Let’s say you play no-limit hold’em for a living. You were taught to maintain a minimum bankroll, and you have determined that for you, the correct minimum bankroll is, “more than 30 buy-ins.” (We are defining a buy-in as 100 big blinds.)
What that means is that if your bankroll drops to 30 buy-ins at your current stakes, you will move down in stakes so that you are again properly bankrolled with more than 30 buy-ins.
It also means that if your bankroll is 60 buy-ins, then it’s really 90 buy-ins.
Suppose you are playing $5/10 NLHE with 60 buy-ins. That’s $60,000. Then you run bad for a couple months, and of course there’s life expenses to pay, and one day you wake up to a $30,000 bankroll. And because you are a powerful professional, you stop playing $5/10, and you start playing $2/5.
And suddenly your 30 buy-ins inflate to 60.
Let’s review. You started with 60 buy-ins, and by dropping down in stakes, you added 30 more buy-ins. So your starting bankroll was, in effect, 90 buy-ins, but only if and when you need it to be, meaning that if you never drop down, none of this matters.
Except that it does matter. In the game called “Don’t Go Broke,” you need to know how many buy-ins lie between where you are now, and where you never want to be. The good news is that your bankroll is bigger than you think it is, if you manage it right.
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