Poker Articles

Managing Your Money and Bankroll, Part 3
By Lou Krieger and Arthur Reber

This five-part series began with a discussion of the problems associated with maintaining a sense of sanity and balance while managing your gambling bankroll. In part two we worried about those wild and unpredictable swings in one's fortunes that accompany extended trips to the green felt. Now it's time to talk about actually creating this mythical bankroll that you're supposed to be protecting. After all, you gotta have it in order to manage it, right?

Bankrolls for vacation-time gamblers
The overwhelming majority of gamblers -- not the professionals, but those who go to Las Vegas three or four times a year or get out to the racetrack once a month -- probably don't set aside a cache of money labeled "bankroll." Instead, they gamble with available cash. They take what's needed for the games they plan to play and that becomes their bankroll for the day, weekend, or week -- however long their sojourn into gaming is scheduled to last.

Every bankroll needs to be managed. It's just a better way to go. As long as it's discretionary money, creating a spur-of-the-moment bankroll out of excess cash is fine. Most folks with regular jobs can pinpoint their expenses rather closely and budget accordingly. If your excess cash eventually disappears into the casino's coffers, it won't feel good, but at least you know you can cover next week's expenses with next week's paycheck.

If you're contemplating a gaming vacation, it pays to do some fiscal reconnoitering. After all, no one can tell you what to do with your money or how to manage it. We can give you some advice; but that's all. The choices are yours alone to make, and the consequences are yours to bear.

Once you determine how much discretionary income you have, you can begin planning your trip. If your destination is an airplane ride away, scope out the fares. Do the same with hotel rates. It pays to shop around. Both airfares and hotel rates are quite elastic. At peak times discounts are nearly impossible to find, but at other times you can nab some terrific bargains if you have the flexibility to travel while others are staying put. Once you've gotten a handle on how much you can afford to spend, start subtracting. When you've deducted the cost of lodging, travel, dinners, and shows, and some of those souvenir T-shirts all of us say we're never going to buy but wind up purchasing anyway, the remainder is your gambling budget.

Let's say you have $1,000 to risk at the tables. Now that kind of bankroll is not going to get you comped into the penthouse suite with free run of the restaurants and all the expensive champagne you can drink, but if you take the time to join the casino's slot club, get your table game play rated by a pit boss, and ask the poker room manager for a freebie after you've played for a few hours, you may still get a free trip or two to the buffet.

Bankrolls for semi-serious gamblers
A lot of gamblers regard themselves as "semi-serious" in that they play the games fairly regularly. A bankroll for such a player is different than one for purely recreational gamblers. Some of the same principles still apply, it's not the rent money, it's not the kids' braces; it's discretionary cash. But for semi-regular gambler, the bankroll isn't a one-time thing for a week in Vegas or Aruba. It lives on. It grows and it shrinks with your gaming fortunes.

Creating and protecting this kind of bankroll is a lot more serious, although many folks we know are rather cavalier about it. Rather than actually having a separate bankroll, they do what the typical recreational player does. They grab some cash and head for the casino, the racetrack, or poker room. Now if you're rich enough to have life covered, this isn't a problem. If not, watch out. If you go on one of life's inevitable losing streaks, and you keep going back to the ATM, you're going to put those kids' braces in jeopardy. There are two keys to success here. First, build your initial bankroll from discretionary cash. Second, keep this cache of cash totally separate from everything except gambling. If you're skilled at games like poker or sports betting and your bankroll builds because you're actually playing the game better than your opponents, you can move up to higher stakes games or increase your basic bet size. If the reverse happens, move back down again. The trick is to make sure that the bankroll is always sufficient to maintain your gambling.

What do you do if you broke? Go back to square one and start building another bankroll and do it all over again. What do you do if things go well and the bankroll grows like Topsie? Go take a vacation to Aruba.

Bankrolls for pros
Pros are different. Professional blackjack players, sports bettors, poker players, and horse racing handicappers who earn their living this way have additional requirements. Their bankroll must provide for daily necessities as well as for gambling, and a professional has to keep adding to that bankroll merely to stay even. After all, professional gamblers are just like the rest of us; they have to pay rent and buy groceries too. And if they go broke, there's no paycheck coming in next week. They must borrow money from other gamblers, quit playing professionally, or (gulp) get a job.