Storing Bankroll On Poker Site(s)

Question

Is it a good idea to store your money and winnings on a poker site? I was watching a little documentary about the Poker Black Friday thing in the US and somebody had quite a lot of money within their account when it happened.

My question is ... is it better to withdraw your winnings asap after a win then just deposit money as you need it, or is there any benefit to keeping your entire bankroll inside your poker site wallet?

Which brings me to my next question, is it worth using a number of different poker sites and splitting your bankroll between them, or is it best to stick to 1 big site like Pokerstars?

Answer 1

If it doesn't cost you anything to withdraw or deposit (no fees), I don't see any benefit of keeping a large bankroll online.

Plus it could be a form of money management by keeping a % of your bankroll on a site. If you bust and can't buy in over and over, it will force you to take a break by redepositing and hopefully getting of tilt.

Answer 2

I used to have my bankroll split between various sites and my winning on MoneyBookers (called "Skrill" nowadays). Then I ended up keeping my bankroll mostly on one big site and withdrawing my winnings to my bank account.

A huge problem with splitting on different sites is that it's great while your clear bonuses (and reload bonuses) but besides that, it's kinda bad because the "points" / status you gain by playing are split on several sites. I'd say it's better to reach a higher status on a single site and hence get a bigger rakeback. Now of course if you find a fishpond, go for it! (CakePoker, when it came out, was a gigantic fish pond and I didn't care playing there with less rakeback because the games were very juicy: no trackers at first and then no trackers "easily" available [because they weren't allowed on Cake]).

Regarding cashing-out and re-depositing constantly: the thing is: it's a bit inconvenient to deposit "as you need" because it takes some time for the money to be credited.

Now regarding the amount you need to leave on the site depends on which limit you're playing and how many tables you're multi-tabling: if you're playing on only one table you don't need as much as if you're playing 12 tables simultaneously (you'd obviously need at least 12 times your buy-ins + x buy-ins to handle the variance).

Back in the days I had zero issue leaving a 4-digits sum on a big site. I don't anymore because I don't take the time to play that much anymore.

Now of course if you leave any amount of money on a poker site you should use 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication), which big sites like PokerStars do provide:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication

Because the first and foremost risk is definitely not PokerStars going down but a virus / trojan / attacker gaining access to your account and stealing your money (I don't know: say by faking a heads-up match where you'd lose it all).

This advice is not only poker related: it is valid for many other sites. Many sites support the Google Authenticator 2FA (PokerStars has its own 2FA as far as I remember), for example...

Answer 3

I would say you should only keep on there, what you don't mind losing, just in case anything was ever to go wrong.

I would also stick to the bigger sites to be honest, less chance of them going broke etc.

When i win big i tend to take at least half of it out and pay off some bills etc.

Answer 4

Obviously it is not that good of an idea. Better go to a bank and let your money grow there. However, as a European guy, I have thought about this as well. Since on most poker sites, everything is stored as dollars, you could basically deposit an amount when the euro/dollar ration is low and then withdraw your money when the ratio changes in a positive way. However, some sites remember the exchange rate from when you made your deposit, some might just look at today's rate.

In general it would be a bad idea... Just put on what you can miss like some of the above comments stated.