Making Money Playing Poker - The Importance of Bankroll Management

Online Poker Rooms have caused the games popularity to skyrocket in recent years. More and more people are playing and playing more often then ever before. As a result the number of good poker players is also on the rise. But being a good poker player is not enough to consistently be profitable, if need to properly manage your bankroll.

No matter how good a player you are and how many good choices you make there are going to be times when you lose. We all have time were we go all in with the best hand and the other guy gets lucky, sometimes this can happen several times over a short period of time. Also as hard as it is to admit sometimes we all make mistakes. Making sure you do not go broke during these times is key to being successful. If you have $100 and bring it all to a no limit hold'em table and win several hands and build your stack to $500, it only takes one bad beat to wipe it all away. You have to expect to get beat sometimes when the odds are in your favor. The best hand in hold'em AA gets beat by the worst hand 7 2 about 15% of the time, and a more likely thing to happen is having a Big pair like AA or KK going against a smaller pair like QQ or JJ, in these cases you are a huge favorite to win, but will still lose about one our of every 5 times. Most of the time we are playing hands that are not that big a favorite and if you can get your chips in with a 60-65% chance to win you are doing very well.

The key to not going broke when we run into a dry spell were we just not not hitting our hands and our opponents keep hitting their outs vs us is to manage your bankroll so that you never have too much of your money at risk at one time. For example do not bring more then 10% of your bankroll to a table or do not use more then 5% of your bankroll to buy into a tournament.. As the stakes get bigger and the competition tough you may want to tighten up even more. If the go a losing streak then you will be force to play for lower limits. If you make good choices and follow a bankroll management strategy then you will be well on your way to being consistently profitable.