By logging each session of live or online poker you will be able to track and analyze your poker performance. Poker Bankroll Tracking and Management is a key ingredient to success. Do not underestimate the value of these tools. If its web based poker bankroll tracking that you are looking to do, PokerCharts.com is an excellent solution. It’s done through a skill called bankroll management and it allows professional players to survive the sometimes vicious volatility of No-Limit Hold’em. The goal of good bankroll management is to limit potentially back-breaking losses at the poker table. The general idea is to never risk too much money on a single game of poker.

Poker bankroll management (BRM) is one of the easiest concepts to learn and apply when you’re at the tables. Chances are you’re familiar with the basics of BRM when it comes to playing poker cash games at Ignition: Keep your poker money separate from the rest of your money, and only buy in for a fraction of your bankroll (5% or less is a rule of thumb). This will lower your risk of ruin and make it more likely to come out ahead in the long run.

Bankroll management for online poker tournaments is a little different, but not by much. Since tournaments naturally introduce more variance to your results than poker cash games, the recommended buy-in level for beginners drops to 1%, giving you more room to wait for those larger (and less frequent) prizes to replenish your bankroll. But there’s more to tournament BRM than putting a cap on your buy-in size. With the following poker tournament strategies, you can tame that nasty variance even more, giving you a bigger chance of success when the chips are down.

The key to conquering online poker tournaments is to understand why those chips don’t have the same value from beginning to end. You can’t cash them in for face value in the middle of a tournament, and except for special “re-buy” events, you can’t simply reload when you lose your stack. Because of this, in most tournament situations, the chips you gain aren’t worth as much as the chips you lose.

This concept is even more important when it comes to poker bankroll management for online tournaments. The more you emphasize survival over chip accumulation, the more variance you can trim from your results – up to a point, at least. This guide will show you how to nurse your stack from beginning to end, using a slightly more conservative poker strategy to extend your tournament life as long as possible and increase your “in the money” (ITM) percentage.

How to Manage Your Stack at the Beginning

There’s a standard set of poker tournament tips for the early levels, and the theme is pretty simple: You can play these levels the same way you’d play at a cash game. That’s because everyone starts off with an identical stack, and unless you’re playing a Hyper Turbo or some other short-stacked tournament, everyone will be deep enough (say, 75 big blinds or more) to make the same moves you can at the cash tables.

However, if you want to use smart tournament BRM and lower your variance, you’ll have to give up some of the expected value you might realize with your more marginal hands. That means folding more often, both pre-flop and after the flop. For example, a hand like King-Jack offsuit might be perfectly fine to open from the lojack (with five players left to act) in a typical No-Limit Hold’em cash game; in a tournament, it’s probably not worth the risk.

Pumping your brakes after the flop means two things: Going for less value when you have a good hand, and bluffing less often when you don’t. As a rough guide, Top Pair-Good Kicker (TPGK) is a hand you can usually bet for two streets of value in a cash game; you might want to settle for one street when it’s early on in a tournament. You’ll also want to continuation bet less often with your trash hands, and bluff-raise less often with hands like gutshots. Always make these adjustments incrementally from the margins – abandon the hands that would give you the lowest expected return first, and save those chips for later.

How to Play With a Short Stack

In a way, poker tournaments actually become easier to play when you’re running low on chips. You no longer have enough leverage with under 40 big blinds to run the same kind of plays you might at a cash game, like multiple raises pre-flop or sick multi-street bluffs post-flop. And once you’re down to 10-15bb, it’s time to go all-in or fold.

Managing these tricky stack sizes is an art when you’re focused on bankroll management. Many players get too passive when they start running low on chips; then, when their stacks are down to the nubbins, they cave and go all-in when they shouldn’t. Here’s how to avoid falling into either of those two traps:

1. Defend the Big Blind Effectively

This is the position where so many poker tournament players – even experts – get too conservative. Generally speaking, when you’re short-stacked, a speculative hand with low-value cards like Seven-Six suited isn’t worth as much as a hand with more “hot-and-cold” all-in equity like King-Four offsuit. That’s because you don’t have enough stack depth to play those multiple streets and try to realize your equity with those small suited connectors.

Playing from the big blind gives you a little more legroom. If you’re in a single-raised pot, you’re getting the right odds to call with a much wider range of hands – even when you’re short-stacked. You still want to take it more conservatively here than the math might suggest, but don’t auto-fold those smaller cards just because you’re running low on chips when you play online poker.

2. Avoid Limping

Open-limping is not encouraged in Texas Hold’em, although there are some situations where it can make sense with a speculative hand when you’re down to around 40 bigs. Those situations disappear when you’re playing a lower-variance tournament strategy – especially when your stack gets down to push/fold territory. Calling a single raise from the big blind is one thing; willingly forgoing the chance to get your opponents to fold pre-flop when you open-raise is quite another.

3. Be Patient

You’ll naturally feel the pressure to get that chip stack moving up again as the tournament progresses and you get shorter relative to the blinds. But don’t forget: Chips lost are usually worth more than chips gained. It can be profitable to play more aggressively when you dip below 40bb, hoping to collect the extra few chips you need to regain the leverage you used to have. But once you get even more shallow, maybe 25-30bb, it’s time to conserve those precious chips. You’ll need them to wait out the other short-stacks at the bubble and get yourself in the money. Never underestimate the value of a “min-cash” when you’re at the tournament tables.

How to Play With a Big Stack

Tournament poker is always better when you’ve got a big stack sitting in front of you. There’s less pressure to use BRM tactics to lower your variance; instead, a healthy dose of “selective aggression” should be more profitable in the long run. Here are three tips that will help you select when and how to hit people with your stack:

1. Widen Your Hand Range

Now that you have all those chips, you can put other people’s tournament lives at risk, giving them more incentive to fold. This allows you to open and 3-bet a wider range of hands; again, you should do this with your marginal hands first, the ones that just barely miss the grade in normal situations. Add weaker and weaker hands as you get more aggressive – there will even be some spots where it makes sense to open any two cards.

2. Pressure the Medium-Short Stacks

Don’t point that aggression at the wrong people. As the big stack, you don’t want to spoil your advantage by getting into a big pot while holding a marginal hand. You also have less incentive to knock out the very short stacks, especially near the money bubble. Instead, use your stack to put pressure on the medium and medium-short stacks, who are already more inclined to fold as the bubble approaches. Keeping the shortest stacks alive will help extend this favorable bubble dynamic.

3. Don’t Go Too Crazy

The amount of pressure you can put on your opponents will depend on your respective stack sizes, as well as their style of play, the bubble situation, and a number of other factors. Going in there willy-nilly and throwing your chips around just because you can will only push your variance beyond the breaking point. Resist this temptation, especially if you have one of those personalities that already leaves you prone to playing too aggressively at the tables.

Not only will the low-variance tournament tactics we’ve mentioned here help you manage your bankroll, they’ll also be easier to execute than a more complicated strategy. Pruning your decision tree will help you avoid getting in sticky situations that only offer a small amount of expected value in return. To find out more about navigating the tournament waters here at Ignition, make sure to check out our entire vault of poker strategy articles. Then take what you’ve learned and put it to good use on the felt. We’ll see you at the tournament tables.

We've covered a variety of topics in this series on multi-table tournament strategy (MTTs), starting with a discussion of tournament structures, the importance of stack sizes, and chip accumulation vs. survival strategies, then moving through the early, middle, and late stages of MTTs and onward to the final table.

To conclude the series, let's talk a little about bankroll management and tournaments, an area that sometimes trips up even experienced poker players who aren't as mindful as they should be of how the variance of MTTs should affect what buy-in levels they choose.

Tournament bankroll management: Why have a bankroll?

It goes without saying — a 'poker bankroll' refers to money set aside for poker only, and should not overlap with living expenses or other funds designated for other uses.

Most poker players who are successful over the long term practice strict bankroll management in order (1) to ensure they can play their best at all times (and not be 'scared money' playing above their heads and worried about losing), and (2) to help lessen their 'risk of ruin' by avoiding getting involved in games that can threaten to deplete their entire bankroll and force them to quit altogether.

If you're only a casual poker tournament player, perhaps jumping in MTTs once in a while for fun as a way to break up the monotony of cash games, you needn't worry too specifically about tournament-specific bankroll management. But you shouldn't ignore it, either.

The only real bankroll concern the casual MTTer should have is not to play a tournament for which the buy-in is so high it will disturb your ability to play without worry of losing what you've paid. If you typically play a $1/$2 no-limit hold'em cash game where you might win or lose as much as a few hundred in a night, playing a $5,000 NLHE tournament is probably a bad idea, both because of the higher level of competition you're likely to encounter and the possibility that your fears of not cashing and losing that big buy-in will negatively affect your play.

Some pros suggest cash game players should never risk more than around 1/20th of their cash game bankroll when playing a tournament. In other words, if you have $5,000 set aside as your cash game bankroll, you really should limit yourself to playing tournaments with buy-ins of $250 and below. If you wish to play a higher buy-in tournament, you can consider selling action in order to lessen your risk.

You can adjust that 1/20th figure up or down depending on your own risk tolerance, but be cautious about risking too much on a single 'shot' at a high buy-in MTT. Only 10-15% of those playing tournaments tend to cash, and even if you're an above-average player in the field your chance of not cashing is going to be greater than your chance of making the money at all, let alone enjoying a big score.

For players who are more serious about playing tournaments — especially if you've chosen to specialize in MTTs to the exclusion of cash — you need to think specifically about your tournament bankroll and always be mindful of how a given tournament fits or doesn't fit into the requirements you've provided for yourself.

Tournament bankroll management: How is it different from cash games?

Cash game players set bankroll requirements based both on the stakes of the games they wish to play and game types.

Obviously higher-stakes cash games require a larger bankroll than do lower-stakes ones, but perhaps not so obviously certain game types require deeper bankrolls than others because of the increased variance or 'swings' they cause.

If you wish to play short-handed (6-max.) or heads-up cash games, you need a deeper bankroll than you would if you stick with full-ring games. Similarly, playing a game like pot-limit Omaha is going to require having a larger bankroll than playing NLHE at the same stakes, since PLO typically tends to cause wider swings.

Similar principles apply to bankroll management for multi-table tournaments. That said, those familiar with managing a cash game bankroll may miscalculate what it takes to maintain a sufficient MTT bankroll.

Someone who regularly plays $1/$2 NLHE cash game for which the typical buy-in is $200 might reasonably think a bankroll consisting of 30 buy-ins or $6,000 is plenty (although more conservative players may opt for an even deeper bankroll).

However for a multi-table tournament player who plays $200 MTTs, a bankroll of $6,000 is not going to be adequate. Given the variance of MTTs, even good players can occasionally go 30 tournaments without a cash, a possibility that is much more likely to occur than for a good cash game player to blow through that many buy-ins.

Tournament bankroll management: How many buy-ins do you need?

A typical recommendation for tournament players is to have at least 100 buy-ins in your bankroll for any tournament you play, although it should be said right off that is often a minimum recommendation. Even so, you can see that for a player of $200 MTTs, that means having a $20,000 bankroll at minimum to absorb the swings of MTTs — much higher than the bankroll of a cash game player whose buy-ins are the same $200.

The same advice goes to the online poker player who sticks with $5 multi-table tournaments, for which a $500 bankroll would represent a comfortable minimum. You can take shots at those $10 or $20 tournaments once in a while, but know that in order to move up to those buy-in levels permanently, you'll need a bigger roll.

Meanwhile, there are several other factors that can push that 100 buy-in suggestion even higher.

For one, if you're on the cautious side you may want to have at least 200 buy-ins or even as much as 500 buy-ins in your tournament bankroll. Also, if you mainly play large-field MTTs, you'll also likely want to have more buy-ins given the higher variance of those events when compared to smaller field tournaments.

Online Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Calculator

How you approach tournaments — that is, your playing style — also matters when it comes to MTT bankroll management. While we've been recommending 'going for the win' in this series, many tournament players place a greater emphasis on simply cashing than focusing on trying to make final tables where they can play for real money. Such players tend not to win the big prizes up top, but may overall experience less variance and thus can get away with having smaller bankrolls. This is where many recreational MTTers end up, with bankrolls of 60 buy-ins (or even less) and cashing enough to stay in the game.

The more serious professional tournament players who do play for the win are going to need deeper bankrolls in order to handle those long stretches between final tables when they aren't cashing at all.

Tournament bankroll management: How does your ROI affect bankroll decisions?

Finally, if you keep good records (as you should) you can calculate your win rate in tournaments — commonly referred to as your return on investment or 'ROI' — and use that figure as another guide helping you decide how deep of a MTT bankroll you should have.

Your tournament ROI is calculated by dividing how much you profit in tournaments (your 'return') by the amount you spend on buy-ins (your 'investment'). Usually the result is then multiplied by 100 and shown as a percentage:

• (winnings - buy-ins) / buy-ins *100 = ROI%

Online Poker Tournament Bankroll Management App

While it's somewhat subjective to say what a 'good' ROI is for MTTs, obviously anything above zero percent marks you as a winning player. Having a 10-15 percent ROI is good, and anything from 25-30 percent ROI and above is going to be better than many MTTers. Meanwhile only the top pros tend to reach and sustain levels higher than those.

Having a relatively small ROI means needing a deeper bankroll so as to ensure you're able to stay in the game during those dry stretches, while having a consistently high ROI means you can get away with less.

One important word of caution, though — don't be overly affected by small sample sizes when looking at your tournament ROI. One big tournament win can inordinately skew a player's ROI, sometimes inspiring false confidence about the sustainability of such a rate.

Don't let a ROI percentage calculated from just 10 or 20 multi-table tournaments inspire wild adjustments to your MTT bankroll management strategy. In fact, some say you need at least 1,000 results for the sample size to be significant enough to be meaningful, so while you should keep track of your results, understand what they mean when you do.

Also in this series...

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Online Poker Tournament Bankroll Management Spreadsheet

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