Poker Bankroll Calculator

Why bankroll management decides who survives

You can be a long-term winning player and still go broke. That sentence sounds wrong the first time you read it, but it is the central truth of poker maths. Variance is brutal: even a solid 5bb/100 winner at NL100 will routinely face downswings of 15-25 buy-ins, and the occasional 40-buy-in run-bad happens to everyone who plays enough volume. A bankroll calculator exists for exactly that reason — to translate your edge, your format and your risk appetite into a number of buy-ins large enough that one bad month does not end your career.

The 30/50/100 rules of thumb

Three rough numbers cover the majority of formats. For No-Limit Hold'em cash, 20-30 buy-ins is the standard floor for a confirmed winner, with 40-50 buy-ins recommended for anyone still proving their win rate. PLO cash needs roughly 30-50 buy-ins because the variance is about 1.5-2× that of NLHE at the same stake — four hole cards mean more close-equity spots and bigger swings. Tournaments are the real bankroll-eater: 100-200 buy-ins is the conservative MTT recommendation, and hyper-turbos can demand 300 or more. Sit-and-Gos sit between the two at 50-100 buy-ins for standard speeds.

Why small edge differences create huge bankroll differences

Risk of ruin is not linear. The maths of compounding variance means a player with a 2bb/100 edge needs roughly four times the bankroll of a player with a 5bb/100 edge at the same stake to have the same probability of survival. That is not an exaggeration — it is the consequence of the standard deviation in poker being much larger than the mean. If your edge is uncertain, the safest assumption is that it is smaller than you think, and the right move is to over-roll until you have a meaningful sample (50k+ hands of cash, 500+ MTTs) confirming your true win rate. Our poker variance guide walks through the standard deviation maths with concrete examples.

When to move up and when to move down

The classic rule is simple but disciplined: move up only when you have the full recommended bankroll for the next stake, and move down at the moment you lose enough buy-ins to drop below the recommended bankroll for your current one. For NL cash, a common trigger is moving down after losing 10 buy-ins at the current level; for MTTs, after losing 30-50% of your roll. The reverse trigger is more conservative — do not move up on a heater alone. Wait until your bankroll has held the required size for at least a week of normal play, so you are not making the jump on variance rather than skill. Use the my-stats dashboard to track win rates against the players you are actually facing, rather than guessing.

Common mistakes

Under-rolling is the obvious one and the leading cause of busted bankrolls, but two subtler errors trip up regulars. The first is not adjusting between formats: a 30-buy-in roll is fine for NLHE cash and dangerously thin for PLO or MTTs, yet many players use the same number for everything they play. The second is ignoring life variance — the bankroll you need to play comfortably is much smaller than the bankroll you need if poker pays your rent, because in the latter case you also need a buffer for living expenses. Treat your playing roll and your life savings as separate accounts. For a deeper look at the principles behind the calculator, see our bankroll management guide.