Texas Holdem Poker

Texas Holdem and poker in general is all about making good decisions, money is just a way of keeping score. That is a good thought, but if you don’t have money, you can’t play. A problem that I see time and again with poker players, both online and live is playing games that are above their bankroll.

What does it mean to play above your bankroll? To play above your bankroll means that the limits you are playing do not allow for normal swings that you see in all poker games. For example, a person that decides to go to a casino with a $500 bankroll and play in $5-$10 Limit Texas Holdem, is playing way above his bankroll.

This fault isn’t exclusive to amateur poker players. I have a friend that I worked with this past summer at the World Series of Poker that decided that he was going to turn professional with a $10,000 bankroll. He started out playing levels that were reasonable to his bankroll, but then decided that he would sit in on games as high as $50-$100. He mostly hung around the $30-$60 range. Sadly, his bankroll was not big enough to take any losing streaks, and as a result, when the streak came, his bankroll was eliminated. This player is not an amateur player, but he made a poor decision with his bankroll and ended up paying the price for it.

Many poker players get it in their head that just because they have a few winning sessions at one level that they can move up and stay at a higher level. If your bankroll cannot support this, then you are committing professional suicide. A healthy bankroll for any level in Limit Poker is 200 to 300 big bets. If you are playing $5-$10 Limit Holdem, then you need $2,000 to $3,000 to be able to successfully handle swings in most cases.

I am not saying not to play at a higher limit if you do not have 200 to 300 big bets. Sometimes, a game is so good that it is worth taking a shot. About a year ago, there was a $5-$10 Limit Holdem game where I play. I knew several of the players at the table. The only decent players were rocks. I technically did not have the bankroll at the time to play $5-$10, but I decided that I would take the equivalent of a couple buy-ins at a lower level and take a shot. The game only lasted a couple of hours after I sat down, but I finished up $150. That’s about 7 ½ big bets an hour.

Another mistake I see made quite often are folks that take a shot at the next level and refuse to move back down. Some players will take the proper approach to build up their bankroll to play at the next level and when they don’t do well at that level, refuse to move back down. Sometimes it is a lack of overall skill, while at other times they have ran into a bad run of luck.

Managing a bankroll is a key ingredient in being able to play poker long term. Those that fail to do so risk being stuck on the rail or having to find other sources to fund their poker career.