How to build your bank roll

If you are ever planning on playing poker at a serious level; building your bankroll is the most important part of doing that (assuming that you are a good player).  If you do not have a solid bank roll it will not matter how good you are, you will get into trouble.  If you do not know how to manage your bankroll you will get into trouble.  Having a good bankroll is like having poker insurance.  You should never play without that insurance.

The fact remains, that poker does have some luck in it.  If you are a good player you will win over a period of time and you will also be consistent.  Where the problem comes in is with the bad beats and unlucky instances in your poker career.  People talk about it all the time, how they lost with pocket aces, or this hand or that hand against a worse hand.  If you do not have a bank roll for instances like this you will be in a lot of trouble.  Not only that, but without that bankroll you cannot play the way you should play in order to achieve success.  The bank roll you have for poker is going to affect a lot of the way you play.

So if the bank roll is so important, how to you build it up?

Well, generally you want to have a bank roll of twenty to forty times the max buy in.  So if you play in a no limit Texas Hold Em game with a max buy in of $300.00, you will want a bank roll of $6,000.00-$12,000.00.  You want to put yourself in the position to not be screwed and have no bank roll if you get very unlucky ten times in a row.  Playing with a bank roll, if you do not do that already really helps you relax and be able to play well. I can tell you right now that there is not any consistent poker player out there that plays without a good bank roll.

If you do not already have a bank roll then it is very important that you build one.  The best way to do this is slow and consistently.  You will not be able to build a bank roll over night.  Not without some serious luck, and risk that is.  The best thing to do is just take your time and build the bank roll steadily.

You can build your bank roll a couple different ways.

The first way (and the way most people chose) is to build your bank roll through poker.  If you are playing poker, chances are you have some money to go towards the game even if you do not have a good bank roll.  If that is the case you could use poker to build your bank roll.  Some people get lucky enough to play with a bank roll of just a couple buy-ins to build their bank roll higher.  What I would suggest is to play lower stakes to build your bank roll.  If you have $1500.00, (5 times your max buy in) you should move down to smaller limits for a while that makes your bank roll the right bank roll for that specific limit.  That way you still have a good bank roll and can play the way you are suppose to.  Then when you build your bank roll up more, you can move up to the limits you want.

That is the way most people would opt to build the bank roll.  Another way that I like to use, is the other income that I have coming in.  I like to put a certain percentage of my income towards my bank roll.  This helps to stop the struggle of getting through poker with no bank roll.  It is a good idea to mix the two together and build it like that.  No matter how you chose to build your bank roll, keep in mind that it is the most important financial decision you will ever make in poker.