Good morning, everyone! I play poker as a hobby, but I intend to make it at least a profitable diversion. Today I have a count of 445 tournaments played. I have a med ROI of 59.3% and a total ROI of -17.5%. I have a capacity of 64 and ITM 9.5%. I usually play micro tournaments with Buy-In between $ 0.50 - $ 3.50 and today I have a return of $ -73.23. I would like to know from you what I could do to improve my game. Do you think it would be a good idea to invest only in $ 0.50 Sit & Go tournaments or play "big" tournaments with $ 1.10 Buy-In with 4000/5000 players. Thanks and hugs!
To improve your game, I would suggest studying poker as much as you can when you aren't playing. Watch live or historical TV poker, poker streams, join a coaching site, etc. CardsChat has a great, free 30-day course that covers the fundamentals of the game--just hit "
poker strategy" in the navigation bar at the top of the stream, and you'll find it. It covers a lot of the basic math calculations that you can perform on the table to try to maximize your
expected value. If you are making +EV decisions and putting in enough volume, you
will be profitable.
If you aren't abiding by a
bankroll management program, I'd start there. While you can manage your bankroll however aggressively or conservatively you'd like to, the pros suggest using an average buy-in of 0.3% of your total bankroll for MTTs and 1.0% of your total bankroll for SNGs. In other words, if your total bankroll is $300, you should use an average buy-in of $1 for MTTs and $3 for SNGs. Note that this is an
average buy-in, so you can take a shot at a tourney a bit above your average buy-in as long as you compensate with some tourneys that are below your average buy-in.
Finally, regarding your question of which tournaments to play, I'd recommend focusing on those in which you consistently perform well. It sounds like you have a decent number of tourneys under your belt, so you should have an idea of which structures you prefer or in which you seem to have and edge over the rest of the field. I, personally, am not much of a fan of (hyper) turbos and SNGs and prefer the larger-field, long-registration tournaments because they have been more profitable for me. With a little bit of luck, it's relatively easy to register for these tournaments at the start and play conservatively but be able to build a healthy stack that can easily apply pressure to those registering in the middle and end of late registration. Then, you have a good shot of getting ITM and, possibly, a good chance of running it deep for a huge payout if your stack is healthy enough when late registration ends. I tripled my bankroll yesterday by placing third place in a four hour late registration tournament, which was my biggest win to date and close to the sum of all of my other earnings over the past few months.
Hope this helps, and good luck on the grind!
- Sundizzel
