How I Built an $80,000 Bankroll

Increasing the size of your poker bankroll will increase your profits to levels you would have never before believed possible. I can remember when I first dedicated myself to building a massive bankroll. It was back when I was playing $.50/$1.00 no limit with $100 buyins and was making maybe $20 an hour at poker.

$20 an hour seemed like a great income for a poker player but I wanted to move up in levels and start bringing home the real cash that could lead to $10,000 months. So I made a goal to get my bankroll up to the point where I could play $5/$10 no limit with $1,000 buyins.

At first, it was a rough road but as I dedicated myself to building a bankroll, it created a snowball effect that was almost unbelievable. I turned a $2,000 bankroll into $4,000 over the course of several months and then suddenly that $4,000 bankroll grew to about $10,000 in just a few weeks.

Soon after that, I was playing $2/$4 no limit and brought in an additional $10,000 that next month, pushing my bankroll up above the $20,000 mark. This was all on PartyPoker, by the way, when they accepted players from the United States.

Anyways, when I reached the $20,000 mark, I was still a little short-rolled for $5/$10 even though I had 20 buyins for the game. $5/$10 no limit has always been an aggressive game and I knew the swings would be wild up there so I hung around at $3/$6 no limit for a while and improved my skills.

The $3/$6 game was really tough back then, and probably still is now, but I learned a lot of great things there while playing on a comfortable bankroll. It seems like it would take forever to make that kind of money but when you’re playing with $600 buyins, the money comes in a lot faster than you would imagine.

I built up the bankroll at $3/$6 for a couple weeks until it broke the $30,000 mark. It was a great feeling but the battle was nowhere near over yet. I decided to give $5/$10 a shot when I hit the $30,000 mark and then things really took off.

$1,000 no limit was a tough game but the competition brought out the best in me. I got into so many memorable battles with some of the most talented players in the world. Old names like loloTRICKDu and BldSwtrs were terrors to play against but they also helped me take my game to new levels.

I was lucky enough to also go on a hot run at the time and that $30,000 roll turned into $40,000 within just a few days. At that level, it still seemed like a lot of money to me but it was actually only a 10 buyin upswing.

At the $40,000 mark, I decided to take a small shot at $10/$20 no limit. If $5/$10 is a tough game, $10/$20 is even worse. Not only was $10/$20 an aggressive game, but the players there knew when to play tight, when to fold and when to push you off a hand with huge bets. Building a 300BB stack wasn’t too difficult, but playing against other players with deep stacks who weren’t afraid to lose it all was a nightmare.

I initially got killed at $10/$20 and came back down to $5/$10 after losing a few buyins there. The money still felt too big for me and I knew I couldn’t play my A game when thinking about it in terms of dollars rather than in terms of big blinds.

So with my $35,000ish bankroll, I went back down to $5/$10 and started crushing those games. I started to get detached from the money at $5/$10 and was able to play as aggressive as necessary without worrying about losing the money.

That $35,000 soon turned into $50,000 and I was feeling invincible. I made $5/$10 my main game and played it all the time, whether at school on my laptop or at home playing 8 tables at a time. Another 30 buyins later, and I checked my PartyPoker cashier and saw that magical $80,000 mark.

Now I spend a lot of my time working on websites and writing poker strategy articles. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you all one day about how I made a million dollars with websites. No, that’s not a joke; I’ll tell you all about it and how to do it.

Until then, keep on reading and keep on playing. Don’t forget to join my strategy newsletter (on the left side of the page) to get strategy articles and poker updates sent straight to your e-mail box. If you join, you’ll also get a free preview from my Kill No Limit e-book.

Good luck and thanks for reading!