Note I have revised the original article I posted - making the standards I give a bit more stringent.

A cautionary note for beginners or those who need a little further improvement or experience. Most of my advice so far in the articles I have wrote are geared towards those who are at least at an intermediate level of play. Bankroll advice in particular assumes you will be playing in games which you figure to have an edge on the opposition.

If you are a beginner or still need to gain more experience and improve a bit to become an accomplished player, then by all means build up your experience at the micro stakes and gradually work your way up. We all have to start somewhere and this is of course quite reasonable and a sensible course of action.

If you are a beginner read ahead anyway and though my opinions on how to manage your money are more liberal than standard thinking they will get you thinking on the important topics of bankroll and general money management practice that you need to get a handle at once your game has moved on.

If you are familiar with this site already you will note that I have been a recent convert to No Limit Play from Fixed Limit and this conversion is now complete I can confirm. A good player has such an advantage at No Limit Play and there is plenty of people giving it a shot at the minute that if you select your games carefully you can do very nicely. You can even make a tidy profit playing in stakes as low as $.50 - $1 games assuming a max buy-in of $100. No matter how good you are at poker if you played a fixed limit game at $.50 - $1 all you are going to win is to be blunt chump change. Fine if you are just playing purely for fun but if your aim is to make some decent money forget about it.

In fact to make decent money at fixed limit you need to be playing $10-$20 or above or playing multiple tables at slightly lower levels. Playing $10-$20 at fixed limit if you were to even take my loose minimum risk approach requires a bankroll of $20 x 100 = $2000 and playing shorthand I would double this to $4000.

So even more good news for good No Limit players with a bit of good game selection you can build up a nice bankroll from a much lower base than at fixed limit without overly jeopardizing your bankroll. I would say having a bankroll of $1000 if carefully managed can potentially build up quite nicely all things being equal for a good player.

Furthermore in low buy-in games at No Limit though at first glance there isn't huge money floating around, some of these guys who play here are almost giving their money away. Though there are never any guaranteed winning sessions you can get a great overlay here and turn over a nice profit without risking so much.

With your knowledge of odds, implied odds, reverse implied odds etc. you will be going up against many of these players who have limited, flawed or simply no understanding of these concepts.

Some players betting is terrible also. You have the all-in merchants who think they can get away with bluff after bluff by going all-in with rubbish. Failing to realize that it just takes the once for their bluff to be called and then unless their bad play is rewarded by the poker gods they go back to playing on their playstation until they can muster another few bucks to either learn their lesson or throw away their money once again.

Then you have the guy who thinks he is still playing Fixed Limit. He bets and raises by tiny amounts, not understanding that he has now the extra leverage of control over the odds he gives his opponents. Thus making huge errors like allowing a drawing hand to play cheaply. Worse again some of these type of players compound their mistakes by often calling the big bet after being drawn out on. Such basic mistakes can be really punished, unlike at fixed limit this is the immediate advantage to an even merely good poker player who wants to play No Limit.

So with all this is mind what kind of bankroll do you need for No Limit Play. The bankroll I see often quoted on the internet is to have at least 20 times the maximum buy-in, I would say this is both too much and too little. This figure is reasonable assuming that you do not want to run the risk of going bust. In fact I think if you are going to play at medium to higher stakes No Limit where your advantage may not be enough it could even be too low.

But setting rigid bankroll principles does not fit into the real world, for one thing they assume that you are always going to be playing at the highest possible stake your bankroll can afford to go in at. In practice this is simply unlikely to be true, say you are sticking to this principle and you have managed to build up a bankroll of $40K, do you really think such a player if he can only find tough games with a max buy-in of $2K is still going to play in such a game? He may very well do but I certainly wouldn't. I'm not going to let my ego get in the way of sensible decision making. I'm going to see if there is easier games at a lower level where I can still make good money. I'm going to avoid tables where there's too many known tough opponents and not enough short stacks, unknown players or known weakies. I'll drop right down until I find that table where I think my overlay is good, at this stage I could end up playing with a bankroll well over 100 times the buy-in potentially. I don't think there is any respected poker authority that would think 100 times the buy-in was not enough once you had an overlay.

Saying all this I don't think there are many players who have build up such a bankroll who are prepared to put it into jeopardy, so what should be the maximum game relative to your bankroll should you consider giving a shot?

Again I believe setting a too rigid formula is unrealistic. If for some reason you see a high stakes game where you believe your overlay is very good. Maybe there are some very rich people who don't really care about the money, there are only playing for fun or for whatever reason and you know the chances are that you are going to come out of it showing a tidy profit (while knowing that the worse can always happen). It is simply ridiculous to have a fixed minimum bankroll for all situations. I believe in this situation possibly having a bankroll as low as 5 times the maximum buy-in can be justified. I outline below why I think this may be the case.

If your overlay is only good and not massive I wouldn't deviate much from the 20 times principle too much, say 15 times (but remember if your overlay isn't that good in the 1st place maybe some lower stake game might offer you richer pickings). However if I believe my overlay is real good I think 10 times is ok and if they really are complete chumps for the taking even as low as 5 times might be right but you need to not let the sums of money involved affect your decision making. If that happens your overlay gets affected and you should stick to more rigid principles. This is where your outlook and attitude is an important attribute to your decision making. So in effect bankroll principles in No Limit depend upon your individual way of doing things and what you are comfortable with.

I would say have some sort of decision making process that you can adhere to, this is where knowing yourself is a major factor. I know I am prepared to take risks with my bankroll that others would not do, however I am not prepared to take daft risks, it is more a weighted risk process I employ.

If you have a bankroll of say only $200, where do you go with this by any bankroll principles even lenient ones mentioned there would not be a whole lot you could do in No Limit with this. Like my Fixed Limit advice, how many people playing poker are going to go bankrupt losing this, maybe if you are a struggling college student you may want to conserve this. If so then if you can find low enough micro stakes then stick to it if you absolutely must. I think for most of us however risking $200 is not a big deal, so I would say if you have got a good game and you are willing to take the risk of losing your $200 by all means go in for a game with max buy-in of $200 once you think you have a good overlay on the table of course.

Everybody is different, everybody has their levels of acceptable risk, know yours, what I think a reasonable approach for a good player is described in the following table.

Table's Maximum Buy In	Take A shot Bankroll	Very Good Overlay	Good Overlay	Moderate Overlay	Rigid Bankroll
200	200	2000	3000	4000	8000
400	2000	4000	6000	8000	16000
500	5000	5000	10000	10000	20000
1000	10000	10000	20000	20000	40000
2000	20000	20000	40000	40000	80000
5000	50000	50000	100000	100000	200000

From this table I think you can take a shot with all your bankroll if it is less than 200, i.e. if you don't mind losing it. I would not consider a move up to a $400 buy-in however until my bankroll is at $2K and this only if my overlay is really good, in practice though I think this is too risky and I think unless you are prepared to lay your $2K bankroll on the line you should wait until you should have $4K, i.e. unless you are still willing to take a shot when your bankroll is $2K you should give yourself a cushion of a minimum bankroll of 10 times the max buy-in before entering a game even if your overlay is very good. At $2K I now have a bankroll which I am not prepared to put into mortal jeopardy and my minimum required level to take a shot is now equal to my Very Good Overlay amount i.e. my bankroll must be at least 10 times the buy-in.

My table appears quite liberal the reason being because at the lower levels I think you can find easy games and your overlay can be excellent. At the higher limits I would rarely rate my overlay as being excellent and therefore my overlay would at best be in the good overlay section. So you can see I am not being so daftly liberal as this table may first appear. In fact in practice even if I think I have a very good overlay at a $2-$4 table with max buy-in of $400, I would still recommend having a bankroll of $4K. I think you can build up enough of a bankroll at a lower buy-in of $200 without jeopardizing your bankroll.

What I would suggest for No Limit Play is make your own table, know what level of play you are at. If you are playing at shorthand tables you need to be somewhat stricter though I still would not be too strict if the opposition are truly rubbish.

If you are going to continually play at the highest stakes your bankroll can stand regardless of weaker lower buy-in games then you definitely need to have a higher bankroll. In fact my rigid bankroll suggests 40 times the max buy-in for a game is the bankroll you need if you are regularly playing at the top end of your bankroll and your table selection is not given the due adherence it merits. Thus my at first glance liberal bankroll structure comes with provisos. It's tailored for me and my mindset and for where my game is at.

If you care about your bankroll which I am guessing you do or you wouldn't be looking through the internet for articles such as this. Establish what your bottom line is, do a table like this or something similar. By all means make it stricter or if you are totally deranged and even more of a risk taker than I am make it more liberal.

Remember though this table is still only a guideline, in No Limit bankroll principles there are few hard and fast rules, what if players at a table are all really short stacked and so the amount of damage they can do is limited again you could really relax up on your principles and if the nature of the table changes then bail out if the conditions are no longer right.

In summation what I think the bottom line is for No Limit Play is once you have a bankroll that you are not prepared to lose by taking risks then putting this into mortal jeopardy is to be avoided, you have to use your experience and judgment for what this may be, to be fair they are not many situations where playing for less than 10 times the buy-in is safe and for me I have come to the conclusion that playing with less than 10 times the max buy-in is not wise.

However there are certain situations where you could relax up on your bankroll standards e.g. a 1k buy-in game where the opponents are known weakies and have small stakes of say less than 200. You could even go with 5 times the buy-in bankroll being a reasonable risk to run here. If a few tough opponents join then it's time to head for greener pastures. However in reality if things did turn sour, hands on heart how many players are able to get away quickly. If a promising situation in which you have initially decided to run a risk does not look so good anymore then you absolutely must not hesitate in leaving the game at the first opportunity.

There is the need to counter balance the overly optimistic nature that is inherent with poker players and gamblers in general therefore I view a minimum of 10 times the bankroll of max buy-in a sensible approach in virtually all circumstances no matter how rosy it looks. If you can remain objective at all times then you can be more liberal at certain golden opportunity times. I believe though that it is being more objective to realize that in the heat of a poker session it can be hard to remain objective. I believe therefore you should use every excuse possible to stop yourself from joining a game where your bankroll is not more than 10 times the buy-in rather than looking for a reason to gamble it up.

If your game is shorthand and your tables that you mostly play you have a good but not great overlay I think you need about 30 times the maximum buy-in. If your overlay is very good and the situation is right I think you can lower this to 15 times. However I don't think you would be going too far wrong if you never played shorthand with less than 20 times the maximum buy-in. If you regularly play in a shorthanded game where your overlay is only very moderate and it's at the highest stakes your bankroll can stand then I think you should have as much as 60 times the maximum buy-in.

A note on Sit and Go tournaments I reckon a minimum of 20 times the buy-in is about right.