PokerWorld

Small stakes and big wins

Have you ever said to yourself ”If I only had a bigger bankroll things would be better”? A bigger bankroll could allow you to play at higher stakes, more expensive tournaments, or just allow you to increase your spending. Today I am going to talk about a shortcut to increase your bankroll instead of slowly building it up with a good bankroll management (I guess I have to return to that topic in a later article).

Many poker professionals grounded their bankrolls with a win or final table in a multi table tournament. Multi table tournament allows many players to lose a relatively small amount of money and the very top to win some relatively big sums of money. Winning a tournament like those might make a huge impact on your bankroll. I had my “break” when I won $8000 with just a $20 buy in. The problem occurs as I see it when the “relative low amount of money” is a big chunk of your bankroll.

Sundays are tournament days. This is the day when the biggest, most expensive, and thus most rewarding tournaments are played (even though I really like playing the $20 000 daily guarantees as well). The weekly $50 000 Guarantee costs $100 to participate in, quite a big amount of money if you are new to poker or is playing at lower stakes. The $100 000 Guarantee costs $150 and the monthly $250 000 Guarantee costs $250. This is not money everyone is comfortable paying once a week (correctly so).

Fortunately there is a shortcut to play those tournaments but with a lot smaller buy in. This is called satellites. A satellite is a qualifier to a bigger tournament and comes in various forms and sizes. We have freeroll satellites, gold chip satellites, step tournaments and regular satellites. Before sitting down you have to decide a few things. I will not have any definite answers to the following questions, but I think it is wise of you to ask yourself this.

What is the buy in to the tournament you want to play, and how big is that amount compared to what you feel comfortable paying, or what your bankroll allows? How long time do you think that the satellite will take, and how big is the reward (the buy in) compared to your usual play. Maybe you would earn more by playing your regular game and buy in directly? Personally I do not like playing satellites with too few winning spots. If it is less than 1 winner for every 10 players I must have a specific reason to play (like qualifying to WSOP where I do not want to pay $1300 or so for a 1:10 satellite).

On the other hand, if there are more winners it might be wiser to buy in directly. If it for instance is 1 spot for every 4 player I must be very sure that I can win a place, or I will be wiser to buy in directly (as the cost for a 1:4 satellite to a $100 tournament would be a $25 satellite I would pay $50 if I had to try 2 times in order to win my spot in which case I would advice you to buy in directly instead).

Also, when playing a satellite with 2 prizes (like a step tournament), remember that you receive the same prize for getting first as for getting second. Play your stack and try to avoid situations where you are risking busting out against a bigger stack if there is still a small stack left in the game. Remember what I talked about in last week’s article. This applies even more to satellites.

So get ready to enter and reveal the secrets of PokerWorld with me over the next couple of months!

Earlier this week I played a step3-tournament to the $250 000 Guarantee at the end of this month and won a spot thanks to one of the opponents did not play very well. I had 2500 chips, and they both had over 6000, but still I managed to get a spot safely when they decided to go up against each other. Last but not least. If you happen to win a spot in a big tournament, try not to play scared and give too much respect to the other players. Play your best game and remember that many of your opponents have taken the same shortcut as you have.

Until next week, good luck at the tables and I hope to see one of you scope a multi table tournament soon.

Per “Illvillja” Wolf

PokerWorld Pro

 

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