How Many Buy-Ins Do You Need for NL10?

Short answer: 30 buy-ins ($300) is a sensible bankroll for NL10 if you’re a solid winner. If you’re still learning, or want to almost never go broke, aim for 50 or more.

NL10 is no-limit Hold’em with $0.05/$0.10 blinds. A full buy-in is 100 big blinds, or $10.

Why the answer depends on your win rate

A bankroll exists to survive downswings. How big those get depends on your win rate and your standard deviation (how much your results swing). Using a typical 6-max standard deviation of 100bb/100:

Win rate	Buy-ins for 5% risk of ruin	Buy-ins for 1% risk of ruin
10bb/100	15 ($150)	23 ($230)
5bb/100	30 ($300)	46 ($460)
3bb/100	50 ($500)	77 ($770)
2bb/100	75 ($750)	115 ($1,150)

Risk of ruin is the chance of losing your whole bankroll if you never move down. The lower your win rate, the more buy-ins you need — and nobody knows their true win rate for sure until they’ve played a lot of hands.

Try other numbers in our variance calculator.

A simple plan

• Move up to NL10 with 30 buy-ins ($300) for NL10.
• Move back down to NL5 if you drop to about 20 buy-ins ($200).
• Take a shot at NL25 once you have around 30 NL25 buy-ins ($750).

Moving down when you lose is what really keeps you safe — it cuts your risk of ruin far below the table above. More in moving up stakes.

Tournaments and PLO need more

• Tournaments: results swing far more. 100+ buy-ins is standard for MTTs.
• PLO: standard deviation is roughly 1.5–2 times higher than Hold’em, so aim for about 50–100 buy-ins. See PLO vs Hold’em.

Related

• Bankroll management
• Bankroll tracker — log your sessions to measure your real win rate.
• Tilt control — the fastest way to lose a bankroll.

#bankroll#cash-games#micro-stakes