Do you need seperate bankrolls for cash & tourneys?

I think get how bankrolls work in general, why they're important, how it protects against variance, etc. But I can't seem to find an answer on the forums about whether your bankroll needs to be the sum of both cash games limits as well as tourneys.

Wait, that sounded confusing.... If the general rule of thumb in No Limit is that you need at a bare minimum 20 max buy-ins for cash games and at least 40 buy-ins for SnGs, do you need the sum of both if you play both kinds of games? Is your total bankroll essentially 2 separate BRs?

Let's say I had a $1000 BR. If I was only a cash player, I shouldn't play any higher than $5NL. Likewise if I only played SnGs, I shouldn't buy-in for any tourney over $25. But what if I played both fairly regularly? Would I in fact need to have $2000 to justify playing at those limits? (Or in other words, would I really need to be playing at half those limits w/ $1000 in the bank?)

Uuug. I spelled "separate" wrong in the subject. You get the idea.

I do not think that you need to have a separate bankroll for the two. Separating them via a manager or some type of excel spreadsheet (however you keep track of your stats) is VERY important. Obviously if you are cleaning up in cash games only to loose it all in tourneys you may want to think about which games are for you, and vice versa.

Flat answer: no.

If you play SNGs one day, and cash game the next, and MTT the next, then no, you would only need a bankroll to satisfy the highest requirement of those 3.

However, there are 2 things to consider (maybe more, but this is all I can think of right now). First, nobody is equally good at tourneys and cash games so you would need to have slightly more than the standard amount because of your weaker game.

Another thing would be if you were multi-tabling both SNGs and cash games at the same time. Then you would need to increase the size of your bankroll based on the variance imposed both by your weaker game and the fact that you are multi-tabling.

Now, there are no base guidelines to determine what size your bankroll would have to be to accommodate these considerations. But the answer to the titular question "do you need separate bankrolls," is no. Think of your poker bankroll as an investment. If your stronger game is NL cash, then you can invest a greater percentage of it than you would in a weaker game, say MTTs.

Gosh, easy question, hard for me to answer. Here is my answer. I like to play 2 cent big blind ring games. I have to make sure never to bring in more than 2 percent into any ring game. So if my bankroll is $100, I can bring 2 bucks into as many 1c/2c rooms as I want, because if I lose in that room I am only losing 2 percent of my bankroll. Next is SnG's or MTT's. I only play up to 5 % of my bankroll in a large MTT, but if it is a 1 table SnG, I only risk 2 percent of my bankroll. So if I have $100 bankroll, I can enter any SnG for up to $2 entry fee, and I can enter as many as I want that day, because at each SnG, I am only risking 2 percent of my bankroll. At any MTT, I can enter up to a $5 entry fee tourney, because I allow myself to lose up to 5% in any MTT. In reality, I only want to lose 3%, not 5%, so I have the discipline to enter only $3 entry fee MTT's. I make an exception to play a $5 MTT if there is like $333 money added by the sponsor. In all 3 of these scenarios, I only need the one $100 bankroll to determine how much I am allowed to bring into a game.

No.

As long as you're rolled for whatever game you're playing at the time, and you're willing to move down in stakes in all the games you play if you take a hit in one of them, then you don't need to divide your bankroll up different ways.

What Oz said.

Also at 5NL, $1000 would be 200 buyins.

I agree with Oz. You can mix your tourney and cash bankrolls, but be prepared to move down if you go on a downswing in either one. The approach I used to use was at least 100 buy-ins for tournies, and 20 for cash, but these days that's probably a little too liberal.

Yeah, that's kind of what I meant: they'd be separate only in the sense that I'd track my total BR (the amt I'm depositing into my poker site, which is Full Tilt) and determine whether I'd move up in the limits according to how I was doing in each of those types of games individually. Thus if I was crushing ring games, I'd only move up based on my success in ring games, and not for example simply because I won a single tourney and my total BR suddenly got a rare boost.

Right. I think that's what I'm suggesting in my reply to mosseyAJ above.

Wait a sec, shouldn't it be the other way around??? More like 5% minimum (20x max buy-in) for cash, and 2% for tourneys? I know these are only rough guidelines we're talking about, but I thought you needed much more for MTTs.

Yeah, ooops. Just noticed the typo.

Right, that's more or less what I've been reading.

Thanks for the input, gang! I think the biggest thing I'm gathering from this thread & other on the forum is to just move up when I start beating the limits in that particular type of game -- whether that's the cash buy-in or tourney buy-ins, separately. So essentially I'm going to track them separately.

I've got a few criteria I'm setting up for myself for moving up in cash games. Tell me what you think....

1. Go up a level if my BR well exceeds 20x max buy-in, and move down is it's less than 20x.
2. Don't go up unless I've won at least 500BB at that limit.
3. Play for at least 100 hrs (total hrs, meaning multitabling counts cumulatively towards your hrs) at the current level before moving up.
4. Play a minimum of 10k hands.
5. My win rate needs to be at least 3 BB/100 or better.

What do you think? Too conservative? I don't think It's too unreasonable. Chances are if have one criterion accomplished, I'm good in the others. Right now I'd definitely rather be safe since I'm still relatively new to online play.