I see this everywhere you try to look about staying within your bankroll... buy in no more than x percentage of your roll.

What is it for no-limit? Best I can tell from running the numbers is 100x the big blind. So, if you're playing at a .05/.10 table, you should sit down with $10. Is this only true for 6 man, or is this for 6 and 9/10? Am I off?

It made sense on Absolute poker b/c the min you could come to the table with was $4 and the max $20, but at Ultimate bet its $2 and $10...?

All the advice says my bank roll should be about 20x the buy in (but never says the buy in). With my above logic, in order to really play at the .05/.10 tables on absolute (the smallest), I should sit with $10 and should have a roll of ~$200...?

Help anyone?

Most often when people say a buyin they mean 100x the big blind... occasionally someone who only buys in for, say, 20x the big blind at all their tables will say something like "I'm down 5 buyins today" without specifying that they mean 5 times 20 BB's = 100 BB's.

When determining how large your bankroll should be, what matters is how much you're bringing to the table (most winnings players maximize their winnings by buying in the full amount). When people say that you need 20 buyins for your bankroll, they generally are implicitly saying "you need 20 buyins for your bankroll if your buyins are equal to 100xBB." If you were only buying in for 20 BB's you'd have higher variance in terms of # of your buy-ins your bankroll fluctuates, so in that case you'd need more than the recommended 20 - probably about twice as many.

Copied and pasted from Beginners FAQ...

Bankroll is an often discussed topic in many poker forums. The general line of thought on Two Plus Two that you should have 300 big bets for limit and 20 buy-ins for no-limit. That means if you want to play 2/4 limit you should have a bankroll of $1200. For no-limit with blinds of $.50/$1 and a $100 max buy-in, you should have a roll of $2000. If you are playing no-limit short stacked, you should have at least 20 times your buy in.

However, these guidelines make a couple of assumptions. The first is that you are a winning player. A losing player doesn’t need a bankroll management since his roll will never be large enough - if he keeps playing without changing his game, he will eventually lose all his money. The second assumption is that you will not add to your bankroll from other sources. If you have $100 on a poker site and lose it, then deposit more, your roll is effectively larger than the $100 you originally had on the site.

Yeah, I caught that Terra... that was a little unclear for me. For "limit," it was explicit at 30xBB, but NLHE...

Thanks Holdem, that's exactly what I needed to know! Since my bank-roll is only about $85 right now, I'm probably going to drop my buy in to 80x the BB, so it gives me 10 buy-ins. I've tried going with the "min" buy in, but those BBs catch up to you way too fast

What if you are multi tabling? For instance, you are playing four tables of $1 $2 NLHE ($200 buy in). Does this translate into needing a bankroll of 20 X 4 X $200?

Unless you are playing worse, you don't need more to multitable. You get the same swings faster rather than larger swings, just as if you are playing on a site that deals hands faster.

First, bankroll management is for winning players. If you don't have an established track record as a winning player, you should be setting a budget, not worrying about bankroll management.

Second, if you are a solid winning player, 20 buy-ins is far more conservative than the 300 BB guideline. These are repeated at the same time by people who don't understand the theory of bankroll management, but they are very different. The proper analogue of 300 BB in low stakes games may be about 10-12 buy-ins.

No fixed number of buy-ins is appropriate. The bankroll you need depends on your win rate, and win rates tend to be much higher in softer lower stakes games than in tougher higher stakes games. So, an expert might be as safe with 8 buy-ins in a soft game as with 40 buy-ins in a tough game. As you move up, you should expect that you will need more buy-ins. As your game improves while you stay at a fixed stake, you will require fewer buy-ins to be safe.

Third, it is much more dangerous to buy in short for 5% of your bankroll than to buy in for 200 times the big blind for 5% of your bankroll. It is much more common for you to get all-in when you have a shorter stack, and an expert will have a lower advantage on average while risking a short stack than with a deep stack. So, you are applying the "20 buy-in" guess out of context when you buy in short.

The FAQs are not clear enough about bankroll management. I intend to fix that.

Thanks Pzhon, that makes it even clearer.

I play a very conservative game on the lower limit tables and am trying to improve my skill. it is slow going on the way up, but goes fast moving down. I haven't been playing for a long time, but math has always been my strong suit. I like playing online because you're looking more at what hands are played, etc, and not so much as "he's holding his hand over his chips."

I'm concerned about bank roll insofar as to be sure i'm playing at the right level. ith $80, I don't want to go sit at a 1/2 table and loose it all in one hand. I should be sitting at .025/.05 tables (if they're around). That way I'll at least be around long enough going down each time I need to so that I actually learn.