A few people have asked me recently why I dont play more tournament poker. Well for a start it doesnt really fit my time and schedule. I much prefer the flexibility of starting and ending the sessions whenever I feel like it and you simply cannot do that with large MTT’s.
I have been playing the 100k and 250k events on Cake Poker until the end of last year with mixed results. Hopefully next month I will be playing in the $5000 freerolls on Cake. Well actually these are not freerolls but tournaments that I can enter by using my gold coins that you automatically collect when you play cash games. If you are a decent tournament player this can amount to free money by the end of the year.
But cash games are where the real consistent money is and these tournaments are really the icing on the cake….excuse the pun. What I dont like about poker tournaments is the variance involved. I like to know that I will be cashing at the end of the month. But there is enough dead money in large MTT’s to be able to make money at them and even in the speeded up online structures. But you must at some stage be able to hold your own at short handed play.
The big money in these events is in the final few places and more than likely in the top three. Therefore it is the same principle as playing an SNG. If you play an SNG that pays the top three places then continually cashing by coming third will leave you struggling to make money. You need to cash higher than third often enough to offset the times when you miss out plus the juice.
This is the same with tournament poker, you need to be hitting those last three spots frequently enough and win just frequently enough to offset the dry patches and of course the juice. This can be helped by selecting tournaments that have value. This means picking events that have added prize money or large numbers of satellite entries. These can be players who have qualified for as little as $1 and on the whole these are not skilled players.
So the upshot of it all is that you can definitely make money playing poker tournaments but certain events are very tough. Events like the EPT’s for instance have very tough fields.
This was in response to a question from Tom Willoughby by the way…..hope you liked the answer Tom.
See ya soon
THE DEAN CAN BE CONTACTED FOR COACHING AND OTHER MATTERS AT Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk
CAKE POKER…..THE SITE THAT DOES NOT ALLOW TRACKING SOFTWARE AND THE HOME OF ONE OF THE BEST RAKE DEALS ON THE NET.
