- Live Low Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy Payout
- Live Low Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy 2019
- Live Low Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy Games
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The appetite for live poker tournaments in the $300 to $2,000 buy-in range has probably never been bigger. In the United States, tours such as Mid-States Poker Tour, the RunGood Poker Series, the Heartland Poker Tour, WPTDeepStacks and the World Series of Poker Circuit continue to pull in huge numbers year after year, often expanding by a. Let's say you play a $3.00 plus $.30 nine-man SNG.That provides a prize pool of $27, and the standard payouts are 50 percent ($13.50) to first place, 30 percent ($8.10) to second place and 20.
Though there's been much hand-wringing over the years about the 'health' of the game, at least one subsection of poker is healthier than ever.
The appetite for live poker tournaments in the $300 to $2,000 buy-in range has probably never been bigger. In the United States, tours such as Mid-States Poker Tour, the RunGood Poker Series, the Heartland Poker Tour, WPTDeepStacks and the World Series of Poker Circuit continue to pull in huge numbers year after year, often expanding by a few stops here and there.
Those are the arenas where I get to realize much of my passion for the game, and one of my goals in recent years has been to keep better records of my results. In that vein, while recently flying back from a trip to Australia to report at Aussie Millions, I spent some time filling out my spreadsheets of 2019 results.
Looking it over, several things struck me. I thought I'd go over the highs and lows of the year here and discuss what it can tell us about the low- to mid-stakes scene in the U.S.
The Numbers
| Event | Buy-ins | Expenses | Cashes | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSPT Majestic Star | $2,220 | $169 | $42,349 | |
| WSOPC Potowatomi | $6,825 | $440 | $15,833 | |
| WSOPC Hammond | $14,825 | $1,150 | $3,126 | |
| MSPT Meskwaki | $3,330 | $175 | $0 | |
| WSOPC Council Bluffs | $10,475 | $165 | $54,297 | |
| Total | $37,675 | $2,099 | $115,605 | 191% |
What a sick year. A 191% ROI!
I wish. In fact, that was just the first four months of the year. Let's see that table again, only with everything else I played from May onward:
| Event | Buy-ins | Expenses | Cashes | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSPT Majestic Star | $2,220 | $169 | $42,349 | |
| WSOPC Potawatomi | $6,825 | $440 | $15,833 | |
| WSOPC Hammond | $14,825 | $1,150 | $3,126 | |
| MSPT Meskwaki | $3,330 | $175 | $0 | |
| WSOPC Council Bluffs | $10,475 | $165 | $54,297 | |
| WPT Choctaw | $7,000 | $460 | $0 | |
| Summer Tournaments | $13,950 | $0* | $2,100 | |
| WSOPC Cherokee | $6,600 | $250 | $0 | |
| MSPT Meskwaki | $2,220 | $75 | $0 | |
| WSOPC Choctaw | $11,200 | $327 | $0 | |
| Total | $78,745 | $3,211 | $117,705 | 32% |
*Wasn't actually $0, but difficult to separate from work expenses
Cue the sad trombone. That's considerably less impressive, if still pretty solid.
Takeaways
So, what are the takeaways from all of this?
Well, first off, it's likely that I ran above expectation. Obviously, I'm mostly playing very good value events. Still my understanding of tournament poker ROI is that 20% is considered pretty good. Therefore, even if I have a decent-sized edge — hopefully this is true! — 32% would be an optimistic expectation.
Also, heaters are fun! My spring sun run included a first-place finish in a Circuit re-entry and a second-place finish in an MSPT event.
Even so, it's important to recognize when you are on a heater and to plan ahead for the inevitable downswing. I cashed for about $117,000 last year, and 98% of it came in about 25% of the year. That's not a recipe for having consistent money, but it's a reality of life on the tournament scene. If you're instantly turning around and using those winnings for more action, the downer will hit very hard.
We must put away some of our winnings as an airbag for when we hit an icy patch and skid off the side of the road. If not we may incur serious injury necessitating a long rehab period — building back at smaller stakes — and be unable to continue firing.
Messy analogy aside, one thing that heater also brings to mind is that it's critical to work on your short-handed and heads-up games. Leaks in these spots can be immensely costly as these situations come up during the biggest money jumps in the tournament, and it's essential to adjust and fight for every pot so the blinds don't rip your stack to shreds. Securing these pay jumps is crucial to your bottom line as they can be the difference between a comfortable winning year and being in the red.
Perhaps the biggest shock to me was the massive number I wound up seeing at the bottom of the 'buy-ins' column. While playing very much part-time in between working a full-time job, keeping a regular workout schedule, and trying to have some small semblance of a social life, I still spent nearly $80,000 on tournament entries in 2019.
Now, I definitely took some shots, most notably the WPT Choctaw $3,500 Main Event. However, even during just the second half of the year, I spent well over $30,000 with only one small cash.
What that tells us is that we need a fairly sizable bankroll to comfortably play these events. Downswings of $40,000 are relatively routine. Even keeping expenses as low as I did — find yourself a good, trustworthy roommate and grind those short-term rental maps for value — that hits the old wallet pretty hard.
I recall a few years ago someone on Twitter starting a discussion of what sort of bankroll one would need to grind the WSOP Circuit. Numbers like $25,000 were getting thrown around, and to me that's completely unrealistic. I play an admittedly high-variance style, but that would cover two or three stops for me, and it's pretty easy to go that long without a significant cash. If I can fire off $80,000 in a year playing the odd Circuit and MSPT here or there, that's got to be a few months' worth of small-stakes play for guys like Ari Engel and Nick Pupillo.
Basically it's hard out on those live circuit streets to make the numbers work in the end. Maybe if I get a few six-figure scores rolling in I'll change my tune. But I guess for now, I'll be taking Engel's advice: stick to the day job and try to win some poker monies on the side.
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tournament strategylive pokerWSOP CircuitMSPTHeartland Poker TourWPTDeepStacksRunGood Poker Seriesbankroll managementROImental gameRelated Tournaments
World Series of Poker CircuitRunGood Poker SeriesHeartland Poker Tour
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Small stakes online poker tournaments are fantastic fun. They can be frustrating at times — I'll give you that — but for the most part, it is difficult not to enjoy yourself while competing in one.
They are also potentially lucrative beasts, not least because they tend to attract players in droves.
On some sites — in particular GGPoker and partypoker — tournaments with buy-ins as small as $1-$10 may see several thousand hopefuls take to the virtual felt in the hope of turning their tiny investments into much more meaningful sums.
As you can imagine, the majority of these huge fields are populated with recreational players and therefore the standard of play is, as a rule, very poor.
That's not to say navigating your way through the crowds and winning one of these things is an easy task, because it isn't.
In other words, don't think you're going to deposit $200 online, play a bunch of these online poker tournaments, and suddenly be rolling in cash like Scrooge McDuck in Ducktails.
It's not going to happen.
What is going to happen, or what should happen, is that you continue reading this article — and others you find in the Strategy section — and once you've armed yourself with the weapons of knowledge, you go out there and apply that learning to do more than just enjoy these tournaments, but to profit from them as well.
Here are five tips designed to help you both prepare for and find success in small stakes online tourneys.
1. Be Prepared for a Long Session
Most of these low buy-in, big field tournaments take several hours to complete, so you need to be prepared to play for a long time.
Be patient as always, but also be ready for a lengthy grind should you go deep in the event.
I've been fortunate enough to chop the $3.30 rebuy on PokerStars twice. On both occasions, the tournament started at around 7:00 p.m and we finished at 6:30 a.m.
This is all well and good if you are a poker pro who can sleep the next day, but you have to take into consideration work commitments if you have a job.
Know what you're potentially getting yourself into when registering for these events.
This tip to beat online poke tournaments does not apply only to low-stake events. As you can see on our Sunday Million strategy guide, also pros like Arlie Shaban and Felix Schneiders advise all players to master the art of being patient.
That said, not every tournament is a 12-hour commitment. All poker sites have a calendar that features also much quicker online tournaments where you can have fun and win meaningful sums.
Live Low Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy Payout
These are the top sites to play online poker tournaments in 2020:
| Poker Site | US Players | See Tournament Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| WSOP Poker | Yes | See Tournament Schedule |
| PokerStars NJ | NJ Only | See Tournament Schedule |
| GGpoker | No | See Tournament Schedule |
| Partypoker | No | See Tournament Schedule |
| Unibet Poker | No | See Tournament Schedule |
| PokerStars | No | See Tournament Schedule |
| 888poker | No | See Tournament Schedule |
2. Be Prepared For Some Crazy Swings
The variance in small stakes poker tournaments is huge because of the sheer number of opponents you have to get through and the fact many of these opponents can be nearly impossible to put on a hand.
Also of significance when playing against a large field full of recreational players is the possibility of players calling your raises — even your all-in ones — with some ridiculous holdings, adding further to the unpredictability of outcomes.
While this situation is very favorable in the long run, over the short term you can often find yourself running worse than you ever thought possible.
Make sure therefore you have an ample bankroll to fall back on when times are hard — something in the range of 200-300 times of your average buy-in (I'd recommend).
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3. Keep it Simple and Value Bet Your Hands to the Max
DO NOT try to run an elaborate bluff at any stage of the tournament because it will only lead to tears of sorrow.
A lot of your opponents only care what cards they have in their hand and won't realize from your actions that you're representing a specific hand — they just want to get to showdown and hopefully win.
Live Low Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy 2019
More often than not in these events you will want to keep matters simple, playing 'ABC poker' and letting the cards fall how they will.
Along the same lines, make sure you get the maximum value from your made hands.
Higher-stakes tournament grinders may routinely fire 1/3 pot-sized bets at their opponents, but that's because it is more difficult to get paid off at those stakes.
At the lower end of the spectrum, you can get away with betting more. Because so many of your opponents will love to call your bets, you may as well take advantage with your strong holdings.
4. Listen to the Betting / Prepare to Lay Down Some Big Hands
How often have you heard poker players bemoan their luck and come out with some rubbish such as 'I can't beat these donkeys, they always hit the nuts on the river.'
What they don't tell you is that 'these donkeys' often play their hands in a manner that allows you to get away from pots should you need to.
For example, if a weak player has limp-called preflop, called the flop, called on the turn, and then leads into you on the river when the flush comes in, guess what?
That player almost certainly has the flush.
The same is often true for raises on the river. Even if the only hand that beats you is , if an obviously weak player raises you on the river, you have to consider that he or she probably has !
5. Don't Worry About Playing a 'Balanced Style'
If someone tells you that you have to play a 'balanced style' of poker in large-field small stakes poker tournaments, laugh and walk away.
While you have to do this higher up the poker food chain, you are highly unlikely to come up against the same players ever again in a field of 3,000-10,000 foes, so you can be as unbalanced as you wish.
That means not worrying so much about not revealing certain patterns with your play, such as always betting big with strong hands.
While against stronger opponents you should balance your play by varying your bets and actions so as not to be read so easily, against large fields of less skilled opponents this isn't as great of a concern.
Obviously, the five tips above are not all you need to be successful in small stakes online tourneys, but they should at least help you in your quest to turn a little into a lot!
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Live Low Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy Games
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tournament strategysmall stakesonline pokerPokerStarsPoker Rules