Maintain your bankroll

One of the most important aspects of proper poker play is managing your bankroll. Your bankroll is the amount of money with which you have to play.  If you have 200 dollars on a poker website, your bankroll at that website is two hundred dollars.  Putting all of that money on the table at once, however, would be very poor bankroll management and that is what I am going to get into here. Managing your bankroll will help to keep you from busting out and having to rebuy. The basics of managing your bankroll are actually quite easy, all they require is a little discipline and dedication.
The first step to managing your bankroll is playing at stakes that are reasonable for the amount of money that you have. For example, a standard rule of thumb is to have at least 100 times the big blind on the table at any given time.  I also only like to play with at most 50% of my bankroll so that would mean that for a 1/2 no-limit game, having two hundred dollars on the table and a bankroll of four hundred.
Another easy thing you can do to help manage your bankroll is something that you should be doing already. You should be folding losing hands and protecting your winners. Protecting your chips and your cards is an important step to building your bankroll. There is nothing worse than taking a hand that was a winner and letting a hand stay in the pot and turning your winner into a loser. On the flip side, you cannot be afraid to get away from a hand that you have no business being in.