PokerWorks

It's Not All About the Cards

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, when it comes to choosing what tournament to play the most important factor is how will it affect your bankroll? The quickest downfall for many professional poker players is that they don't know how to manage their money. They'll play over their head at buy ins they can't afford and before they know it, they are broke and begging anyone who will listen for a buy in. It is important that you sit down and take a realistic look at your bankroll and plan accordingly. I'm going to take you step through step on how to do this.

Determining your bankroll

The first thing you need to do is figure out how much you have available to play tournament poker with. This needs to be money that is not used to pay bills, money you don't have allocated to cash games or anything else. It needs to be money you are comfortable losing, because the odds are you might lose it all. This isn't to say that your goal is to lose it, obviously it isn't, but you need to understand that there is a chance you will and be ok with it. By doing this, you'll find that you will be playing your best poker because you won't be playing scared poker – if the money means too much to you, chances are you won't be playing optimally.

Determining your tournament buy in

Now that you have determined your bankroll, you need to determine what buy ins you will be playing. A good rule of thumb is to have 50-100 buy ins. I like to use 100 because I know that variance is as they say... a bitch... and I feel that 100 tournaments is a big enough sample size to handle it. For example, if your bankroll is $10,000, you can play in 100 $100 tournaments. Obviously, you're not going to just play in $100 tournaments, so what I suggest is to find a range of tournaments that make the average $100. This will give you a shot at some bigger tournaments while still keeping you within your budget. Here's an example of what I am talking about using the $10,000 bankroll as the basis:

Tournament #1 - $50+5 tournament
Tournament #2 - $200+15 tournament
Tournament #3 - $24+2 tournament
Tournament #4 - $50+5 tournament
Tournament #5 - $100+9 tournament
Tournament #6 - $50+5 tournament
Tournament #7 - $100+9 tournament
Tournament #8 - $69+6 tournament
Tournament #9 - $69+6 tournament
Tournament #10 - $200+15 tournament

Ten tournaments, total buy ins of $989 or an average of $98.90 per tournament. Just because you are playing lower buy in tournaments like the $24+2 or the $50+5, should you treat them differently than the $200+15? There is often a lot of money at stake in some online $24+2 tournaments with first place often exceeding $10,000 or more.

If you start to lose, don't panic

I have to admit that I've been guilty of this one on more than one occasion and it's a lesson I learned the very hard way. There's nothing more frustrating than not cashing in 15-20 tournaments in a row and it is very easy to jump into a bigger buy in tournament to try and get it all back at once. You can probably see where this is headed. A downward spiral. Take the $10,000 bankroll as an example. Say you go through 20 tournaments without cashing and your bankroll is now at $8,000. You aren't happy with this and there are a couple of $1,000 tournaments going off that if you just cashed in you would make up your losses. You bubble the first $1,000 and even more frustrated, you sign up for another. Your aces get cracked by queens and your bankroll is now down to $6,000. Now you are even more frustrated and are looking for even bigger tournaments to try and get back the $4,000 you have lost. Next thing you know, your bankroll is nothing. If you had remained patient and continued to play the lower buy in events optimally, chances are you would have gotten that $2,000 loss back but you went for the short run and getting it all back at once and now you have nothing.

Why am I telling you this? Because having been on the poker circuit and among Internet professionals for over five years it is probably the biggest downfall I see among poker players (often, poker players will go to the pit to try and get back their loss rather than play in another tournament, but it's the same principle). Poker is a game of control... be controlled with your money and in the end you will be rewarded.
If you start to win

Another common problem is dealing with a big win. Many players will treat it as if they have won the lottery and start doing things differently. Imagine you have that $10,000 bankroll and played in the PokerStars Sunday Million and took 8th place for $20,000. You look at your schedule and see the $24+2 tournaments you have set up for Full Tilt this week and think to yourself that those tournaments are a waste of time. You're going to pack up your bags and hit the next big WPT tournament. You go to Vegas for two weeks. Your airfare, hotel, and expenses run you $3,000. You play in the preliminary events and go 0 for 7 and find yourself out $10,000. You decide to give the Main Event a shot and fork out the $10,000 it costs and don't cash in that as well. You've lost the entire $20,000 you won and now your bankroll is actually down $3,000 because of the travel expenses.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't move up to bigger buy in tournaments, but what you need to do is sit down and go through all the steps again. If you've added $20,000 to your bankroll, you need to determine how much you want to keep in your bankroll and how much you want to keep for “fun.” There's nothing wrong with taking some money out to enjoy after a big score, in fact, I usually take out 25% of my monthly profit to do just that. Once you've done that, however, you need to be realistic about what to do with your new bankroll. Let's say you took $5,000 out to buy some new toys and your bankroll is now $25,000. Using the 100 tournament rule, this means you can play in tournaments where the average buy in is $250. Feel free to sprinkle in a $500 or $1,000 tournament here and there, but make sure they are few and far between and that you remain close to the average. If you continue to play well, you'll increase that bankroll even further and before you know it, you'll have enough to play in the buy ins that you dream of.

Taking a shot

Now that I've given you the long spiel, I want to add that it's ok to take a shot at a WPT or WSOP event if you’re doing well. Let's say you win $50,000 in an online tournament and it's been your dream since you were a kid to play in the WSOP Main Event. Take $10,000 and do that. I have no problems with that. It's profit you've won and you're entitled to do with it what you want. Just be smart about the rest of your bankroll and continue to play with it as you always have been.

The bottom line

The most successful players... the ones that last the longest in the poker world are the ones that manage their money properly. You're smart when you're at the table playing poker, be smart when it comes to the money you win as well.