Building a bankroll with the right bankroll management strategy are critical to your success as a poker player. The most important thing to remember about building a bankroll is to start at the right stakes.
You will increase your chances of winning by spreading your risk across many tournaments or cash games. This is the basic strategy you must be willing to do.
If this sounds ridiculous to you, then perhaps you haven’t made any significant amount of money playing poker online. The reason for the 5% limit is that there will be times where you will go on losing streaks. A bad run of cards can really put your bankroll in a bind. This is especially true when you buy into tournaments with more than 5% of you bankroll.
If you have a $20 bankroll and play $5 SNG’s, you will be broke after 4 none cashing tournaments (like a bad run of cards). If you were to play the $1 buy-in tournaments you will have lost only 20% of your bankroll instead of 100%. Don’t forget to add in the cost of the rake, which would put you over your bankroll! You may be willing to take that risk, but it may not be worth it in the long run.
They have plenty of stories of their own disappointments and discouraging sessions, but by learning good bankroll management strategy and using them, they have been able to weather the tough spots. The trick is to have enough of a bankroll to get you through spells of bad cards and still have something left to play with when your luck turns around.
In order to survive the long droughts of not winning use this as a rule of thumb: Don’t use more than 5 percent of your bankroll for any one buy-in.