× for PLO. The buy-in count is the bankroll size — there's no other math you need at this layer.
Move both directions
Up on a clean trigger with a 3-buy-in shot. Down on a 5-buy-in stop-loss with no negotiation. The down-move is what makes the up-move sustainable.
Lock the roll
Separate account. Separate identity. The bankroll isn't yours to spend — it's a working tool, and treating it as anything else is how players bust out.