CHOOSING THE RIGHT LIMITS

After you make your first deposit and head over to the cash tables, you will find that you are provided with a variety of limits both in cash games and tournaments for you to choose from. But what limits should you be playing at? You could take your entire bankroll to one table an the hopes of hitting a big win, but then you stand the chance of losing your entire deposit amount if you get unlucky. On the other hand, you could take your big roll to the lowest limits possible to avoid losing it all in one go, but this way you will find that you are going to make very little money.

As you can imagine, the best limits for you to play at are the ones that offer you the best opportunity to make a decent amount of money, with the smallest risk of going broke. The concept of playing at the correct limits to avoid going broke is known as ‘bankroll management’, and it is something that all aspiring winning players should take note of and remember at all times. Here are the rules of bankroll management that apply to the No Limit Texas Holdem variant of poker:

Cash Games
If you want to take your seat at the cash game tables, you should have at least 20 full buy-ins for the stakes you wish to play at. Therefore if you want to play at the 5c/10c tables where the maximum buy-in is $10, you should ideally have a bankroll of at least $200. Here are a few other examples of how much of a bankroll is needed for each of the different cash game stakes:

Sit and Go’s
If you decide that you would rather earn your money through the popular sit and go’s on offer, you should have at least 40 buy-ins for the level of tournaments that you wish to play at. Therefore if you would like to play in the $1+$0.20 sit and go’s, you should have at least $48 in your bankroll. Here are a few other examples of how much of a bankroll is needed for each of the sit and go levels:

These rules of bankroll management may appear to be a little extreme, asking you to have more of a bankroll than you may think is necessary, but they are solid guidelines that are tried and tested to help keep you winning money without going broke. However, it is possible to bend these rules slightly and take a few risks by jumping in at higher levels than you are ‘rolled for, so that you can earn money more quickly. This is not something that many poker pro’s would normally recommend, but there is no harm in making a little exception and taking a small risk to help set yourself on your way to the more profitable limits.

Example

Say for example you make a typical $50 (£25) deposit to your online poker account. The rules of bankroll management state that you should stick to the 1c/2c cash games and $1+$0.20 tournaments to avoid losing your bankroll. However, at these limits you would struggle to make $4 (£2) or more an hour even if you multi-tabled, which would not really be worth your time. Therefore it can be a good idea to shift up a level or two to where you can make a little extra money with that little extra risk, which in this case would be the 2c/4c games or even the 5c/10c games.

Summary

Obviously, the higher the stakes you play at, the more risk there will be of losing your entire bankroll. But if you play slightly more cautiously, you can reduce the chances of losing a significant amount of your bankroll through bad runs of cards. In the past, I have quite comfortably ran my bankroll up to $200+ from playing at the 5c/10c tables with a $50, but I had to be careful as I only had 5 buy ins for that particular level. If I had a bad run of cards I am sure that it wouldn’t have taken me long to lose it all, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world because at the end of the day, $50 is not a figure that I am going to find difficult to replace in the working world.

So if you are making a small deposit, it may well be in your interest to bend the rules of bankroll management and take a little more of a risk with your small bankroll until you can build it up into the safer regions and play from there. It is perfectly possible to build your bankroll by playing at limits where you only have 10 or even 5 buy ins for cash games or 20 or 10 buy ins for sit and go’s, but just be prepared to play cautiously and avoid coin-flip situations where you and your opponent are all in and stand an equal chance of winning if you can.

When you have won enough so that your are correctly bankrolled for a level like 5c/10c, you should become stricter with your play and stick at the correct levels from there onwards to give yourself the best opportunity to win without the possibility of losing it all through a bad run. The bending of the rules of bankroll management should be confined to the smaller stakes where you are trying to get into the decent money-making levels after starting with a small deposit, so be sure to get out of this habit when you have the opportunity to play at a decent level and have the correct bankroll to play there.