How many buy-ins do you strictly recommend for micro stakes?

Hey everyone! I’m currently grinding the micro stakes ($2NL and $5NL) and trying to take my bankroll management more seriously. Some articles suggest 20-30 buy-ins, while others swear by 50+ to handle the crazy variance at these levels. What is your personal rule of thumb for moving up or down?

For standard microstakes NLH cash games with a 100BB max buyin and no straddle or ante I suggest the following plan:

<$100 - 2NL
$100-150 - 2NL and 5NL
$150-250 - 5NL
$250-400 - 5NL and 10NL
>$400 - 10NL

For other game types like PLO, which are higher variance, you want to increase these numbers. And I would also increase them for NLH full ring cash games on GG Poker, where there is a big ante, the risk or chance of facing straddles and a 200BB max buyin. For that particular game I would dubble all the above numbers and not even consider playing 5NL, until I had $200.

The idea with mixing up stakes is to move up gradually by taking some early "shots", when you feel like it and find good tables, but without forcing yourself to move entirely to a new higher limit at once. Of course the idea is, that as you approach the higher ends of the intervals, you mainly play the higher limit and vice versa. So if for instance your bankroll peaked at $170, but you have now dropped to $110, then I would pretty much drop back down to 2NL entirely.

There is no deeper science to these numbers, and there is a lot of room for personal preferences. Some people hate to see big swings to their bankroll, while others are more tolerant to it. So the most important is to make some kind of reasonable plan and then stick to it. You dont want to be playing 25NL or 50NL with $289 in your account, because then you are just gambling and hoping to get lucky.

Others have said this in other posts, but you may not have heard it before --
1 # of buy-ins only matter if you cannot replace the money
2 Buy-ins do not matter at all if you are not a winning player- if you do not have a skill edge then you will just keep losing. # of Buy-ins are necessary to overcome variance only not lack of skill edge.
3 At the micros even when we have a skill edge rake destroys us. # of Buy-ins does not matter if we play on the wrong tables. You want to develop strategies to max ROI vs micro players- which means only playing on good tables.

eetenor said:

Others have said this in other posts, but you may not have heard it before --
1 # of buy-ins only matter if you cannot replace the money
2 Buy-ins do not matter at all if you are not a winning player- if you do not have a skill edge then you will just keep losing. # of Buy-ins are necessary to overcome variance only not lack of skill edge.
3 At the micros even when we have a skill edge rake destroys us. # of Buy-ins does not matter if we play on the wrong tables. You want to develop strategies to max ROI vs micro players- which means only playing on good tables.

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Point #2 is a brutal truth that a lot of players choose to ignore. A massive 100-buy-in bankroll for an unstudied or losing player doesn't save them; it just stretches out the timeline of going broke. A bankroll is a shield against variance, not a substitute for a skill edge.

Lol, I am willing to lose 3 buyins a day and I will hang poker up the rest of that day.

Number of buyins in my bankroll? I prefer 50 to 100 buyins in my bankroll, depending which poker variant I am playing.

eetenor said:

1 # of buy-ins only matter if you cannot replace the money

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I would rather say, that not everyone need to have a bankroll. If you play poker in a recreational way, and have the financial situation to support your hobby, there is nothing wrong with simply depositing the money needed for the games, you want to play, and not thinking about having a certain amount of money set aside for poker.

But if you are trying to become a winning player, then bankroll is not only about avoiding "to go broke". Its also about setting up some reasonable guidelines for, when you can attempt to move up, and when you have to move back down again, so that you are reasonably sure, you are actually beating your current level before attempting to move up.

eetenor said:

2 Buy-ins do not matter at all if you are not a winning player- if you do not have a skill edge then you will just keep losing. # of Buy-ins are necessary to overcome variance only not lack of skill edge.

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Which is exactly why, it makes sense to begin in the micros and grind it up from there, even though you can afford to jump right into higher stakes. Just because your financial situation allow you to deposit $10.000, does not mean, you are likely to be able to beat 100NL without years of study and practice at lower limits.

eetenor said:

3 At the micros even when we have a skill edge rake destroys us. # of Buy-ins does not matter if we play on the wrong tables. You want to develop strategies to max ROI vs micro players- which means only playing on good tables.

Click to expand...

I agree, that game selection is important for long term results. As Jonathan Little say, building a poker bankroll is about finding a game, you can beat, and then play it a lot.