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Bankroll Management for Tournament Poker

Bankroll management is a topic that’s usually discussed within the context of cash games, but an emerging branch of that discussion is focusing on tournament play.  Since variance plays such a greater role in tournament poker, it’s not always easy to clearly determine a precise bankroll requirement for poker tournaments.

What makes tournament poker so much more volatile than cash games?  A number of reasons, but the basic one can be roughly expressed as the “feast or famine” nature of tournament poker.  The prize pools in tournaments are structured in a way that makes them insanely top-heavy, with first place often being worth more than the next six places combined. 

That fact alone makes tournaments a higher-variance endeavor than their cash game counterparts, but amplifying the impact of top-heavy payouts is another unique aspect of tournament play: Escalating blinds. 

Since the blinds increase at a rate greatly disproportionate to the combination of chips in play, players are generally forced to “gamble” in the late stages of a tournament.  Once the blinds become a significant portion of the average stack, a common situation at many poker tournament final tables, players bet and call with weaker hands than they might otherwise.  Players moving all-in more often increases the amount of “luck” involved in inning a tournament, as good players win flips just as often as bad players.

Given that you’re unlikely to win many tournaments relative to the amount you enter, and given the need to maintain a bankroll long enough to survive the stretches in between large wins, the proper approach to tournament bankroll management seems to be a conservative one, especially when playing online poker tournaments where buy ins can add up rapidly.  While it may be tempting to play tournaments with buyin that represent a large chunk of your bankroll, players who take that approach tend to either get rich or go broke quite quickly.