Bankroll management
How many buy-ins do you actually need? The math, the discipline, the rules.
Bankroll management is the boring topic that determines whether you survive long enough to be lucky. Get it right and the games are infinitely-iterable; get it wrong and one normal downswing ends your career.
The number
For a 5bb/100 winner with 100bb/100 SD: 40 buy-ins gives 1% RoR. 27 buy-ins gives 5%. 19 gives 10%. Anything below 19 is straight-up reckless. Use the bankroll calculator to plug in your own numbers.
For MTTs, multiply by 4. A regular tournament grinder wants 100+ buy-ins of the average buy-in they're playing. PKO and bounty players want 150+ because the variance is higher.
The discipline
- Move up at 30 BIs of the next stake; move down at 20 BIs of the current.
- Withdraw rakeback monthly to a separate account. Don't compound it back into a too-aggressive roll.
- Track everything. If you can't tell me your sample-size-adjusted win rate to the nearest bb/100, you don't know your variance, and you don't know your risk.