Poker bankroll calculator
Updated 12 September 2026The question players actually type: I have this much money, where should I sit? Cash games, online and live, with the maths shown rather than a rule of thumb asserted.
The short answer. Your stake is set by three things: the size of your bankroll, your win rate, and how much chance of going broke you will accept. At 5 bb/100 in online 6-max, 30 buy-ins carries a 5% risk of ruin and 46 buy-ins carries 1%. If you do not know your win rate, the tool uses a deliberately modest 2.5 bb/100 — which roughly doubles the buy-ins you need, and is the right way to be wrong.
Your bankroll
No win rate given, so we are using a deliberately modest 2.5 bb/100. If you are better than that, every number below is cautious — which is the right direction to be wrong in. Typical for online 6-max: 5 bb/100.
Online 6-max, standard deviation 100 bb/100 (σ 75–120 bb/100). Risk of ruin is the chance of losing the whole roll if you never move down — 5% means one player in 20 with your numbers goes broke.
What you can play
$2,000 at 2.5 bb/100 is 80.0 buy-ins at NL25 ($0.10/$0.25) — a 1.8% risk of ruin, inside your standard limit of 5%. Moving up to NL50 wants $2,996.
Every stake, priced
| Stake | One buy-in | Buy-ins you hold | Risk of ruin | Bankroll for 5% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL2 | $2.00 | 1,000.0 | <0.1% | $120 |
| NL5 | $5.00 | 400.0 | <0.1% | $300 |
| NL10 | $10.00 | 200.0 | <0.1% | $599 |
| NL25 ← | $25.00 | 80.0 | 1.8% | $1,498 |
| NL50 | $50.00 | 40.0 | 14% | $2,996 |
| NL100 | $100 | 20.0 | 37% | $5,991 |
| NL200 | $200 | 10.0 | 61% | $11,983 |
| NL500 | $500 | 4.0 | 82% | $29,957 |
| NL1000 | $1,000 | 2.0 | 90% | $59,915 |
Rows in red carry more risk than you said you would accept. Every number comes from your win rate and a standard deviation of 100 bb/100 — change either and the whole table moves, which is exactly why published buy-in rules disagree with each other.
When to move up, when to move down
| Stake | Sit down with | Drop a level below |
|---|---|---|
| NL10 ($0.05/$0.10) | $599 · 60 BI | $379 · 38 BI |
| NL25 ($0.10/$0.25) | $1,498 · 60 BI | $949 · 38 BI |
| NL50 ($0.25/$0.50) | $2,996 · 60 BI | $1,897 · 38 BI |
The move-down line is your roll at three times the risk you chose (15%). Cross it and you are gambling rather than grinding: drop a level, rebuild, come back. Moving down is the single habit that separates players who survive a downswing from players who restart.
How the number is worked out
There is one formula under all of this, and it is simpler than the arguments about it. The bankroll you need for a chosen risk of ruin — the chance of losing the lot if you never move down — is your standard deviation squared, times the natural log of that risk, divided by twice your win rate. You do not need to hold that in your head, but you do need its three consequences.
- Halve your win rate, double your bankroll. Win rate sits on the bottom of the fraction. A player who thinks they win 5 bb/100 but really wins 2.5 needs twice the roll they planned for.
- Standard deviation is squared. A loose, aggressive, three-bet-everything style with a standard deviation of 140 instead of 100 needs roughly double the bankroll at the same win rate. Your style is a bankroll decision.
- Safety gets cheap, then expensive. Going from a 10% risk to 5% costs about 30% more bankroll. Going from 5% to 1% costs another 50%. There is no point chasing zero; there is every point in not sitting at 30%.
Why published buy-in rules disagree
You will see 20 buy-ins, 30, 50 and 100 all stated as the rule. They are all correct for some set of assumptions, and none of the articles says which. Twenty buy-ins is fine for a strong winner who moves down without ego. Fifty is right for somebody whose real win rate is thin and who hates moving down. One hundred belongs to players with no other income. The table above lets you pick your own assumptions instead of adopting a stranger’s.
The live numbers look startlingly low for the same reason. A live winner makes two or three times the big blinds per 100 hands that an online winner does, against a similar standard deviation, so the maths genuinely supports a thinner roll. What the maths does not price is that you only see around 27 hands an hour live, so a cold run lasts months in wall-clock time rather than weeks — and the temptation to take it out of the grocery budget arrives long before the formula says you are in trouble.
Shot-taking, without the handwaving
Taking a shot at a bigger game is fine if you decide the terms before you sit down. Size the shot so that losing it does not change your main game: a couple of buy-ins, and never more than around 5% of your roll on the table at once. Set the give-up point in advance — two buy-ins lost, or one session, whichever comes first — and go back down without renegotiating with yourself. A shot you would not take if you lost it is a transfer, not a shot.
Next steps
- Poker variance calculator — the swings that come with the stake this tool just picked.
- Poker bankroll management — the full guide: buy-ins by format, move-up and move-down tables, stop-losses, cashing out.
- Poker variance explained — standard deviation by format, and how big a downswing is normal.
- Poker equity calculator — the other half of the maths: how often your hand actually wins.
- Preflop charts — the ranges that decide the win rate everything above depends on.
Frequently asked questions
How many buy-ins do I need for cash games?
It depends on your win rate and how much risk you will carry, which is why published answers range from 20 to 100. At 5 bb/100 with a standard deviation of 100 bb/100 — a normal online 6-max winner — 30 buy-ins gives a 5% risk of ruin and 46 buy-ins gives 1%. A live player winning 10 bb/100 with a standard deviation of 85 reaches the same 5% at about 11 buy-ins, which is why live players genuinely can run thinner. Most players should still hold 30 or more, because nobody knows their own win rate precisely.
What stake should I play with a $500 bankroll?
Online, $500 is 50 buy-ins of NL10 or 20 buy-ins of NL25. If you know you win 5 bb/100, the calculator puts NL10 inside a 5% risk of ruin while NL25 sits at 13.5%, so NL10 is the game and NL25 is the shot. If you do not know your win rate and we use a cautious 2.5 bb/100, the required roll doubles to 60 buy-ins and the same 5% target pushes you down to NL5 — which is the honest price of not knowing. Live, $500 is two and a half buy-ins of $1/$2 and is not a bankroll for that game; it is one bad session.
How much bankroll do I need for $1/$2 live poker?
One buy-in at $1/$2 is $200 at 100 big blinds. A winning live regular at 10 bb/100 technically reaches a 5% risk of ruin around 11 buy-ins, or $2,200. In practice the standard advice of 20 to 30 buy-ins ($4,000 to $6,000) is sensible, because it absorbs the fact that your real win rate may be half what you think and that live games can run cold for months.
Should bankroll include money I need for rent?
No. A bankroll is money set aside for poker that you can lose without changing how you live. If you are playing for a living, keep living expenses in a separate account and take a fixed monthly draw from the roll. The moment rent depends on this week’s session, you start playing scared, and playing scared costs more than any bankroll rule saves.
When should I move down in stakes?
Set the line before you need it. A simple rule from the table above: move down when your bankroll falls to roughly three times the risk level you picked — for a 5% player that is where the risk has reached 15%. In buy-ins, most players move down below 15 to 20 buy-ins for their current stake and move back up once they can cover the full requirement again.
What is risk of ruin?
The chance of losing your entire bankroll before your edge pulls you clear, assuming you keep playing the same stake all the way down. It comes from the Malmuth–Grossman formula, which needs only your win rate, your standard deviation and your bankroll in big blinds. Because real players move down when their roll shrinks, the figure overstates how often anyone actually busts — treat it as a stress gauge.
Does this calculator cover tournaments?
No, cash games only. Tournament bankroll requirements are much larger and come from a different shape of distribution, where most of your profit arrives in rare deep runs. Commonly quoted figures are 100 buy-ins for small fields, 200 to 500 for large ones and 30 to 100 for sit-and-gos, but we would rather point you at those than dress up a cash-game model as tournament maths.