Eric Rizen Lynch

Tournament Value

Someone asked me the other day on Pocket Fives why I play in the 40k on Party sometimes. Their poker coach recommended against them playing this particular tournament and they wanted to know why I would play in it if their coach recommended against it.

Well, there are a few things to take into consideration when deciding what tournaments you want to play in. As a player, you need to decide what your priorities are when you decide what tournaments you might want to enter. There are many different ways to classify tournaments, but most of them fall into two categories. One is the huge guaranteed tournaments that often attract 1000+ people in them every night/week while the other is the smaller field (100-400) tournaments that generally attract less people but still offer good value.

The fact is, there are only two tournaments held nightly that you can turn < $30 into over $10k if you win. That's the 45k on Stars and the 40k on Party. Because of this, these tournaments offer a low risk/high reward model that makes them a great value. These particular tournaments often offer the easiest way for someone with a modest bankroll to take a shot at a huge score.

So why would anyone recommend against these tournaments?? Well, there are a lot of reasons. I think the main one boils down to confidence though. With 2500 people in the 40k every night, even the best player in the world isn't going to win it very often. Playing this tournament day after day without evern hitting a decent score can be demoralizing on newer players who would have a better shot and hitting a more modest payday in a tournament with a smaller field.

With 2500 people, if you were exactly average you would win this tournament about once every 8 years if you played it every day (since every person has a 1/2500 chance of winning if of equal skill). Now, with the horrible play in this tournament most people who are taking the time to read this probably stand a better chance than that, but even if you were 8 times better than the average player (which is highly unlikely, even the best players often feel they only have a 4-5x advantage over the field) you'd still only win it once a year, and final table it less than once a month!

The times you make over $10k off your $22 more than makes up for it, but it isn't the best tournament to play as a confidence builder, that's for sure. This is why I tend to mix my tournaments a lot. Each night I play 2-3 high variance low risk/high reward tournaments (usually the 45k on Stars and 75k on Dise with the 40k thrown in when I have desktop space on a given night) and also try and mix in 2-3 low variance tournaments with 100-300 player fields that while they don't give me the same return on my money, I will final table and win more often due to the smaller fields (these usually include the Happy Hour on Empire and the nightly 100+9 on UB).

I find this personally makes the best mix for me in that I will often be able to reach at least one final table a week in the smaller events which reduces my variance between times when I hit a nice big score in the bigger events. It also keeps my confidence level high because I'm not going weeks and possibly months between final tables in the bigger events.

So, I'm not recommending or saying any particular tournaments should be on everyone's schedule, or that everyone should mix up their games like me. I'm simply saying that you should be aware of the positives and negatives of different structures and put yourself in the best position to stay in both the right state of mind, and the right state of your bank account.

-Rizen