Every poker player needs a bankroll. When you play poker, money is the tool of your trade just as sure as wrenches are the tools of an auto mechanic's trade.
If you don't have any money, you're out of the game. But poker gives you an unbridled opportunity to build a bankroll, especially online poker, where the cost to play is less than it is in a traditional casino and you have an opportunity to begin building a bankroll from a very small base.
There are only two requirements. First, you must be a winning player. If you can't beat the game, the only way you'll ever build a bankroll is to subsidize your losses with income earned elsewhere. A lot of players do just that. They enjoy poker and don't mind marginal results. If they lose their bankroll today they can revitalize their playing stake when payday rolls around just by diverting some discretionary income into their poker-playing stash.
But if you want to build your bankroll by plying your poker skills, you have to be able to beat the game on a regular basis to do so. When you're able to win regularly, you are free to give yourself a promotion to higher limits and see if you still have the ability to succeed on the next rung up the ladder. If you keep this up, you'll eventually find your niche-the highest stakes you can continuously win at-or you'll keep right on going until you become one of the world's best poker players.
The second requirement is discipline coupled with patience. You can't play too big for your bankroll because your bankroll needs to be large enough to outlast the predictable swings and bad results that every poker player-even the best in the world-suffers. Discipline is even more important and more critical if you're trying to earn a livelihood playing poker. It's one thing to play part time, and if you can beat the game, you've found a hobby that pays well, and that's not bad.
If you hit a rough patch, it's no big deal. You can replenish your bankroll with discretionary earned income without missing a beat. But if you are trying to live off of your poker winnings, you've chosen a much steeper hill to climb. You won't have any other source of funds if you hit a losing streak because there's no other earned income you can use to supplement your bankroll. If that's not bad enough, you also have to dig into your bankroll each and every month just to pay for the necessities of living. You need to win a certain amount each and every month just to keep pace with your cost of living. In essence, because your living expenses come right off the top of your poker bankroll, you have to win money each month just to break even and maintain the same size bankroll going into the next month. To build your bankroll from there, you have to win an amount above and beyond what you need to meet your living expenses.
You can begin to build your bankroll by playing small. Regardless of how much you have to start with-whether it's $10, $100, $1,000 or $10,000-fight the temptation to play beyond your means. The variance in poker is bigger than most people imagine and the only way to outlast it is to play small enough that your bankroll is never in jeopardy.
You can create check points for yourself. Suppose you decide to begin playing tomorrow in $20 sit 'n' go tournaments. Stay at that $20 buy-in level until you've made at least four or five times the buy-in. Once you've earned $100 from playing in your $20 buy-in events, promote yourself to $40 or $50 buy-in events. If you lose, drop back down to the $20 level. If you keep winning, keep promoting yourself. Maybe at the end of some period of time, you'll find yourself playing in $200 buy-in events.
You can do the same thing with cash games. You might want to join one or two $1-$2 no-limit games with a capped $200 buy-in. Once you're up to four or five times the maximum buy-in, go ahead and promote yourself to a $2-$4 no-limit game.
But don't chase your losses. Too many players, in a rush to get out for the day, will play higher when losing. You should do precisely the opposite. You shouldn't ever put your entire bankroll-or even most of it-in jeopardy if you're trying to build it. And the way to preserve your bankroll is to play smaller after you've lost and earn your way back up to the previous limits.
If you try this, be forewarned: You will probably not build the bankroll you'd like to have overnight. It takes time. Don't promote yourself too fast either. Make sure you have enough-and more than enough is better yet-in reserve so that if you lose you will not have to drop down to a lower limit.
Poker, like golf, can be a very humbling game. Every player has bad streaks, and the psychology of a losing streak can lead to a self-defeating attitude of playing bigger and losing even more, until a bankroll is broken and the player is on the rail, or back to square one in an attempt to rebuild a bankroll.
If you take my advice and begin small, stay within your means and promote yourself when you've earned it and can afford losses in bigger games, you'll never have to go back to square one again. And that's the sign of a lifelong winner.
Visit Lou Krieger online and check out all his books at www.loukrieger.com. You can read his blog at http://loukrieger.blogspot.com and write directly to him at loukrieger@aol.com.
