Rules to help save your online poker bankroll

Burning through one’s online bankroll is something that even the very best poker players are prone to. One or two sessions can ruin weeks or months of perfect play and success if you don’t have bankroll management skills. The inability to keep a balance online is the reason why over 90% of all online poker players lose money.

Besides having good poker skills, you need to be a good bankroll manager in order for you to remain profitable over the long term. Maintaining discipline and control over one’s strategy is particularly harder when you are playing online than when you are playing in a land-based casino. Online poker fields some of the best players. These players are not just good, they are also faster, more informed, and meaner. That means you will have to be very good yourself in order to get even a shilling from them.

If you have poker skills, then you will need bankroll management skills I am going to mention below to become an even better player.

Play within your roll

The first and most significant concept of bankroll management is being able to play within your role all the time. Poker is not a zero-sum game and that means that if you play well, you will actually make profit. You can expect a positive return on your investment if you are smart enough with how to manage your roll. As a rule of thumb, you should never have more than 5% of your bankroll committed to one table at a time. That is a good rule if you want to make your finite bankroll seem like it is infinite. However, there is even a better rule. The rule is that you should drop that percentage of your bankroll to 1% or 2%. This way, you will always have enough money to play whatever game you want to without risking enduring some serious losses.

Don’t monitor your poker balance

If you follow the first rule and start with a reasonable bankroll, then your chances of going broke are slim. Poker is a game that is usually played with chips and not money. Thus, knowing how much is in your bankroll is actually not very relevant. There are several legit reasons that make checking your bankroll every time irrelevant. First of all, when you make it a habit of checking your bankroll every time, what will happen is that every time you win, you will check your account and that will lift your spirits because you will be making money. However, upswings never last forever in judi online poker and you will soon take a beating, and a bad one. When that happens, you will also check your balance and realize that it has dropped by a significant amount and that may tempt you to start forcing your play to get your bankroll back to where it was.

The minute you start forcing your play, that might mark the end of you because chasing losses is never a good idea in gambling in general.

Treat poker seriously

Lastly, playing poker costs money and treating it seriously is very important. You should know that every game you lose represents money that you will never get back and if that doesn’t concern you, then maybe you shouldn’t be playing poker in the first place.