Building Your Poker Bankroll Articles | Poker

By: Richard Bleuze

While online poker can be a fun and profitable, building a poker bankroll requires a more disciplined approach.  A run of bad cards can come at any time.  Winning players make sure that they are able to withstand such runs in order that their poker bankroll's grow over time.

Below are a few tips to help you build a poker bankroll.

1) Never Play Above Your Level

Bad cards and bad beats happen to even the best players in the world at times.  Disciplined players know that only a small percentage of their poker bankroll should be at risk in any one game.  Useful numbers to remember are 20 buy-ins for No-Limit Holdem games, or 30 buy-ins for SNGs or multi-table tournaments.

2) Spend Time Selecting A Table

Time spent selecting the 'fishiest' tables to play on will reward poker players with steady poker bankroll building.  Instead of just sitting at the first available table, check the statistics available in most poker room lobbies. The key factors to look for are number of players seeing each flop and the average size of the pot. 

3) Take Advantage of Online Bonuses

Many sites offer big incentive bonuses to sign up with them.  Discipline poker players look  to find how easy the bonuses clear.  Regular reload bonuses and extra incentives such as VIP clubs or freerolls can also be factored in. 

4) Beware of Tilt

Tilt describes any situation where a player starts to play less than optimally.  The classic form of tilt is anger following a 'bad beat'.  Tilt is the arch-enemy of disciplined poker players building a poker bankroll. 

Finally, building a poker bankroll involves more than just grinding out the same games day-by-day. As your bankroll grows you will need to move up and face stronger poker opponents.  Study of the game can take many forms including participating in poker forums, reading poker strategy articles and even paying for one of the many online training sites available today.  One thing that I do know, is that if you do not work on your game that poker bankroll that you built, will soon stop growing some day soon!