Many professional poker players are drawn to the tournament circuit because of the large payoffs and opportunity for near instant celebrity. But the reality is that if you want to play tournaments for a living, you need to understand that you’ll easily go for months without getting a major return on the hours you’ve invested at the table. If you play tournaments on a regular basis you need a larger bankroll than the one you’d use when playing cash games because more often than not you’re going to lose.
How much do you need? While interviewing professionals for my book Poker Wizards I found there’s no hard and fast rule and they have widely different opinions about the size of bankrolls.
Mike Sexton says you should have at least $20,000 to play in $1,000 tournaments. Kathy Liebert considers herself conservative and will only play a $1,000 tournament when she has at least $40,000 in her bankroll.
Daniel Negreanu doesn’t like to quote exact numbers but estimates a bankroll of $50,000 should be enough for a winning player in a $1,000 buy in event. His theory is, if you find you have gone through half of that without getting some good returns, you’re either having a really bad run, or you’re not quite as good as you thought you were.
And there are even more conservative pros with other formulas. Marcel Luske believes that if you want to play tournaments for a living, your bankroll should be 100 times the size of the entry fee.
T. J. Cloutier figures that when you factor in the entry fees, accommodations and travel expenses it can cost about a half million dollars to play at all the major events for a year. Do the math and see how many tournaments you need to win just to break even. The chance of actually making a living from the tournament circuit is pretty slim, even if you win more often than most.
That’s why Mel Judah has become very selective in the tournaments he now enters. He says paying your way into every tournament that’s available is a losing proposition given the large number of players in many of today’s events. Yes, he still enters tournaments, but he carefully considers the risk and likely return of each before he does so. He also defrays some of his tournament expenses by playing satellites and cash games.
The bottom line? No matter how skillful a player you think you are, you should always play with a bankroll and at levels that will allow you to survive and stay in the game. Also, as many of the best players point out, you just can’t play your best game when you are using money that you can’t afford to lose… commonly called ‘scared money.’ That’s a result of playing at levels too big for your available bankroll.
Ultimately you can be the best player in the world, but if you run out of money you won’t get the chance to play. Maybe it all comes down to Chris Ferguson’s very simplistic view of money management. Just never bet more than you can afford to lose.
Author Resource:-
Warwick Dunnett is the author of Poker Wizards: Wisdom from the World’s Top No-Limit Hold’em Players. For tips on money management for cash games and additional insights from the pros, check out his blog at http://Blogs.pokerwizards.net or the Poker Wizards website at http://www.pokerwizards.net
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