Last Saturday I was faced with a dilemma: I was unable to play my usual 1pm $90 tournament. This tournament has a great structure for such a small buy-in: 30,000 chips, 30 minutes blinds, a nice gradual level and ante progression, and most importantly, it gets between 70 and 120 players. Unfortunately, this week other responsibilities restricted my from playing the $90. My only available option was a late afternoon $70 tournament. This one also has 30-minute blinds for the first 9 levels (20 minutes thereafter) and a decent blind structure, but only 15,000 chips, and most critically it only gets 30-40 players on average. Was this really going to be worth my time?
In the $90, the whole final table generally gets paid one way or another (bubbles are paid when there are less than 95 players). Often there is a final 4-5 way chop for near $1,000 each, and sometimes you can make more if you take a top 2 spot. In the$70 tournament if you end up with a $300-$400 take, you’re doing well.
Tournament Fields: How small is too small? Click To TweetBut then again, grinding for 11 hours to get past 80+ players, who are generally higher caliber on average than those in the $70, seems more of a task than having to outlast 30 players over 6 hours. While the payout ratio is the same, there is a lot to account for in the bigger fields. The previous week I got moved to 5 different tables over 10 hours to finish 7th and get $300. In the $70, only 3-4 players are getting paid, maybe a 5th gets their money back and there is no chance of a big payout.
Although logic seemed to dictate that the $70 might not be worth it, the “I want to play” side of my brain won out, as it usually does. When I arrived 20 minutes into the first level and was only the 12th registrant, I knew I was indeed an irredeemable idiot. The tournament swelled to a whopping 26 players in the end, and I made the final table fairly quickly (woohoo!) then to encounter the tightest group of players I had ever seen. This worked great when I was short stacked and able to rob myself back to an above average stack. We played on. Feeling tired near midnight, I proposed an even 6 way chop just to be done with the water torture and walked away with $238 (after tip I netted $150 over buy-in).
I’m not sure this experience furthered my insight into ideal tournament size. For one, my limited window for tournament play will always drive the “I want to play” toddler in me, even in the face of fiscal logic. Second, in perusing Jonathan Little’s new book, Mastering Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’Em, I came across an interesting template for managing your tournament stake.
Little’s premise is that the bigger the field you play, the greater the variability, thus the deeper your stake needs to be. For example, assuming a 30% ROI overall, if you play in single table Sit-N-Go you would need 24 buy-ins in order to comfortably play, whereas for a field of 45 players you would need 69 buy-ins, and at 90 players and you would need 103. Oh my kingdom for 103 buy-ins! For an average field of 1,200 players Little says you need 289 buy-ins. He calculates that downswings of 125 buy-ins over 1,000 events are not uncommon.
So Little’s advice is to stay in small tournaments where you have good results while you build your bankroll. Now the delta between 40 players and 90 may not be as substantial as the jump to 500+ runners, but it still bears some consideration. Still the lure of bigger payouts is awfully tempting.
What about you? Do you have a sweet spot for tournament size? Or some guidelines for your lower and upper limits? I am interested to see how others approach this question.
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I like a minimum of 40 players with a good slow structure. If i can at least 5x my buy in every 4 tourneys or so I’m happy. The donkaments with under 20 people are a waste of time.
Yeah, the small AND fast structure tournaments are the worst of all worlds. Definitely 26 players felt way too small. 40-50 as a bottom feels right and I’ve really enjoyed 80-120 as a nice typical weekly tournament size. Once a month my standard tournament goes from a $90 ot $150 buy-on and from about 80-100 players to 150-170. Does not change things subjectively for me much – except that the basement level poker room gets hot and stuffy!
Very nice article. Thank you. I like the shot at a bigger payout. The Bicycle’s Quantum Reload, for example, has a $25,000 guarantee, a gentle structure, and a minimum buy-in of $65.00. But all poker is a learning experience!
Hard to resist that kind of total pool (with a good structure) for such a small buy-in! That is kind of the ideal for smaller stakes players like myself.
Another interesting tidbit from Jonathan Little’s new book is that he basically advocates never chopping in low stakes events because he feels the money risked is never life changing so it would be better to get the experience of playing down on a final table to the final few players rather than taking a certain payout. At my preferred card room, not sure I can withstand the social expectations of saying no to too many chops though….never mind that after playing for over 10 hours I’m starting to wane a bit most nights.
AS long as you have time to play the total number of players is not as important as the first place money to buy inn is round 40 to 60.
If the first place money is less than 40 then the game is just good for practice.
Tom Mcveoy advises first place be 60x buy in
I’ve seen very few of those, thus my 40x.,
Hmmm. I’ll have to pay attention to this more when I play but I believe that my weekly $90 tournament is more like 25-30 times most weeks. When the buy-in goes to $150 and the tournament size likewise increases I think we are more around 40x. Mostly we are held down by a rake that is way higher than advised by anyone, but that’s unfortunately pretty much true of all the tournaments within striking distance for at least once weekly play.
I am a “recreational” player with a reliable source of income, so a string of losses will only effect my ego, not my ability to play in the next one! I prefer to play in the largest fields I can find, with the largest top payouts. I know JL talks about increased variance, but if you really want to minimize variance, just don’t play! If the top prize is, say, $1,200 that is nearly insignificant. OTOH, I played in an event last month at Borgata with about 560 entrants and a top prize of $41,000. After nearly 14 hours of play, the final table made a deal and I took home $10,500. At the WSOP main event I made it deep into day 3, got no money, but what a blast! And, of course, the potential was life changing.
I’m not even sure the math is correct regarding variance. How many 30 player events do I have to win before I can match one deep run in a large field event? I don’t really know, but I’ll keep reaching for the dream by entering the largest field events I can find (Talking mostly in the $300-$600 range)
John, congrats on the Borgata event! I played one there last year with like 280 entrants and min cashed (so only like $250 profita), but yeah it was a good feeling to know if I got a run in the final few hours that could have been more of a 5 figure score.
Yeah, it is mostly about what your bank roll, or account for us recreational players, can absorb. With 2 children about to go to college I can’t afford to have the variability that could happen if I played a lot of $500 events so I stick to my $100 events. But when I go to Vegas, or the Borgata or Foxwoods, or the occasional higher buy-in local event, I’ll take a shot a few times a year. So far, my wife and I, have actually been more profitable at the larger events over the past few years, but again we’re cautious so we keep a balance.
As you say, tournament poker is about embracing variability and a couple major scores in your career can account for the large part of your profitability. You have to be good enough to put yourself in that position frequently, but then there is some luck involved to get into a large chop or even a run to winning one of the top 2-3 spots outright. I read an article a couple years ago where they followed a bunch a pros across all the WSOP events that year. Their win rate was only like 12%, just about chance basically, and most were not profitable. Of the ones that were, it was almost always because of one big score. Take those away and basically all those pros would have been in the negative.
Some of Little’s data on number of buy-ins needed struck me as well, maybe a bit conservative. But I get his basic point. But as you say, your one Borgata payoff was worth lots of deep runs in small tournaments, maybe more than you would get in years of play. But if you go into a bad run, you can also lose a lot playing $300 to $600 each time without a cash for months.