When you set aside an amount that you have decided to play poker with it will be easier. You will then know how much money you spend on poker and feel safer and more comfortable playing with it. Remember: Do not spend money on poker that you cannot afford to lose!

What do you want from playing poker?

If you go all-in preflop with AA and someone calls with KK, 80% of the time you will win but 20% of the time you won’t. So, if you invest all your bankroll during this situation you will lose all your money every five times. To avoid this, try to invest only a small part of your bankroll in any one game. The sit n go’s you play – The bigger the field, the more variance and dry spells you should be prepared for. So you’ll want a bigger bankroll for 180-man sit n go’s compared to 18 or 45-mans. The stakes you play – The larger the stakes you play the bigger the bankroll you’ll want to have. For one thing, larger stakes means larger swings. In the columns you see the variants Sit and Go tournaments, Double or Nothing (DON), Heads-up SNG, 18- and 45 man SNG and Multi Table Tournaments (MTT, tournaments with 100 or more players). If you want to pursue an aggressive BRM, then for Sit and Go’s (SNG) 50 buy-ins and Double or Nothing (DoN) 30 buy-ins are the minimum bankroll requirement. Bankroll management (BRM)​​ Spin and go’s are, compared to other poker-formats variance-heavy. To play Spins comfortable, we advise having 200 buy-ins. You could take some shots with a 100x bankroll-management, but when you do this, you should be ready to move down in stakes as soon as you have only 100x buy-ins left for the limit below.

Try to decide what do you want from poker. If you play just for fun from time to time you do not need a large bankroll. But, if you want to play more regularly, you should decide to be more conservative, especially if you want to be a professional. Bankroll is your “tool” to work. If you lose all of it, you won’t be able to earn money.

Set a target

When you play poker you should remember that, even though you might play well, you can always lose the hand. If you go all-in preflop with AA and someone calls with KK, 80% of the time you will win but 20% of the time you won’t. So, if you invest all your bankroll during this situation you will lose all your money every five times. To avoid this, try to invest only a small part of your bankroll in any one game.

You can see our What is the Best Poker Game for You? lesson for advice on how many tournament or table buy-ins you should aim to budget for with your bankroll. The advice varies depending on what game you choose to play, as there are extra considerations to take on board. In any case, serious players should be able to afford to lose their stack at least 20 times in any game.

If you are on downswing or not ready to play on the limit, try to leave the stakes (there is no shame in levelling down, it’s very common) and rebuild your bankroll. After doing so you can try to attack the higher limit again. Do not play higher stakes than your bankroll permits. If you stay too long with not enough bankroll, you might lose all your money.

Consider your skill level

It may tempt you but, if you win a lot of money in one tournament or promotion or deposit a huge amount, don’t go to high stakes immediately. The size of your bankroll doesn’t define your skill level. Try to climb stakes step by step and get proper knowledge and the rest of your big winning invest in different way. Poker is not a get-rich-quick game, and the players who have become rich from playing poker have spent thousands of hours to get there.

Test your knowledge with our short quiz below

Playing heads up sit and go's can be one of the most paying forms of poker you can play. Most players sitting at those tables are just bad, they could not fold top pair no matter what and may push any ace x preflop on blindlevel 3. That's the fun part. When you know how to play the game, it's more or less easy to beat. There is only one problem you may face when climbing the ladders of heads up poker, it's bankroll management. How many buy ins should you have? What kind of downswing can be expected? How do you manage tilt and losing sessions?

Turbo Sit And Go Bankroll Management

Bankroll management keys

1. keep a minimum of 20 buyins for the level you play at, it's better to have 30. During heads up sit and go's a lot less luck is involved. You face a single opponent and unless you suck at poker or have to push marginal hands all the time, you should be able to beat the games fairly easy up to 50$. When you sharkscope heads up players you find plenty of guys running pretty bad so to say.
2. Don't move up on limits to fast. This is one of the mistakes people usually make, 'oh I have 5 buyins for that limit, let's take a shot.' You lose that and move on to the next higher limit giving yourself 1 buyin. You lose that and my bankroll is gone again. Well it should not be like that, but you get the picture. Just stick to a roll where you can take at least 10 losses and still feel comfortable.
3. Move up when you can. I'd say move up once you hit 30 buyins for the next level. Conservative players can go for 40, gamblers for 20. Poker is about taking shots at the higher levels without losing your bankroll. The higher you go the more sophisticated or stupid players get. People with money will gamble, not as bad as in a casino, but still they are there. And headsup poker attracts them.

What kind of downsings can you expect?
That's pretty much depending on your skill level. Poker is luck, headsup is luck, but overall I have recognized that headsup poker is less about luck than other forms of poker. Usually it's easier to get a read, put the other on a hand and get your money in good. You can't expect more. There will be suckouts, there will be losses, but on the long run, headsup sit and go's are beatable in my eyes.

Bankroll Sit And Go Karts

Tilt and losing sessions

Bankroll Sit And Go Heads Up

How to avoid them is one of the key lessons every poker player has to learn. Nobody is the same and it's hard to give advice. Usually it's good to quit when you are losing. Just call it a day. It's tough online, you can always find a running game, but you have to learn it. Some players can take losses like they don't matter, others go on tilt. Emotional players have problems, but will make ballsy calls and plays that the others players would not make. It's a fine line, and probably, in no limit a human with emotions going with his reads may beat a computer playing his cards.