Tournament credits are the equivalent of cash, except that it can't be used in regular ring games or sit N gos, and you can't cash out... However, you can use it to buy into tournaments. So how do you factor in "tournament credits" when determining how to manage your bankroll? Bodog recently ran 3 separate $5+.50 buy ins "qualifiers" for the 100k guaranteed tournament. Since this qualifier actually paid in tournament credits, I bought in for all 3, and won 1 out of the 3, crediting $109 tournament credits to my account.
Now if you are building your bankroll and you qualify in one of these tournaments, what do you do with your tournament credits?
The general response is to bet it all and buy in for a $100+9 tournament. This is exactly what the casinos want. The reason they do "$100k guarentees" is because they want to get people playing high limits. But they also want players that play a lot to get a chance to get a lot of money. By having big guarantees like this, and a bunch of tournaments allowing a win into the entry, they're trying to get as many people in the tournament as possible, they want you to play in the higher games so they get the maximum tournament fees.
It's very tempting when you have a chance to buy into one of these $100 events and no have a noticeable hit to your bankroll, but it's just the same as if you had $109 more in your account and buying in for $109 tournament. Consistent accumulation at safe stakes is the way to do it. Even if you're a winning player, the law of averages say that there will be long periods of time where you will get unlucky, just as there will be long periods of time when you don't sometime in your poker career.
Based on the amount alone, you should just use your tournament credits just as a supplement to your normal bankroll. If your bankroll is $200 and you have $100 tournament credits, treat it as if you have $300, IF you are a winning player. There fore buying into MTTs with the rule, you should have 2% at stake. so 2% of $300 would be $6. I like to the qualifiers because often they'll allow maybe 3 people to qualify. The reason this can be to your advantage, is because you don't have any specific amount of chips to win. You certainly need to accumulate chips, but you can usually just pick your spots well, avoid confrontation even more than usual, and basically you get rewarded for other people knocking themselves out. These tournaments are very profitable because it's like this: In a winner take all tournament, it's essentially just a series of cash games where you move higher and higher up in stakes, until one person has it all. You might buy in $15 to get 1500 in chips, however that doesn't change the fact that it's basically a cash game with escalating blinds, except that $100 in chips represents $1. The only difference from a cash game is in this cash game you are forbidden to cash out. In normal tournaments, there's an advantage for playing to survive since you get paid for surviving, but not as much... essentially the winner who takes all the chips has to forfeit his winnings. It's basically like an agreement that the winner must forfeit a large portion of his winnings to the players who finish in a certain place. So at a certain point players actually earn money by folding. So the question becomes which is more valuable folding and finishing getting a small to decent cash out, or do I need to make a move to try to be in a position to finish in the top 5 spots. The player who finishes 2nd by just surviving is rewarded more so than the winner who must get every chip, but only gets rewarded as if he won 25% of them.
But in tournament qualifiers, even more advantage is to the player who finishes 2nd. He gets paid as if he finished first. The tournament is actually stopped at a certain point (although some play it out even though it is irrelevant), and if you're still alive, you're rewarded the same with 2 chips as the person with 20,000 chips. To keep the cash game analogy, this would be the equivalent of playing a cash game, and then at a certain point after all but whatever amount of people it pays out are eliminated... after everyone is gone EXCEPT you and the players who "qualify" all the money at the cash game would be equally distributed. So if someone survived with $1 worth of chips, and the first place person had $30,000 and 2nd had $29,999; they would all get 20,000 in chips... Of course if this was a $15 buy in, and they started with 1500, that 1500 would be worth $15 and the 20000 would be worth $200. In normal tournaments the third place might get 50, the 2nd place might get 150, and first place might get 400. But nowhere else can you get that kind of return with virtually nothing. You can actually be losing money in the long run in cash games, and play that kind of style in these qualifiers just a sort of survive style and actually do very well in the long run in these qualifiers. In addition, these tournaments often have a specific guarantee. They might award 3 "$100+9 tournament buy ins" regardless of the number of entrants. They can do this because they're not really giving the player money. They're getting people to buy in for maybe $5, and then all of that money won't go to people who can cash out, it will go towards people that can only enter another event, guaranteeing that a certain amount of that money goes back to them in "fees". These events also attract new players, but it's an advantage to you if there's 40 players playing a $5.50 buy in, and 3 109 payouts, or $327 guaranteed.
I think you would be wise to actually use your "qualifier money" or tournament credits to enter in additional qualifiers. If you play these right, and adapt your game based on the payout, you can do pretty well. However, at some point you will need to turn your tournament credits into actual cash, depending on if you're in it for the long run, or the short term. It's probably more valuable to just keep building up your tournament credits, especially since there's often extra money in there, and especially if you're a conservative tournament player, who doesn't get in a lot of all in confrontations, and who passes up small edges, but still is aggressive and steals pots at the right time. You will still be entering in other tournaments, that are under the total 2% of your bankroll as well.
HOWEVER, the 100k guaranteed tournament often has a lot of extra money in there. Since a winning player, and (any player) will have a higher expected value if there's extra prize money in there, they can risk slightly more... how much more depends upon how much extra money is in play... The problem with this is that the moment you calculate how much extra money is in the tournament, several more players will join, and there will be less additional money. Many players also wait for the last second and then join the tournament, probably making sure there is extra cash in the pot... so there is a flood of players at the end. But you'll have to just estimate HOW many players there are available... then calculate the extra money.
Lets say at the 100k guarentee you estimate that 600 players will be signed up. That means that at $100 there will be $60,000 in the prize pool.. but since it's guarenteed to have 100k there's an extra 40,000 in the pot. Now divide this number by the number of players which is 600. 40000/600=66.6... Subtract this number from the $109 buy in. You'll get 42.33. Now the buy in should be treated as if it's 42.33... If this surpasses 2% of your bankroll, you shouldn't join it. Put another way, take that 42.33 and multiply it by 50 and you get 2116.5... If your bankroll is this amount or greater, you can join this tournament... however your win rate isn't going to be any greater, in fact, if you're used to $10 buy ins, it's probably going to be less.
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