Poker Bankroll Management (Poker and Other Gambling Endeavors)

I'd like to hear from all sorts of gamblers who have ideas, methods, recommendations on how to manage a gambling bankroll, whether it be with the horses, table games, lotteries or whatever.

Win or Lose!

How do you determine the right amount to have (in a separate pile please), from where you are not paying bills, for the level of betting you are doing at the moment?

For examples:

Horses - Betting $100-$500 a day, what kind of starting cash roll do you need to have?

Poker - Playing 1/2 NL live 5 days a week, 6 hours a day.
or if online playing .25/.50 NL 5 days a week, 4 hours a day. Note: If strictly a tournament player, state the usual buy-in (live or online) and what bankroll you need to start.

Slots - $1 max bet or lower, state the amount and what you think is a good amount please.

I'm actually looking to see if there is a multiplier in play, like in poker, someone might suggest have 500 Big Blinds in a bankroll to sit at a .50/1 online NL table.

Second part of this is more difficult:

When do you drop down in the amount betting per day, or session? Or do go up, trying to recoup it faster? Do you have a point of abandoning your current trend and begin to build it back up another gaming way (different game, lower stakes, lower risks)?

I hope everyone would contribute to this thread and just provide others some thoughts on how you got started or what you do present day, this is a huge issue to many gamblers, some take the wrong path and don't even know what happened!

 

bills i always pay first,. and i put a little aside here and there and if i get a fair amount, i make a run to the river,. if i win at the river i play only my winnings plus the put aside money to try and get up in money,. i have won and lost, more on a break even scale, as long as i do not have to save again,. if i have to save again , i am not breaking even and am loosing,. so i seem to loose and gain back, but so far cannot claim to be ahead,. yet the way i do does not cause me financial damage.,

 

For playing online tournaments, especially larger MTT's, I want to have 100 buy-ins in my bankroll before playing a given level of game consistently. I can take a portion of my bankroll and use it for taking shots at larger tournaments, but for my daily grind, I want to have 100 buy-ins.

One large reason for this is that I want to be able to make the necessary plays, especially around the bubble. This means that I'll have more exits near the bubble, but the times where I'm able to win those hands, I'm then set up for a deep run, which is where the real money is in tournaments.

I use this for sit and go's too, and will use 45-man's as an example as I've played them in blocks of 100. It's not uncommon to have streaks of 30+ games where I don't cash in them (while making a profit over the entire block). I need to have my bankroll large enough to be able to withstand multiple streaks like this.

For playing a given level of game, for me to move up, I want be sure of two things. First is that I'm bankrolled for the new level of game and the second is to be proven over a sizable quantity that I'm beating the current level of game.
When I move up, if I see that my bankroll drops, I'll drop back to the previous one until I get my bankroll back up. Once that is corrected, then I'll play a combination of the two levels until I'm comfortable at the new one, then drop the smaller level once the higher one is profitable. Since I'm already beating the next lower level, I always have that to fall back on if I run into a variance run or have problems with a new higher level and need to study more in order to beat it.

Hope this helps and good luck at the tables.