How much money should you bring to a poker game?

Plan on 100 big blinds, which is 100 times the size of the bigger blind. It gives you room to raise, get re-raised and still fold without losing the lot, and it's the stack most game plans assume. In a $1/$3 game that's $300, and in a $2/$5 game it's $500.

Every room sets its own limits, so check before you go. Bellagio's $1/$3 game runs from $100 to $500 and its $2/$5 from $200 to $1,000. At the bottom of that $1/$3 range you'd have about 33 big blinds, and one raise and call would use up a big share of it.

Because a good night can still start with a bad hand. Say you get all your chips in three times in one evening, and each time you're an 80% favorite. The chance of winning all three is 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8, which is 51 in 100.

That means you lose at least one of them about 49 times in 100, and each one could be your whole stack.

A second buy-in means one bad result doesn't end your night. Two is a sensible number for a casual player, because you get a chance to recover without digging into money you meant for something else. If the first stack goes, take a short walk before you buy the second one.

Pick your number at home, when nothing has gone wrong yet. Write down the most you'll lose tonight, take exactly that much in cash, and leave your bank cards behind so a bad hour can't reach the ATM. Decide when you'll stop as well, because a long night is when most people make their worst decisions.

Treat the limit as already spent. When it's gone, the night is over, and you go home. If you find you can't keep to it, the National Council on Problem Gambling can help.

If you play once in a while, you don't need a reserve at all, because each night comes out of your fun money, the same as dinner and a show.

If you play often and want to keep going through losing runs, the usual rule of thumb is 20 to 30 buy-ins for cash games and 100 or more for tournaments, kept apart from everything else. For a $1/$3 game with a $300 buy-in that's $6,000 to $9,000.

Our bankroll guide shows what each choice risks, and the guide to variance shows how long a bad run can last.

Tips and rake. At nine seats and about 30 hands an hour, you'll win roughly 3 pots an hour by chance alone, so tipping $1 a pot costs about $3 an hour, or $17 over a five-hour night.

The rake is bigger. A PokerNews calculation for a $1/$2 game with a $5 cap put each player's share at about $11 an hour, at 40 hands an hour, before any jackpot drop.

You only pay it on pots you win, but over a long session your results will carry it, so count on about $55 for a five-hour night.