Building A Bankroll From Scratch

Bankrolls can be built quite quickly if one goes about it the right way. In fact, they can be built a lot faster than most people think. Have you ever seen how quickly some of the super high stakes players seem to bounce back after losing a couple hundred thousand dollars? Well, you can do the same except you have the advantages of bonuses and easier competition. This article will give step-by-step directions on how to get that fledgling bankroll up and going and bigger than ever.

Using Bonuses to Build Your Poker Bankroll

I’ll start with a small number and explain the best way to move up. It really doesn’t matter if you’re starting with a $50 bankroll or a $5,000 bankroll, the same tactics apply. The only difference is that as your bankroll grows, bonuses will become a smaller part of your tactics and good play will become even more important.

Let’s begin with $100. A lot of people can spare that much to get started, but if you can’t then save up your money for a while. It’s not good to be playing on money you can’t afford to lose. No matter how great of a player you may be, there is always a risk in poker – especially when working from a short bankroll.

The fastest way to get started with a small bankroll is to bonus hunt. With the help of bonuses, you’ll have turned that $100 into $4,000 in no time.

Here’s what we do. First, we find the site with the smallest sign-up bonus and get that one taken care of before any of the others. It would do no good to waste your 100% $600 Full Tilt Poker bonus if you only have $100. So, we will start with PokerStars. They offer a 100% $600 sign up bonus. It’s an easy bonus to clear and should get you off to a great start.

Deposit that $100 and they’ll match you with $100. Just click on any PokerStars and use the bonus code Stars600. You clear the bonus by collecting the required number of player points. You do this by playing as many hands as you can at .02/.05 NL (remember the 20 buyin rule).

As long as you play well and don’t hit any major downswings, you’ll have a $200 bankroll when you’ve finished with this part. That doesn’t sound like much right now, but it’s all about to snowball upwards big time. Hopefully by the time you clear this bonus you’ll have been playing well and managed to grind an extra $50 profit by this time. You have now finished the hardest step in the process. Once you get your bankroll up to $250, the rest is cake.

Now, you’re sitting with a $250-ish bankroll and are properly rolled to play .05/.10 NL. Now your profits will be coming in twice as fast. We’re already off to a great start! Grind away at .05/.10 until you can make another $50 and get your roll up to $300. This won’t take long at all as the play is so atrocious at this level that anyone using basic strategy can win if they work at it.

Once you hit that $300 mark, you’re going to have to make a decision.  The next set of bonuses are 100% matches that can get you up to $600 in bonus money depending on how much you deposit.  The only problem is that right now you only have $300.  You can either use the next bonus immediately to get a $300 bonus or you can save the bonus and grind yourself another $300 so you can take full advantage of the next bonus.

The choice is yours but I recommend you do it the hard way and grind until your bankroll is $600.  These bonuses are one time things only so you don’t want to waste it.  I also recommend you wait until you have $600 because when you get to $600, you’ll be properly rolled for .10/.25 no limit which will make the next bonus much easier to clear.

For the rest of this example we’ll just assume you waited until you had $600 before continuing.  If you don’t want to wait you can still follow along, you’ll just have to adjust a couple of the numbers.

It just so happens that Carbon Poker offers a 100% bonus of up to $600. You must use the bonus code UPTO600 when you deposit to get this bonus. Well, isn’t that nice – I’m sure you can see where this is going. However much money you deposit, they will match it up to $600! I strongly recommend you wait until you have a full $600 in your bankroll before hitting this bonus so that you can get the most benefit. Remember, you only get the first time deposit bonus one time.

After you clear this bonus, you’re going to have doubled your bankroll again to a total of $1,200 plus whatever profit you’ve managed to squeeze out while clearing the bonus. Now you’re rolled for .25/.50 NL!

So after just two bonuses, you’ve managed to turn a $100 bankroll into $1,200 and can comfortably play .25/.50. At this level, the money will be coming in faster than ever. If you’ve had decent success at the tables, your bankroll may even be bigger by now. I’m guessing the average bankroll will be somewhere around $1,300 by now.

Next, you take that $1,300 roll of yours and deposit it into Full Tilt Poker and get yourself a nice 100% matching bonus of $600. There is no bonus code necessary here; just click on any link to Full Tilt on my site and you’ll be good to go. After you clear this bonus you will end up with a bankroll of about $1,900. If you’ve played well and not run into too much bad luck, your bankroll could easily be anywhere between $2,000 and $2,500 by now.

Wow!  If you’ve made it this far congratulations!  You have officially made more money than 80% of people who’ve ever played poker.  That last bonus should have put you well above the $2,000 mark and maybe even above the $2,500 mark.  You’re now rolled for .50/1.00 and you can start making some serious money at 100NL.  If you look back to when you first started, a single buyin at your current stakes is equal to the entire bankroll you started out with!  You’re not done yet, though.  We’ve got a couple more bonuses to hit…

Aced Poker is going to be our next stop. Aced offers a nice sign up bonus of 100% up to $1,000. This bonus isn’t as easy to clear as some of the others so I’ve saved this one for when you have a little more money and should be playing something higher than the micro stakes. Just use the code ACED100 when depositing to get this bonus.

The second-to-last stop is Bodog Poker. Bodog gives you an instant 10% bonus up to $50 and a 100% bonus up to $500 after you’ve played there for a month.  The $500 bonus doesn’t require any certain deposit amount, it just releases based on how many player points you earn there.  5,000 are required for the full $500 bonus.  After you clear this bonus you will probably have at least $3,500 in your bankroll and maybe even will have over $4,000.

Now, thanks to these bonuses, you have turned that $100 deposit into $4,000 without a whole lot of work. Even if you’re starting out on a bigger bankroll, these bonuses are huge and add up quickly.

The next stop is Doyle’s Room, where you can get a 110% bonus up to $550. Clear this bonus and you are good to go. Your bankoll will be over $4,500 by now and you can play high enough stakes to make some real money.

After you clear that bonus, your last stop in this long journey is Party Poker. Use the bonus code EasyMoney at Party Poker. All you have to do is sign up after clicking on one of the links from this page and you’ll get a nice $500 bonus.

I saved Party for last because it’s probably the best poker site to play at. Once you clear this bonus, you can stay at Party and clean up on all the fish. By now your bankroll will be over $5,000.

These bonuses come to a total of $4,400 in free money. Add to that the profit you’re bringing in while clearing these bonuses and you can see how easy it is to build a bankroll. All it takes is patience and perseverance. Even if you hit a speed bump or run into a big downswing along the way, you just recollect yourself, move down temporarily (if necessary), rebuild, and then move on to the next bonus when you’re ready. It’s amazing, really.

Use my bonus page for reference if you don’t want to search through this entire article every time you need a new bonus.

Good luck at the tables!