1. Taxes On Poker Tournament Winnings
2. Florida Poker Tournaments
3. Chances Of Winning Poker Tournament Today
4. Chances Of Winning An Online Poker Tournament
5. Chances Of Winning Poker Tournament Tonight

Do you get frustrated playing poker tournaments? You play all the time and it seems like you never cash. And even when you do, you cash the minimum. Every once in a while you get teased with a deep run only to run Kings into Aces – resulting in another broken mouse.

Chances Of Winning Poker Tournament, sports exchange gambling, konami slots review, salle de concert le nouveau casino. To find out how to improve your chances of winning poker tournaments, check out this awesome review of the Raise Your Edge Tournament Masterclass. Alternatively, you may want to consider hiring a poker coach from this list of the best poker coaches. Up to this point we have only been discussing bankroll requirements for tournaments. Poker odds calculate the chances of you holding a winning hand. The poker odds calculators on CardPlayer.com let you run any scenario that you see at the poker table, see your odds and outs,.

Well as you gain experience, you learn that in order to be successful as a poker player you need to get comfortable with running bad. This is even more prevalent if you are a poker tournament specialist. But no matter how experienced you are, these bad runs can test you and make you question your skill level. This is especially true if you are an amateur poker player who only plays a handful of tournaments a week. You can actually go months without cashing and this duration of time in between cashes can skew your view of reality and affect your play.

Now if you read enough poker forums and websites you will hear about all the online tournament pros who are regularly taking down five and six-figure cashes. They paint this picture of guys constantly making final tables and raking in mounds of cash. You may even be a bit jealous and wonder, “what do those guys have that I don’t?” Well, I’m hoping this article will help answer that question and provide some much needed perspective on the topics of volume and variance.

Amateur Poker Players vs. Pros

Amateurs – For the purpose of this article, an amateur player is someone who plays about 1-3 times per week, usually at night. They have a “real job” and may have a family or are in college full time, so they can only put in part-time hours. But make no mistake, this player is serious about the game and spends time on poker forums, watching training videos, etc. Since we’re talking about tournament poker, the amateur in this article plays mostly large field no-limit hold’em tournaments. They may be a winning player, break even or maybe a slight loser in the game thus far in their career.

Pros – A professional is someone who plays online poker for their sole source of income. For this article, we are using those who specialize in large field online poker tournaments.

The Stats

Before reading too deep into these numbers, keep in mind that the purpose of this article is to provide perspective into your own results by comparing them to the results of other players. It is not meant to be a scientific study.

The numbers below represent an average of 10 players from each category and use results from both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars from 2010. The pro stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 8/22/10 and the amateur stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 9/20/10. They only include tournaments with over 180 players.

* Pro stats were taken from a ranking of the top 10 online tournament players. Amateur stats were taken from a sample of 10 amateur players who volunteered their screen name for use in this study.

**Avg. Played/Day is based on a 5 day week, but also only includes playing 2 sites. Actual volume per day may be larger for those who play more than 2 sites and less than 5 days a week.

What Do These Stats Mean?

As you can see, the pros are not these mythical beasts who cash all the time and final table every tournament. Media attention can sometimes give off a false reality as it only highlights their wins and never mentions how many losses it took to get there.

The realities are:

• Even the top pros only win tournaments less than 1% of the time. For some it was as low as 0.60%. So this means they are winning only 1 out of every 100 times. Of course variance doesn’t always come on schedule and they can go 200-300 tournaments without a win.
• Top pros only final table around 3% of the time. Some are as low as 2%.
• Top pros are only cashing about 13% of the time. This means they lose money 87% of the time they play! In fact, amateurs cash more often than pros. The difference is that when pros do cash, they cash deep more often.
• Pros have massive downswings like everyone else. In fact, becasue of the volume they play, they have had longer non-cash streaks.

Why have the pros averaged a $400,000 profit this year before September? It is in their ability to close tournaments. There is a reason why their ROI is 58% higher. Let’s look at the stats:

• Pros make 1/3 more final tables than amateur poker players.
• At a 9 person final table, the average of hitting top 3 should be 33%. Pros are hitting this 43.61% of the time.
• Of the times they cash, pros are final tabling almost twice as often as amateurs (23.9% compared to 12.8%).
• Pros finish in the top 3 almost 3x as often as amateurs.
• Volume, volume, volume. Let’s not forget that pros play all day, every day. This is their job. They have a distinct advantage of overcoming bad variance much quicker and also seeing “the long run” of making profitable decisions quicker.

Keep in mind that the group of amateurs used were volunteers from various poker forums. While not all were winning players, the fact that they study the game says they likely have better results than an average amateur. Also, because of their volume size an individual amateur’s skills may be better or worse than their results show.

Improving Your Game

How can you use these stats to improve your game?

Add More Tables

Get outside of your 1-3 tabling comfort zone and simply add a couple more tables. I know the argument is that it’s harder to make reads, but the volume you put in will make up for that. In addition, this extra volume means you are playing more hands and will result in improving your game even faster. This extra experience will more than make up for the short-term loss of a perfect read.

Play More Days

Just try to add 1 more day per week. Don’t be lazy. If you currently play 7 tournaments a day, adding 1 more day x 52 weeks = 364 more tournaments/year. Even at the amateur ROI average above of 20% and average buy-in of $30, that means an extra $2,184 in profit.

Stop Caring About Individual Tournaments

It’s easy to expend emotional energy in any single poker tournament. You’re trying to win of course. But the odds are that you’re not going to. In fact, you’re only going to cash about 15% of the time. All you can do is focus on making good decisions and the variance will work itself out in the end.

Play for the Win

There’s a reason why amateurs cash more than pros. They care more about it and tighten up near the bubble. But you will miss out on valuable opportunities to accumulate chips if you are playing just to cash. In addition, you can’t fear busting or making a mistake when you get deep. In order to make real money playing poker tournaments, you have to trust your instincts and play to win.

If you’ve ever grown frustrated playing poker tournaments, don’t sweat it. Keep in perspective that even the best players in the world don’t win that often. The only way to balance out negative variance is to put in enough volume where your skill can prevail.

Good luck at the tables.

By Donovan Panone

Taxes On Poker Tournament Winnings

Donovan started playing poker in 2004 and is an experienced tournament and cash game player who has a passion for teaching and helping others improve their game.

1. Great, revealing article. Stats like these are very encouraging. Thanks, Donovan

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This is a very important lesson and can also be quite intimidating to a lot of people as we are going to discuss Poker Math!

But there is no need for you to be intimidated, Poker Maths is very simple and we will show you a very simple method in this lesson.

You won’t need to carry a calculator around with you or perform any complex mathematical calculations.

What is Poker Math?

As daunting as it sounds, it is simply a tool that we use during the decision making process to calculate the Pot Odds in Poker and the chances of us winning the pot.

Remember, Poker is not based on pure luck, it is a game of probabilities, there are a certain number of cards in the deck and a certain probability that outcomes will occur. So we can use this in our decision making process.

Every time we make a decision in Poker it is a mathematical gamble, what we have to make sure is that we only take the gamble when the odds are on in our favour. As long as we do this, in the long term we will always come out on top.

When to Use Poker Maths

Poker Maths is mainly used when we need to hit a card in order to make our hand into a winning hand, and we have to decide whether it is worth carrying on and chasing that card.

Florida Poker Tournaments

To make this decision we consider two elements:

1. How many “Outs” we have (Cards that will make us a winning hand) and how likely it is that an Out will be dealt.
2. What are our “Pot Odds” – How much money will we win in return for us taking the gamble that our Out will be dealt

We then compare the likelihood of us hitting one of our Outs against the Pot Odds we are getting for our bet and see if mathematically it is a good bet.

The best way to understand and explain this is by using a hand walk through, looking at each element individually first, then we’ll bring it all together in order to make a decision on whether we should call the bet.

Consider the following situation where you hold A 8 in the big blind. Before the flop everyone folds round to the small blind who calls the extra 5c, to make the Total pot before the Flop 20c (2 players x 10c). The flop comes down K 9 4 and your opponent bets 10c. Let’s use Poker Math to make the decision on whether to call or not.

Poker Outs

When we are counting the number of “Outs” we have, we are looking at how many cards still remain in the deck that could come on the turn or river which we think will make our hand into the winning hand.

In our example hand you have a flush draw needing only one more Club to make the Nut Flush (highest possible). You also hold an overcard, meaning that if you pair your Ace then you would beat anyone who has already hit a single pair on the flop.

From the looks of that flop we can confidently assume that if you complete your Flush or Pair your Ace then you will hold the leading hand. So how many cards are left in the deck that can turn our hand into the leading hand?

• Flush – There are a total of 13 clubs in the deck, of which we can see 4 clubs already (2 in our hand and 2 on the flop) that means there are a further 9 club cards that we cannot see, so we have 9 Outs here.
• Ace Pair – There are 4 Ace’s in the deck of which we are holding one in our hand, so that leaves a further 3 Aces that we haven’t seen yet, so this creates a further 3 Outs.

So we have 9 outs that will give us a flush and a further 3 outs that will give us Top Pair, so we have a total of 12 outs that we think will give us the winning hand.

So what is the likelihood of one of those 12 outs coming on the Turn or River?

Professor’s Rule of 4 and 2

An easy and quick way to calculate this is by using the Professor’s rule of 4 and 2. This way we can forget about complex calculations and quickly calculate the probability of hitting one of our outs.

The Professor’s Rule of 4 and 2

• After the Flop (2 cards still to come… Turn + River)
  Probability we will hit our Outs = Number of Outs x 4
• After the Turn (1 card to come.. River)
  Probability we will hit our Outs – Number of Outs x 2

So after the flop we have 12 outs which using the Rule of 4 and 2 we can calculate very quickly that the probability of hitting one of our outs is 12 x 4 = 48%. The exact % actually works out to 46.7%, but the rule of 4 and 2 gives us a close enough answer for the purposes we need it for.

If we don’t hit one of our Outs on the Turn then with only the River left to come the probability that we will hit one of our 12 Outs drops to 12 x 2 = 24% (again the exact % works out at 27.3%)

To compare this to the exact percentages lets take a look at our poker outs chart:

As you can see the Rule of 4 and 2 does not give us the exact %, but it is pretty close and a nice quick and easy way to do the math in your head.

Now lets summarise what we have calculated so far:

• We estimate that to win the hand you have 12 Outs
• We have calculated that after the flop with 2 cards still to come there is approximately a 48% chance you will hit one of your outs.

Now we know the Odds of us winning, we need to look at the return we will get for our gamble, or in other words the Pot Odds.

Pot Odds

When we calculate the Pot Odds we are simply looking to see how much money we will win in return for our bet. Again it’s a very simple calculation…

Pot Odds Formula

Pot Odds = Total Pot divided by the Bet I would have to call

What are the pot odds after the flop with our opponent having bet 10c?

• Total Pot = 20c + 10c bet = 30 cents
• Total Bet I would have to make = 10 cents
• Therefore the pot odds are 30 cents divided by 10 cents or 3 to 1.

What does this mean? It means that in order to break even we would need to win once for every 3 times we lose. The amount we would win would be the Total Pot + the bet we make = 30 cents + 10 cents = 40 cents.

Break Even Percentage

Now that we have worked out the Pot Odds we need to convert this into a Break Even Percentage so that we can use it to make our decision. Again it’s another simple calculation that you can do in your head.

Break Even Percentage

Break Even Percentage = 100% divided by (Pot odds added together)

Let me explain a bit further. Pot Odds added together means replace the “to” with a plus sign eg: 3 to 1 becomes 3+1 = 4. So in the example above our pot odds are 3 to 1 so our Break Even Percentage = 100% divided by 4 = 25%

Note – This only works if you express your pot odds against a factor of 1 eg: “3 to 1” or “5 to 1” etc. It will not work if you express the pot odds as any other factor eg: 3 to 2 etc.

So… Should You call?

So lets bring the two elements together in our example hand and see how we can use the new poker math techniques you have learned to arrive at a decision of whether to continue in the hand or whether to fold.

To do this we compare the percentage probability that we are going to hit one of our Outs and win the hand, with the Break Even Percentage.

Should I Call?

• Call if…… Probability of Hitting an Out is greater than Pot Odds Break Even Percentage
• Fold if…… Probability of Hitting an Out is less than Pot Odds Break Even Percentage

Our calculations above were as follows:

• Probability of Hitting an Out = 48%
• Break Even Percentage = 25%

If our Probability of hitting an out is higher than the Break Even percentage then this represents a good bet – the odds are in our favour. Why? Because what we are saying above is that we are going to get the winning hand 48% of the time, yet in order to break even we only need to hit the winning hand 25% of the time, so over the long run making this bet will be profitable because we will win the hand more times that we need to in order to just break even.

Hand Walk Through #2

Lets look at another hand example to see poker mathematics in action again.

Chances Of Winning Poker Tournament Today

Before the Flop:

• Blinds: 5 cents / 10 cents
• Your Position: Big Blind
• Your Hand: K 10
• Before Flop Action: Everyone folds to the dealer who calls and the small blind calls, you check.

Two people have called and per the Starting hand chart you should just check here, so the Total Pot before the flop = 30 cents.

Flop comes down Q J 6 and the Dealer bets 10c, the small blind folds.

Chances Of Winning An Online Poker Tournament

Do we call? Lets go through the thought process:

How has the Flop helped my hand?
It hasn’t but we do have some draws as we have an open ended straight draw (any Ace or 9 will give us a straight) We also have an overcard with the King.

How has the Flop helped my opponent?
The Dealer did not raise before the flop so it is unlikely he is holding a really strong hand. He may have limped in with high cards or suited connectors. At this stage our best guess is to assume that he has hit top pair and holds a pair of Queens. It’s possible that he hit 2 pair with Q J or he holds a small pair like 6’s and now has a set, but we come to the conclusion that this is unlikely.

How many Outs do we have?
So we conclude that we are facing top pair, in which case we need to hit our straight or a King to make top pair to hold the winning hand.

• Open Ended Straight Draw = 8 Outs (4 Aces and 4 Nines)
• King Top Pair = 3 Outs (4 Kings less the King in our hand)
• Total Outs = 11 Probability of Winning = 11 x 4 = 44%

What are the Pot Odds?
Total Pot is now 40 cents and we are asked to call 10 cents so our Pot odds are 4 to 1 and our break even % = 100% divided by 5 = 20%.

Decision
So now we have quickly run the numbers it is clear that this is a good bet for us (44% vs 20%), and we make the call – Total Pot now equals 50 cents.

Turn Card

Turn Card = 3 and our opponent makes a bet of 25 cents.

After the Turn Card
This card has not helped us and it is unlikely that it has helped our opponent, so at this point we still estimate that our opponent is still in the lead with top pair.

Outs
We still need to hit one of our 11 Outs and now with only the River card to come our Probability of Winning has reduced and is now = 11 x 2 = 22%

Pot Odds
The Total Pot is now 75 cents and our Pot odds are 75 divided by 25 = 3 to 1. This makes our Break Even percentage = 100% divided by 4 = 25%

Decision
So now we have the situation where our probability of winning is less than the break even percentage and so at this point we would fold, even though it is a close call.

Summary

Well that was a very heavy lesson, but I hope you can see how Poker Maths doesn’t have to be intimidating, and really they are just some simple calculations that you can do in your head. The numbers never lie, and you can use them to make decisions very easy in Poker.

You’ve learnt some important new skills and it’s time to practise them and get back to the tables with the next stage of the Poker Bankroll Challenge.

Poker Bankroll Challenge: Stage 3

Chances Of Winning Poker Tournament Tonight

• Stakes: $0.02/$0.04
• Buy In: $3 (75 x BB)
• Starting Bankroll: $34
• Target: $9 (3 x Buy In)
• Finishing Bankroll: $43
• Estimated Sessions: 3

Use this exercise to start to consider your Outs and Pot Odds in your decision making process, and add this tool to the other tools you have already put into practice such as the starting hands chart.