Most online tournament players use a bankroll of 100 to 200 buy-ins for standard multi-table tournaments (MTTs). Large-field events, bounty formats and lower-skill-edge players need more, often 300 to 500 or more. Cash game players usually hold 20 to 40 buy-ins at their stake. These are rules of thumb from common bankroll guides, not laws. The right number depends on your win rate, your format and how much risk of ruin you will accept.
This guide breaks the number down by format and stakes, explains risk of ruin without heavy math, and shows how to adjust the figure to your own situation. For a longer walkthrough of the fundamentals, see our bankroll management strategy guide.
Tournament poker has far more variance than cash games. A skilled player can go hundreds of tournaments without a deep run, because most of the prize pool sits in the top few finishing spots. That is why tournament bankrolls are measured in many more buy-ins.
| Format | Typical bankroll (buy-ins) | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cash games (6-max or full ring) | 20 to 40 | Steady results, you can leave any time |
| Sit and Gos (single table) | 50 to 100 | Small fields, flatter payouts |
| Small-field MTTs (under about 100 players) | 100 | Lower variance than big fields |
| Standard online MTTs | 100 to 200 | Top-heavy payouts, long losing streaks |
| Large-field MTTs and Sundays (1,000+ players) | 300 to 500+ | Extreme variance |
| Progressive knockouts (PKOs) and mystery bounties | 200 to 400+ | Bounty luck adds variance |
| Satellites | 50 to 100 | Many flat-paying seats, though entries vary in value |
These ranges are consistent with the guidance in sources such as PokerNews and Deuces Cracked. Sources differ at the edges, so treat each row as a starting range. For a format-by-format breakdown, read How Many Buy-Ins for a Poker Tournament Bankroll?.
A simple way to apply the table is to work backward from your bankroll. If you hold 200 buy-ins, your maximum buy-in is 0.5% of your bankroll. If you hold 100 buy-ins, it is 1%. Many players cap any single entry at 1% to 2% of total bankroll.
| Buy-in level | Bankroll at 100 buy-ins | Bankroll at 200 buy-ins | Bankroll at 300 buy-ins |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1 | $100 | $200 | $300 |
| $5 | $500 | $1,000 | $1,500 |
| $11 | $1,100 | $2,200 | $3,300 |
| $22 | $2,200 | $4,400 | $6,600 |
| $55 | $5,500 | $11,000 | $16,500 |
| $109 | $10,900 | $21,800 | $32,700 |
| $215 | $21,500 | $43,000 | $64,500 |
Use your average buy-in across a session, not the biggest one. If you mix $5 and $22 tournaments, size your bankroll against the average and skip the top of your range when you are short.
Risk of ruin (RoR) is the probability that you lose your entire bankroll before your edge has time to show up. Three things drive it:
A commonly cited target for professionals is a risk of ruin of roughly 1% to 5%. A smaller edge or a more volatile format pushes the bankroll you need higher for the same target. That is the reason a 100 buy-in bankroll can be fine for a strong player in small fields and dangerously thin for a break-even player in a 5,000 runner event.
There is also an uncomfortable point about your own results. Your true win rate is hard to know. Even thousands of tournaments leave wide error bars, so many players overestimate their edge. If you are unsure, assume a smaller edge than your last 12 months suggest and size the bankroll accordingly.
A bankroll is a policy, not a number. Decide your rules before a downswing starts.
Your bankroll sets your stake. Your tournament selection sets your edge. Both matter, and a small edge improvement can lower the bankroll you need.
Late registration is one documented way to improve your position. GTO Wizard's ICM analysis of late registration found that a late entrant's seat is worth about 10.9% more than the buy-in in a standard MTT and about 29.76% more in a flat-paying satellite. That is ICM seat equity, not ROI, but it shows that when you enter changes what your buy-in is worth. PKOs are the exception: GTO Wizard's PKO study found a late starting stack loses about 14% of its value, so timing works against you there. Our guide to the best time to late register covers timing in detail.
Overlay is the other lever. An overlay exists when a guaranteed prize pool is larger than the buy-ins collected, so the field as a whole is getting more back than it pays in. Playing overlay events can improve the expected value of each entry without raising your stake. Profitmaxxer scans 12 poker networks every 30 seconds and sends Telegram alerts for overlay and for Max Late Reg timing. Per its live stats page, it has detected about $55.1 million in total overlay across 83,315 overlay instances over 199 days, which works out to roughly $660 per instance on average. That average is across all instances and buy-in levels, so what you see at $5 or $22 will be smaller. See Biggest Poker Tournament Overlays: The Real Numbers for the large cases.
None of this replaces a proper bankroll. An overlay improves your edge, but variance still applies to every single entry.
Between 100 and 200 for standard MTTs, and 300 to 500 or more for large fields and bounty formats.
Most guides suggest 20 to 40 buy-ins at your stake, depending on how much risk you accept.
Professionals often aim for roughly 1% to 5%. Recreational players can accept more, but only with money they can afford to lose.
Yes, if you accept a higher chance of going broke. Playing lower stakes than your bankroll allows is the safer alternative.
Set your target from the format table, pick your stake from the stakes table, and write down your move-up and move-down rules. Then review them at fixed intervals instead of after every bad session.
Max Late Reg alerts you when it is time to register for profitable tournaments. Set your preferences once, get pinged when the math says go.
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