What Is a Poker Buy-In? Tournament and Cash Game Buy-Ins Explained

A poker buy-in is the money you pay to enter a game. In a tournament it’s a fixed fee, split between the prize pool and the house’s rake. In a cash game it’s the amount of chips you sit down with, usually between 40 and 200 big blinds.

Tournament buy-ins

Tournament buy-ins are usually written in two parts. A $20 + $2 tournament means:

• $20 goes into the prize pool.
• $2 is the rake, the fee the site or casino keeps for running the game.

If 1,000 players enter, the prize pool is 1,000 × $20 = $20,000. Usually around 12–20% of the field gets paid, with the biggest prizes going to the final table.

You’ll often see buy-ins written as a single number, like “$22”, which includes the rake.

Cash game buy-ins

In cash games you buy in for a stack of chips you can cash out at any time. Tables set a minimum and maximum, usually measured in big blinds. At a $0.50/$1 table, a 100-big-blind buy-in is $100. Many players buy in for the maximum so they have enough chips to win big pots.

Other buy-in terms

• Re-entry: paying the buy-in again to get back into a tournament after busting, if allowed.
• Rebuy and add-on: buying extra chips during set periods, common in some tournament formats.
• Bounty tournaments: part of the buy-in goes into bounties paid for knocking players out. A $10 + $10 + $2 PKO means $10 to the prize pool, $10 to bounties and $2 rake.
• ABI (average buy-in): the average buy-in across all the tournaments you play. It’s a standard way to describe a player’s stakes.

How much should you buy in for?

Because tournaments are so volatile, players usually keep a bankroll many times their average buy-in, often 100 buy-ins or more, so a normal downswing doesn’t wipe them out. Cash-game players typically keep dozens of buy-ins for their stake.

If your bankroll can’t support the games you want to play, staking is another option: a backer pays your buy-ins in exchange for a share of profit. See what is staking in poker? and how to get staked.