There are poker players who make a lot of money by winning consistently at the game, but many of them are often found haunting the casinos and big poker rooms hitting up buddies for a loan or a stake to go after more. Why? Because as good as they are at playing the game of poker, they are bad at managing their bankroll. You many be at that level where you think you don’t have to worry about it because you are just starting out, but now more than any other time you have the chance to affect your long term success via bankroll management.

There are two reasons now is a good time; first, because good habits need to be started early, and second, because if you go broke now you may give up on the game all together.

Bankroll management is essentially knowing what to bring to a poker table when you play. Having too little means you cannot withstand the low tide in the ebb and flow of luck, and if you tap out too quickly you wont be able to recoup and become profitable.

Your bankroll is a factor of either limit big bets or no limit buy ins. If you are playing at $1/$2 limit poker, a big bet is $2, so if you want a conservative bankroll of 1000 times a limit big bet, you need $2,000. If you play $50 tournaments, you need 100 times that for a conservative bankroll, or $5,000.

Even a risky bankroll is 250 or 20 (so $500 or $1,000 in the above examples.) Don’t have that kind of cash to invest in poker? No worries, just start at smaller limits and work your way up. Another way you can look at it is the reverse- start with what you have. If you have $100 to play poker with, then you are looking at $1 SnGs or playing 0.05/0.10 games for a while.