I am personally a strong advocate of utilizing proper bankroll management. I’ve made most of my living playing fixed limit ring games as a prop and betting sports game. During this time I kept my sports bets to 1-2% of my bankroll and always played poker stakes where the big bet was no more than 1/1000th of my current bankroll. Over my career as an affiliate and managing poker props I’ve witnessed something to this day I’ll never understand – players failing to properly invest their inactive bankroll into something capable of earning them a profit.
A great deal of winning poker players believe they are utilizing good bankroll management skills by keeping an enormous bankroll stored in online poker rooms and E-wallets. My personal opinion is a lot of these players are leaving way to much money on the table. Keeping more than can be lost during a few day downswing on a site is a bad idea for a couple reason.
#1 Its just poor practice; your account could be hacked, the company could get purchased or face legal trouble resulting in funds being tied up, or a number of other things could happen.
#2 Equally important is your bankroll is not working for you. Failing to Keep the the majority of your “inactive bankroll average” in an interest bearing account or other investments
is just plain foolish and is certainly poor bankroll management.
For years I was guilty myself of practicing poor money management by keeping large sums of unneeded cash in online in poker room account. I set myself straight after being burned once and experiencing a couple close calls shortly after.
The first time this came to bite me was when BetOnSports.com closed down with 25% of my bankroll locked inside. This money has been gone for many months and I have little hope I’ll ever get it back.
Shortly after being burned by BetOnSports I had a major scare when WWTS froze my account with 30% of my bankroll tied up. Thankfully Bodog bought them out and after about a 5 week delay I was able to access my funds.
Only because the previous two incidents had me on my toes I was not effected by the Neteller lock out. When I got news of the arrests I immediately panicked and deposited the 50% of my bankroll (which all was in Neteller at the time) evenly to the four gambling sites I trusted the most. I was very fortunate to identify and then eliminate this particular risk, because hundreds of people have had funds tied up in Neteller now for many months.
These scares were enough to wake me up; I decided that from now on I need to be responsible with my bankroll. I realized that my current banking policies were not optimal bankroll management. I now believe there is no excuse whatsoever for any professional or semi professional gambler to not at the very least to keep their money in a few percent interest bearing account (like a money market account). For myself I realized I needed to come up with a plan that involved some calculated risks in order to gain maximum value (after all that is what I do for a living).
When formulating my new bankroll management policies I determined during a typical month only 20% of my bankroll was ever actually active. This helped me to determine a good allocation for my funds. Here is what I do:
#1 Keep 20% of my bankroll in play between poker sites, sports books and Ewallets.
#2 Keep 20% of my bankroll in easy to access interest bearing account This is money I can deposit back into play without major hassles.
This leaves me 60% that I want to be more aggressive with seeking higher level of returns. I’ve got my hands in quite a few businesses so I now allocate 35% of my bankroll into short term profit generating business investments.
This leaves me 25% to invest. Personally I choose to invest into Forex trading. For those of you who are not familiar with this, it is a massive industry. In fact 1.9 trillion dollars (USD) is traded on the Foreign exchange market every day.
The greatest thing about Forex is that it is not difficult to learn. You can sign up for a free account at Easy-Forex where you can begin trading for as little as a $50 investment. They also offer a free E-Book which is a great training resource.
Once you get the hang of it there are are lots of places (easy to find on Google) where you can get tips to trade more effectively.
There are lots of places to trade Forex online. I prefer Easy-Forex for a number of reasons which I will cover in the section below. These are things that are not important right now if you have no experience in this industry. If that is the case then bookmark this page now and then click here to get your Easy-Forex account and then be sure to read their free e-book.
Easy-Forex Review – Online Forex Trading
The Easy-Forex website does a remarkable job representing itself. You might want to just go straight to their website and navigate around rather than reading this review. For those who want it all summarized on one page I’ll do my right here.
One of the reasons I prefer Easy-Forex is that they have one of the best support staffs in the industry. They provide live web based tutorials but also have support available to provide you with one on one training which will help you to become a more savvy Forex trader.
Also Easy-Forex has some of the lowest fees online and also offers free banking methods. For example wire-transfers have no associated fee on their end. Also their rate limit and stop loss features are second to none backed by an industry leading guarantee.
Click Here to Get Started at Easy-Forex
