Reckless at the tables v Reckless with your bankroll

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 27 January 2010 / Leave a Comment

Although poker requires you to be extremely reckless with your money on the tables, the percentage of your total bankroll that you are reckless with basically always needs to be very conservative.

One of the strange features of poker is that in some areas you have to be very cautious, while in other areas you have to be incredibly reckless in order to be successful. Perhaps the best example of this is in bankroll management, where you need to be very cautious about the percentage of your money that you gamble with, but to be incredibly reckless with the money that you choose to gamble with.

Poker - particularly big bet games - requires you to take considerable risks at the table. Playing timidly is arguably the most dangerous style in games like pot limit Omaha and no limit hold'em, where weak and passive players get torn apart by players prepared to take risks against them and put them to the test constantly. As the old adage goes, you have to be prepared to die in order to live at the poker tables, and you forget this constant need for barely controlled recklessness at your peril.

This being said, if you applied the strategy you have to utilise at the tables to the money you have off the tables, you would wake up broke pretty much everyday of the year. Although poker requires you to be extremely reckless with your money on the tables, the percentage of your total bankroll that you are reckless with basically always needs to be very conservative. You cannot fight the variance in poker, and not having an adequate safety cushion in terms of your bankroll will result in going broke in the long run no matter how good you are.

Most players struggle with this inherent contradiction, either playing very aggressively with way too much of their bankroll on the tables, or being very conservative with their bankroll and playing timidly at the table. Both these approaches are doomed to failure at all but the very lowest stakes, and being able to understand and cope with this inherent contradiction in poker is critical to long term success. Have no fear when you pick up your chips, but exercise as much caution as possible when you pick up your money.

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