Playing The Right Games For You

The World Series of Poker has wrapped up for 2014, and as usual it was a frenzy of all types of poker. Cash games and tournaments all around Las Vegas ran for dozens of different poker games at every sort of stakes. Shallow stack and turbo tournaments ran alongside deep stack and slow structure tournaments. Almost no matter what you might want to play, it was available.

This abundance led me to have a few conversations about some of the options. One tournament in particular that prompted discussion was the first-ever Monster Stack no-limit hold’em event run at the Rio. It was a $1,500 buy-in event, but instead of the typical 4,500 in starting chips, this event started each player with 15,000 chips. This change meant that the play was much deeper than in a typical tournament. The event also lasted five days rather than three.

The Monster Stack was a huge success for Caesars, drawing one of the largest fields ever for a live tournament. I mused on Twitter that its popularity was a bit ironic, since the structural changes favor a few select players at the expense of almost everyone else.

Deep-stacked no-limit hold’em is a far more complex game than no-limit played at typical tournament stack depths. Players with high-level experience playing deep — those who have played hundreds of thousands of six-max online cash games hands at the mid and high-stakes — will have an enormous advantage over everyone else in any monster stack tournament. Whenever the tournament registration line is down the hall and out the front door of the Rio, you can be certain most of the entrants don’t have this elite experience.

In other words, the typical player will expect to get less prize money on average in return for their $1,500 in a Monster Stack event than in a regular old $1,500 no-limit tournament.

I had to be reminded, however, that most people don’t play poker just for the bottom line. They play for enjoyment and for the challenge of the game. They play to spend time with like-minded people. They play for the adrenaline rush. I can easily see how a Monster Stack event would appeal to many people for these reasons, even if it may be a little more expensive to play these events over the long run.

Define Your Priorities

I think every regular poker player should step back once in a while and reevaluate why they play. What are your priorities as a poker player? Are you trying to have fun? Challenge yourself? Make money? Something else?

If you play for multiple reasons, rank them. Do you have long term goals in the game? Or are you mostly just playing for right now? How do your long-term priorities compare to your short-term ones? Which are more important to you?

There’s a good reason to do this. Once you define your priorities you can choose the games that will help you best meet your goals.

The Cash Game Pro

On Twitter, a local $2-$5 cash-game pro asked me if I thought it made sense for him to play the monster stack tournament. I answered no, but I had to make assumptions about what this player’s priorities are to come to my answer.

As a pro, I assumed that his number one goal when playing poker is to make a profit. I assumed that he considered playing this event (as opposed to the hundreds of other no-limit tournaments that run during the WSOP) because of the advantage it offers to players like him who have developed deep-stack cash-game skills.

A quick look at the numbers makes it clear that this tournament is not a good use of his time and bankroll if his goal is to maximize profit. It’s a $1,500 tournament. Let’s assume that this player has a return on investment (ROI) of about 20 percent for the tournament. This is a strong number for tournaments in general — most players fall short of it. I gave him extra credit for having cash-game skills in a tournament structure that rewards these skills, but I docked him points for likely having holes in his tournament strategy once the stacks eventually get short and the bubble arrives.

With a 20 percent ROI, his expected profit for the tournament is $300. How many hours does he expect to play? It’s a five-day tournament, so the winner will likely play 60 hours or more. The average run, however, is nowhere near that long. With the deep stacks and hour-long levels, perhaps the average run might be 10 hours long. That puts his expected hourly rate at about $30 per hour, which might be similar to what he would expect to make playing 10 hours of $2-$5.

But there are two other factors. First, the variance characteristics of $1,000-plus buy-in tournaments are considerably less favorable for a pro than those of $2-$5 cash games. Second, income tax acts like a second rake on the high prizes, thereby dropping the effective ROI considerably.

All-in-all, even though this tournament structure was ideally suited for this player’s strengths, if his goal was mainly to make money playing poker, he would have been better off just playing a regular old $2-$5 game for a day.

Getting Caught Up In The Frenzy

I made my first major poker trip to Las Vegas during the Chris Moneymaker year of the WSOP. At that time, I had a limited bankroll, and I depended completely on poker winnings to support myself. What I should have done before I arrived in Vegas was to have a clear think about my priorities and goals for the trip. I should have planned my play out and then stuck to the plan.

I did pretty much the opposite. Every new game was a shiny object to me. A single table satellite to a $2,500 limit hold’em event? Sure, why not? A second-chance multitable no-limit tournament? Sign me up. A limit hold’em cash game five times bigger than what I usually played? Put me on the list.

It was during that WSOP that I played in my first no-limit cash game. I played Omaha eight-or-better. You name it, I tried it.

I ran hot and managed to make it through the weeks to Chris Moneymaker’s legendary victory with bankroll intact. But I got lucky. I could easily have busted out that spring, and had that happened I’d probably have been out of poker.

It’s easy in poker to fly by the seat of your pants. Play this tournament, jump in that cash game, bang, bang, bang.

It’s much better, however, to think. And clear thinking isn’t just for pros. It’s for everyone.

What, exactly, are you looking for? What game format offers you the most of that while costing you the least? Maybe the Monster Stack is exactly what you’re looking for. But you might be better off using that time and money on ten $150 buy-ins to regular old tournaments.

In the end the goal is to make sure you’re playing the right games for you. ♠

Ed’s newest book, Poker’s 1%: The One Big Secret That Keeps Elite Players On Top is available now at his website edmillerpoker.com. You can also find original articles and instructional videos by Ed at the brand new site redchipoker.com.