Tips for Building a Bankroll

Learning how to build your bankroll in order to move up the stakes quickly is what online poker is all about. As you move up the stakes, you essentially begin to double your monthly profits if you manage to keep the same bb/win rate. For example, if you make $7,000 profit per year in the NL25 games per than you’ll make around $14,000 in NL50. You really want to push yourself up the stake as fast as possible because you can double your profits whilst not having to “double” your ability. It’s also best to move up the stakes and takes risks whilst your young so that you don’t have to do so when you’re older and dependant on your online poker winnings.

How to Build a Poker Bankroll from Scratch

I think that most new players are better off not depositing any money to begin with. You might think this sounds crazy and counter-productive but in my opinion if you deposit money too early you’ll just lose it to a better player.

I recommend playing freerolls and play money games when you’re first starting out. This will not only help you get used to the rules of the game and playing online, but you’ll also do so without risking any money whatsoever. Once you’ve played a few thousand hands in the play money games, or even 10 – 20 freerolls, you should by now have a clear understanding of the rules of the game. You should be able to build up a bankroll worth $50 – $100 by playing a handful of freerolls and finishing on the final table a few times. The best poker sites in my opinion are PokerIdol, Betsafe and RedKings( many high value freerolls for their players).

With a bankroll of $50, you now have a big enough bankroll to start playing the micro-stakes $0.02/$0.04 ring games at PokerIdol. You can buy into these games for 100 big blinds ($2) which gives you more than 20 buy-ins in total, which utilised good poker bankroll management and allows you to bust out a few times without causing you any serious trouble.

It’ll take you a while to start making money playing cash games but the number of fish currently playing these sorts of games means that you should probably be breaking even to begin with. A tip for playing the micro-stakes games is to apply a TAG (tight-aggressive) strategy to your game, which involves only playing your top 10% of hands including 1010+, AJ+ and pocket pairs. You want to play these thick and fast when you hit top pair on the flop, and it’s probably best not to try advanced tricks like bluffing or double barrelling until you get more experience and knowledge of the game.

Eventually, you should be able to start producing a win rate of around 3-7bb/hr. You can also start multi-tabling to make things go faster. By reading a range of poker ebooks, poker strategy on the internet or even signing up to a poker training site to watch professional poker videos produced by mid-stakes players like Cole “CTS” South, you’ll be able to add bits to your game and learn how to play at the higher stakes e.g. learning about 3betting, 3betting light, blind stealing, positional play, combating different opponents and continuation betting.

Taking Advantage of Poker Bonuses

Another great way to help you build your bankroll is to take advantage of poker bonuses and reload-offers whenever possible. Whether these are no-deposit bonuses, rolling bonuses or even instant deposit bonuses, they’ll all help you to increase your profits and build a bankroll faster.