Bond18 - Around the World in 90 Days: Day 92

Posted by Bond18 | Filed under Bond18

With a few days to kill before the start of the Vic Champs I’m back at the online grind, which I’ve missed horribly. My normal day online begins by forcing myself awake at 10am and stumbling over to my computer sans shower. Then I fire up every site I intend to play on and register for all the tournaments in advance, preventing the all too common failure to register in time. After that I spend the next seven to nine hours playing up to about fourteen tables, though I normally average around eight or nine.

Although I honestly enjoy playing tournaments online, staying focused and genuinely interested for the entire session proves difficult. While I refuse to go so far as turn on the TV or watch a movie I’m always listening to music and browsing the internet, as well as occasionally having programs like AIM and MSN up, though I normally close those down when my session gets more hectic.

It’s common knowledge that successful cash players make more money than roughly equal stakes tournament players. However, the money to be made grinding a full tournament schedule is pretty respectable. To get a rough estimate of what a tournament player makes you can work it out using www.officialpokerrankings.comor www.thepokerdb.com. If you take a look a look at a players long term ROI you know what his expected earn is per tournament (though it’s not exact, since you have higher ROI’s in some tournaments than others, not to mention the considerable variance that goes along with big field tournaments.) After that you estimate the total amount of his daily buy-ins, which you can find out from those sites as well. Then you just run the math. Say for example a player has $1,000 in buy ins a day at 100% ROI, then that player expects to earn $1,000 a day, assuming this has been maintained over a very large sample (and in MTT’s, no sample is actually big enough.)

Keep in mind though that very few players are legitimately 100% ROI outside of very soft large field tournaments such as Sunday majors and a few of the bigger daily tournaments, such as the Tilt 50/50. Still if you put in enough volume at stakes you are consistently beating you can see how the money is considerable.

Because the money is so large it always amazes me how few MTT grinders actually have money of their own. Some have the obvious leaks of house edge gambling, cash games spew or very expensive drug habits, but for others the leaks are more hidden. Some only play the biggest buy in and toughest tournaments which even the greatest players have significantly reduced ROI’s in. Others simply don’t put in the volume to accumulate considerable wealth. Many are backed for both their online and live action and end up getting so heavily in make up as a result of live tournaments that they do nothing but dig themselves out of that hole with their online winnings.

For all the guys out there who are considering or looking into a backing deal you should know the standard within the industry is to give up your online action in order to get live backing. For many guys I actually think this is a pretty bad idea, even though it means you’ll get to take shots at big buy in live tournaments and have a shot at getting your one big score or being famous.

Think about this for a moment; if you’re a MTT grinder who can maintain a 50% ROI at mid to high buy ins online (which is entirely reasonable) and able to play around $2000 worth of buy ins a day and be careful with your money, you can easily accumulate a large enough bankroll to start putting yourself in large live tournaments but simply sell off some action in about a year. If you’re willing to just sit at your desk eight hours a day seven days a week for say, 48 weeks of the year and not go fucking nuts with your spending habits you can realistically have a $300,000 bankroll by the end of the year with a work schedule that’s considerably less stressful than most peoples. It takes discipline though, and I’ve found that the reason a person like me (who is of average intelligence and borderline retarded at math) can make so much money in this game is because that’s a trait so few people have.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have an eight hour session to put in.

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