is it realistic to play tournaments only and expect to make a profit?

The thing is, ring games bore me to tears! plus they drain my bankroll harshly. I hate sitting there for up to 2 hours waiting for a money hand. So i started playing tourneys because i find them much more exciting. i play the 20k grntd on pokerstars whenever i can. Its the 11 dollar buying at EST.

my very first outing i came in 17th and won 141 dollars, since then Ive lost it all to the same tourney over a couple of weeks. i had two other itm finishes, but they were pitiful. One was 127th and i received 20 dollars profit i believe. another was just inside the bubble so it was pretty much my money back plus a dollar or so.

How much would you recommend i deposit? i was thinking 220 for 20 buy ins over a months period. i haven't been keeping track, but id say I'm down 30 dollars or so playing this tourney. The only reason it isn't higher is because that 17th place finish.

also, how can i figure out whether i suck ass or not? i always feel like the biggest donkey whenever i bust out. I'd like to become immune to the feeling so that it doesn't get me down come the next time i play the tourney.

If you are going to play nothing but big MTTs, it's harder to consistently make money.

Personally, I rarely play ring games but prefer to play sit n gos (aka a small tournament) and an occasional MTT. To each his own but if you prefer tournaments I recommend this approach, it's working pretty well for me.

I don't think I could handle the inevitable long streaks of no money finishes if i did nothing but MTTs.

Yes you can. I'm an occassional ring dabbler but I've made $25k from tournaments at buy-ins up to $55 over 4 years.

You need to be prepared for huuuuuuge swings though and a couple of years solid play to work out if you are genuinely beating them or just getting lucky.

20-30 buy-ins is enough to get you started but it's entirely possible you could play perfect poker and lose it.

The difficulty is that top 3 finishes make such a difference and you need a lot of final tables for the beats to be even close to evening out.

To plug my blog (see sig) for a second it documents my history playing tournaments since I started and it shows that there can be some amazing rushes of success and deserts of despair in between.

I'm pretty much tiltproof nowadays but it's taken some horrendous beats and a solid grasp of what the long run is to get there.

You can't beat tournies though for the massive rush of winning big but you'll be leaving the table empty handed much more often than not.

Good luck,

A proper BR for playing MTTs is atleast 50x the buy-in. If you want to regularly play a 10 dollar MTT and not go broke (if you're a good player) you should have atleast a $500 dollar BR. It is possible to make money playing only MTTs though, there are just bigger swings. You may not have a decent placing in a long string of tournaments, so your BR will take a bit of a hit, but then if you make a final table, or even 1st place, your BR will skyrocket.

i seem to consistantly finish in the same spot. out of 2300-2500 people, i finish 900-1100 on average. Usually last an average of two hours. Is this anything to be proud of? Or am i just your average dreamer? its always the same scenario to. i dont get dealt crap for ages, then i get a hand like TT and im forced to go all the way with it because the blinds are raping me. Or the dreaded push all in with T 2 os when its folded around to you only to be called by the BB holding Kk. thats the worst feeling in the world. LOL

I have produced bankrolls by playing 10man sng's
I have tryed in 30 mans but not stay with it.
in larger fields,im happy just to place,still not made it to final table in big $ tourney,Im just going to listen to the feedback on this

First off, I can appreciate your love of tournaments vs. ring games. It seems to me though that playing ten dollar MTT's is getting ahead of yourself a bit. Try dropping down to five dollar (or even less) sit n go's to sharpen your skills. It sounds like you are playing loose aggressive so the fewer the players the better off you'll be at surviving those marginal hands as the field becomes less than six players at a single table tourney. You have to expect to take some lumps, but also stay alive and over time you'll find your bankroll growing, though with some signigicant swings. So... first try single table nine players, then step to eighteen, twenty seven, etc etc larger sit n go's to sharpen your skills at lasting over the longer haul. If you win enough at the sit n go's, treat yourself to a larger big dollar MTT from time to time, but never more than five percent of your bankroll. Good luck!