Biggest win in an online tournament

mick84

I have been playing a lot of online tournaments lately and have ok results.
The fields are around 1200 to 1600 players.
The Buy In’s are between $ 5 – $ 10
The biggest payout I got was $ 800 dollars second in a 1300 field
Has anyone tried to make a living or a healthy profit from these tournaments?
They are always on and you get great value for your money

Example
Buy- In $ 5 = 3.10 Euro
Prizepool - $ 12,500 - 7,937 Euro
Great Value

The Great Dane

If you wanna make a living out of playing poker, you have to play tournaments a bit bigger than 5-10€ BIs. First of all, there is too far between the top 5 results in tourneys with +1K players. And lets say its a 5€ BI tour with a 1K entrants and the first prize payout is 30% you'll get aprox. 1666€ for a win. Thats way to small an amount to make it worth the while IMO. Its hard to make it as pro on tours only.

If you really wanna go pro i would start to play cash games, and of course start on low limits and make sure you are a winning player. Besides that you have to keep two words in mind; Bankroll management and Diciplin. To keep track of how you are doing you can buy some tracking software such as Poker tracker3. great value.

Just my thoughts

TwoShedsJackson

Half of the field is usually out in the first hour in a lot of online tournaments (freezeouts anyway), which makes for a LOT of dead money to play for. To give an example, last night I reg'ed for a tournament that was five hours from starting, went out to dinner that evening, came back when the tournament had already been on for about twenty minutes, and 580 out of 819 players were left, with me having lost 60 chips from the initial starting 1500.

Could take you around 5/6 hours to win a 1000 man tournament, I know if I got €1666 for six hours 'work' I'd be happy enough

I've made three final tables in the last couple of weeks out of about fifteen tournaments, barely cashed in five others, and busted out of the others but thats way more than I ever managed live (and a lot faster too).

I get bored fast with the early stages of an online tournament so would usually open a cash game too to try and keep active, or start another tournie once you're about half an hour into the first one.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

CHD

I won two $5 SnG in a row before.

flushje

Couple of $1500's

a-k-47

lets hear it r4ad

zuutroy

$1400 the only timed I played the million...easy game.

AdMMM

To work out if you can make a living out (or a healthy profit as you say) from these low buyin tournaments, you have to work out your Return on Investment. In checking Offical Poker Rankings we can see the RoI of the top tournament players in the world. The highest ranking player (at the moment) for PokerStars is a player called Johnny Bax who has a RoI of 87% which tranlates to every $1 he invests in a tournament (excluding fees), he expects to get back $1.87 of which .87c is profit.

Should JohnnyBax exclusively play $5 tournaments for a living, he would earn $9.35 for every tournament he played, but he has already invested $5, so he makes a profit of $4.35 each tournament. He would need to play 229 tournaments a week to earn $1,000 a week which equals €635. This translates to playing 32 tournaments a day and would be a full time job, as it's a time consuming thing going deep in large field tournaments.

Now, we've established that a top tournament player like JohnnyBax could make a living playing $5 tournaments full time. Bear in mind that his RoI is 87%. Yours is going to be lower. Much lower. If we have a RoI of half of what JohnnyBax's is (which is still amazingly impressive and up there with the best), then we need to play 66 tournaments a day in order to sustain an expected income of €635 per week.

The important thing I mentioned there is that it's an expected income, not guaranteed. Some weeks you'd earn more thanks to a big score, while other weeks would see you actually lose money! You'll find yourself earning less than €635 most weeks and only over a long period of time (like a year) that this is in fact what you're earning per week!

Now let's just pause for thought. All this is assuming that you're up there with the best of them in terms of ability and understanding of the game. It's very probably that you aren't. No offense. Let's assume that you're a profitable player with a RoI of 10%. For every tournament we play, we'll earn $5.50, for a profit of .50c. It takes a lot of .50c's to earn €635 - 1270 to be exact! So, you'd have to play 1270 $5 tournaments a week to potentially earn €635! Doesn't sound so lucrative now does it?

flushje

AdMMM wrote: »

To work out if you can make a living out (or a healthy profit as you say) from these low buyin tournaments, you have to work out your Return on Investment. In checking Offical Poker Rankings we can see the RoI of the top tournament players in the world. The highest ranking player (at the moment) for PokerStars is a player called Johnny Bax who has a RoI of 87% which tranlates to every $1 he invests in a tournament (excluding fees), he expects to get back $1.87.

Should JohnnyBax exclusively play $5 tournaments for a living, he would earn $9.35 for every tournament he played. He would need to play 106 tournaments a week to earn $1,000 a week which equals €635. To play 15 tournaments a day would be a full time job, as it's a time consuming thing going deep in large field tournaments.

Now, we've established that a top tournament player like JohnnyBax could make a living playing $5 tournaments full time. Bear in mind that his RoI is 87%. Yours is going to be lower. Much lower. If we have a RoI of half of what JohnnyBax's is (which is still amazingly impressive), then we need to play 30 tournaments a day in order to sustain an expected income of €635 per week.

The important thing I mentioned there is that it's an expected income, not guaranteed. Some weeks you'd earn more thanks to a big score, while other weeks would see you actually lose money! You'll find yourself earning less than €635 most weeks and only over a long period of time (like a year) that this is in fact what you're earning per week!

Doesn't sound so lucrative now does it?

Interesting

Tight Ted

Since I started getting serious about poker, I've only played 1 tournament. Came 17th in a $10 one for $90 I think. Seriously boring, not my thing at all.

mick84

I agree what you are saying AdMMM.

But from reading on these forms , everyone brings the stats in . If you play so many hours and cash so many times , play so many tournaments ..... etc

Me personal I think you have a better chance of getting a bank roll from these small buy in tournaments.

With these small buy in tournaments and big prizepools you can manage your money better . 10 times better than cash games and also practice more tournament play

And if you do manage to get a big payout , say a few grand .

You could do alot more (live) big buy in tournaments (with bigger prizepools).

And at the end of the day you are getting alot of play for your money instead of losing it all to a 4 outer on the river in a cash game.

Most important rule , get value for your money.

AdMMM

flushje wrote: »

Interesting

My maths was all wrong. I somehow incorrectly assumed that all winnings from a tournament was profit, when of course it's not as we've invested our buyin. I've corrected the post now

NeVeR

came 2nd in a 35k tourney got about 7k for that.. and i won another one for about 3k,

I dont play much now tho only little things.

cooker3

mick84 wrote: »

And at the end of the day you are getting alot of play for your money instead of losing it all to a 4 outer on the river in a cash game.

Most important rule , get value for your money.

....Yeah cause you never get 4 outed in tournaments

Four of a kind

only started playing online tournaments the past month. playing mainly on pokerstars and ladbrokes.
Cashed last night in the sunday millions for $1800...169th place, which was my biggest cash in a tournament.

would be very difficult to make a living playing small buyin tournaments imo. Not saying it can't be done, just that it would be tough.

Ollieboy

I build my bankroll up from play $10 stt's and than moved to $10 rebuys and freezeouts. I also used to play satalites to live events. Over a year I build up a 6 figure bankroll, but this was help with 2 very big scores.

My advice would be to start at this level, but try moving up as quickly as you can, as the bigger buy-in allows you to create a bankroll, but also withdraw from it.

Can you be a professional mtt player? well it depends on how much you need to live on. I've easily equal or double my salary for the last 3 years, but this year I'm down, but have recovered a lot in the last 2 weeks.

I wouldn't like to play full-time and have spent time with some of the best mtt players in the world, most of them at there peak were making $500k a year from online mtt play, but they also moved up the levels or moved to cash.

I think cash games are key if you want to be full-time as the variance in mtt's is massive.

lee_arama

Cashed for $1100ish in $10MTT rebuys on Ladbrokes before.

But I tend to do best in cash games. Plenty 4 figure pots won over the past few years.

bohsman

I won a pot in a cash game once.

Killme00

bohsman wrote: »

I won a pot in a cash game once.

I believe it snowed in hell on that day

Requiem4adream

I think it's always useful to define a "living/healthy profit" when you ask this type of question, OP. I'm 25 years old with no kids, not married, and no intention of doing either anytime soon! I'm really low on responsibilities and committments, a by-product of that is my expectations are set really low in terms of making a "living". I've played mtt's on/off for about 4 years as a means of income, first year or 2 was the end of college, and 2007 i didnt play much. I dont "need" much money from 1 end of the month to the next and it doesnt really bother me if i dont have it.

You need a certain type of outlook and disposition to do it, otherwise you'd crack up. My sessions invariably are between 7-15 hours, sometimes more. That's not purely by choice either! The bulk of mtts on stars take over 5 hours to win and you'll always have other games starting - so yeah, long hours, long days. It's not even just a matter of sitting here at the pc, it's about trying to maintain concentration close to your maximum over a sustained period of time. It's not easy to do. Lapses in concentration lead to more mistakes, only takes 1 mistake to undo 4 hours of good play.

2008 has been a good year largely due to a good January and a good big tourny cash; but i dont leave it up to chance like that - the volume i put in means it's always likely to be at least an ok year.

2008 (mtt) - 3037 games @ $51 ABI (average Buy in inc. rake)

Rake is usually 10% so let's say i've played 3000 games @ $5 rake in mtt's in 2008. Five (5) FPP credits are awarded for each $1 in tournament fees paid. So that's 25 FPPs for each tournament - i'm supernova so with the FPP multiplier that's 87.5 FPPs per each tournament average. 87.5 x 3000 = around 2.6million FPPs***. You can get $4000 Reward Bonus for 250k fpp, so in effect that's $40k worth of rakeback for the volume i put in. So even if times are bad and i'm breaking even or losing, so long as i maintain a high volume it'll be ok.


Is it possible to make a "healthy profit"? Yes but not many can do it and without making a big cash it's a lot harder to do. Like anything in life, if you're willing to put in the effort, the chances are you'll succeed, especially at the levels you mention. At those levels, poker competency is all that's needed to be +EV, so once you have that all that remains is the dedication to pump out a massive volume over a long period of time.

Seriously though, if you have committments - wife/kids/mortgage, even stuff like car loans, student loans, whatever, dont even try it as a sole means of income. Hari-kiri!

*** This is just a rough idea, could be wrong with the maths....DONT SHOOT!

Gorvacofin

AdMMM wrote: »

To work out if you can make a living out (or a healthy profit as you say) from these low buyin tournaments, you have to work out your Return on Investment. In checking Offical Poker Rankings we can see the RoI of the top tournament players in the world. The highest ranking player (at the moment) for PokerStars is a player called Johnny Bax who has a RoI of 87% which tranlates to every $1 he invests in a tournament (excluding fees), he expects to get back $1.87 of which .87c is profit.

Should JohnnyBax exclusively play $5 tournaments for a living, he would earn $9.35 for every tournament he played, but he has already invested $5, so he makes a profit of $4.35 each tournament. He would need to play 229 tournaments a week to earn $1,000 a week which equals €635. This translates to playing 32 tournaments a day and would be a full time job, as it's a time consuming thing going deep in large field tournaments.

Now, we've established that a top tournament player like JohnnyBax could make a living playing $5 tournaments full time. Bear in mind that his RoI is 87%. Yours is going to be lower. Much lower. If we have a RoI of half of what JohnnyBax's is (which is still amazingly impressive and up there with the best), then we need to play 66 tournaments a day in order to sustain an expected income of €635 per week.

The important thing I mentioned there is that it's an expected income, not guaranteed. Some weeks you'd earn more thanks to a big score, while other weeks would see you actually lose money! You'll find yourself earning less than €635 most weeks and only over a long period of time (like a year) that this is in fact what you're earning per week!

Now let's just pause for thought. All this is assuming that you're up there with the best of them in terms of ability and understanding of the game. It's very probably that you aren't. No offense. Let's assume that you're a profitable player with a RoI of 10%. For every tournament we play, we'll earn $5.50, for a profit of .50c. It takes a lot of .50c's to earn €635 - 1270 to be exact! So, you'd have to play 1270 $5 tournaments a week to potentially earn €635! Doesn't sound so lucrative now does it?

This argument doesn't really follow, since JohnnyBax is maintaining a 87% ROI for tournaments with very high buyins. This doesn't mean that a player of lesser skill cannot achieve an 87% ROI for tournaments with 5 euro buyins.

Mr.Plough

lol donkaments

The_Chopper

I once only made a loss of $35 in a $3r on stars after cashing for ~$150, does that count?

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

Tight Ted

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

But anyone who could beat them for that much of a clip would quickly move up to a higher average buyin.

Exactly. Who in their right mind would still be playing mainly $10 tournaments with a decent MTT roll.

a147pro

I think its very possible to make a living in tournies, if you play tight enough you will cash in a little less than 1 in 3, which means you are effectively playing for free. If you then get lucky at the business end you can make real profits. All without need for excessive grind or huge tilt inducing bowl wrenching pots you get in cash games which I can't handle at all. In a large field tournie you're only risking your buy in which is always tiny relative to the gains to be made. While you feel sick when you get two outed or you make a real fcuk up on the final table, you really learn from it. I also love the long slow flow to a tournie, but if you're good enough to make a faster living playing cash, and you get a buzz out of it then go for it.

having said that the structure is massive and personally I think there's no point in playing unless you're guaranteed 1K at about 9th or so. As such, the Stars 20K and 50K guaranteed or upwards are ideal and my new favourite is the $109 buy in, which can have very decent money with a small field.

As someone pointed out, in the 20K and 50K games 40% are gone in the first hour. Sometimes that'll be you to a bad beat or cooler but in reality there's a huge amount of crap players in large entry tournaments who aren't able to hack a full length game. A small sample of them will accumulate chips and survive till late on but they'll mess up then and you can take the chips off them then provided you run reasonably good.

bazwin

I've had 3 major wins since I started playing online poker in 2005....the best one yet was winning a seat to the WSOP IN 2005.. it was only a small field of people playing in the tournament around 250 as it was a special invite but still i was delighted....the other two were finishing first in 35k guaranteed on paddypower....

Requiem4adream

a147pro wrote: »

I think its very possible to make a living in tournies, if you play tight enough you will cash in a little less than 1 in 3, which means you are effectively playing for free.

Over a large sample, it's almost impossible to cash 1 in 3 or anywhere close to it. If you look even at the top 25 on the main page of OPR, i think there's only 1 or 2 who have an ITM over 18% over 1k games or more. 33% >1k games extremely unlikely.

1 in 6 over a large sample is very good, even 1 in 7, the key factor is your FT conversion rate when you get ITM, and obviously how you perform on those FT's!!

aarymark

a147pro wrote: »

I think its very possible to make a living in tournies, if you play tight enough you will cash in a little less than 1 in 3, which means you are effectively playing for free. If you then get lucky at the business end you can make real profits. All without need for excessive grind or huge tilt inducing bowl wrenching pots you get in cash games which I can't handle at all. In a large field tournie you're only risking your buy in which is always tiny relative to the gains to be made. While you feel sick when you get two outed or you make a real fcuk up on the final table, you really learn from it. I also love the long slow flow to a tournie, but if you're good enough to make a faster living playing cash, and you get a buzz out of it then go for it.

having said that the structure is massive and personally I think there's no point in playing unless you're guaranteed 1K at about 9th or so. As such, the Stars 20K and 50K guaranteed or upwards are ideal and my new favourite is the $109 buy in, which can have very decent money with a small field.

As someone pointed out, in the 20K and 50K games 40% are gone in the first hour. Sometimes that'll be you to a bad beat or cooler but in reality there's a huge amount of crap players in large entry tournaments who aren't able to hack a full length game. A small sample of them will accumulate chips and survive till late on but they'll mess up then and you can take the chips off them then provided you run reasonably good.

33% in the money is not sustainable in online mtt over any decent sample except for the very best players

Tar.Aldarion

Mostly play love level cash for fun, as for an online tournaments, biggest win was 800, bi was 3e fo. I've only played very little online tournaments.

a147pro

Requiem4adream wrote: »

Over a large sample, it's almost impossible to cash 1 in 3 or anywhere close to it. If you look even at the top 25 on the main page of OPR, i think there's only 1 or 2 who have an ITM over 18% over 1k games or more. 33% >1k games extremely unlikely.

All the top lads have about 15 - 18% ITM, apart from a handfull of accounts that have only played a few tournies but won huge in them. But these guys are probably playing 15 - 20 large MTTS a night. They will thus be happy to take their flips safe in the knowledge that they'll go deep in enough of the others to compensate. I do think that if you play only 2 or 3 tournies a night, ideally only one, concentrate and play uber tight you can finish in the money in about a third. That's my experience over 60 tracked tournies, including at least 10 BS SNG's my g'friend played without placing, and was my (untracked) experience prior to that. I only get to play about once a week though so I'm inclined to take it seriously when I do. For instance, I've cashed in 3 out of 4 1000+ MTTs, just bubbling the 4th.

However, if you were playing them seriously and for a living you would be much higher volume and as such would inevitably go down below 20%.

Requiem4adream wrote: »

1 in 6 over a large sample is very good, even 1 in 7, the key factor is your FT conversion rate when you get ITM, and obviously how you perform on those FT's!!

This is very true and I think a lot of SNG experience and in particular HU experience really pays off here. I remember getting HU with a guy, running all over him and being convinced he was pure crap, then checking his OPR since and seeing he was actually a decent winner. I suspect he had got too used to long MTTs played tightly and had no gears for final table play.

zuutroy

ROI ABI AFS R/A ITM ITM
68% $13 2228 16% 44/219 20%


Early 5% (10%)
EM 11% (20%)
Mid. 43% (40%)
ML 22% (20%)
Late 18% (10%)

Would this be a big enough sample to know anything?

bohsman

There actually is a poker forum on boards btw, usually a bit more informative than this one.