I shared some of my thoughts here

http://regressing.deadspin.com/there...e-1-1526677424

these stats are meaningless of sample size. also, the quality of players playing 200 dollar buy ins is different than the people playing 1500s or bigger. Anything basically below 200 there are no pros because they realize its impossible to make a living.

A big issue is the rake creep up at the 500 and 1k level. 15 + percent rake at 500s is standards and the 1k are now between 10 and 15 percent.

At a 30 percent roi you are not really making that much money at these levels. A good (not great player may be able to get that kind of roi), however, the bankroll requirement for these events is still pretty high and you might lose for 5 years.

so i suppose the author is right, trying to make a living at mid size donkaments is very risky.

even if you could make 60k a year not really worth it unless you have a big amount of savings from something else to live off in my opinion or you have an established bankroll and are not intent on pouring money back into saving to play bigger.

all in all just does not seem like a great road to go down.

The article itself doesn't say it's impossible, it just lays out conditions necessary for making $60K with an assumed long-term ROI based on study of available online and live stats.

Like most authors, I didn't select the title for the piece.

I think the bias for the wsop data probably goes in the opposite direction relative to what you suggest. The 50 tournament pool should include a lot of people that ran good at the beginning in order to have enough buy ins to enter in 50+ tournaments.

You could imagine the identical twin of one of these people that loses the first twenty tournaments, goes broke, and never gets to fifty tournaments. His twin, on the other hand, makes an early final table and has the bankroll to enter over fifty tournaments.

Judge for yourself. They're the people in the chart at the end of this article.

Thanks for the article. I have been a profitable live tournament player every year, but I'm glad I do it as a hobby instead of having to rely on poker to make a living.

I found the article and this forum fascinating. I am glad that Bosox15 posted what he did. My stats are near what his are with and ABI of $175, but not as many tournaments. I don't make a living at it but I am a good winner. I think I could if I quit my job.

I find that when I play a $125 - $200 tournament at Venetian or Aria that there are several players that are downright bad. It seems to me that these players don't play cash because their money does not last as long. The same is true for what I saw at the WSOP, but to a lesser extent. These players make typical Venetian tournament very profitable.

So at the higher levels the ROI is bad for great players but still positive. At the lower levels the ROI is great for great players. A $200 tournament with a 250% ROI is $500 profit for an average of ~4 hours. You could make a living doing that.

An argument we hear all the time is learn all games so that when a soft game shows up in a game that is not your specialty you can jump in it. I prefer tournaments. That is where I have made most of my profits. I play them first, but also jump in cash games when I am not playing tourneys.

I agree with most of what you said, but I think a 250% ROI for a $200 tourney is extremely optimistic (and that's being nice). They just don't have the structure or field sizes to allow such a high expected ROI.

Could drive a man to drink or

Sure, it would be 250% if you can post that result every time you enter the tournament, but how realistic is that? To make $60K a year, you need to make that $500 profit 240 times during the year: roughly four times a week. Looking at the recurring tournaments results for the Venetian, I don't see the same names popping up anywhere near that often.

This is the reported payout schedule for a 79-player $220 tournament at the Venetian in January.

1st - $3,114
2nd - $1,934
3rd - $1,265
4th - $889
5th - $660
6th - $513
7th - $422
8th - $367

A 250% profit on the tournament buyin would be a payout of $770, meaning that if you were going to maintain a long-term 250% ROI, you'd need to place something like 4th or 5th every time you entered the tournament.

Alternatively, you'd need to win the equivalent of 1st place money once every four entries. 4 buyins = $880. Payout needed to cover 4 buyins and make 250% profit: $3,080. Taking a 2nd and a 3rd in 2 of 4 entries would do it, as well.

79 x $200 = $15,800 (I am assuming $20 rake but I have no idea)

1-8th place adds up to $9,164

Nice try but what happened to the other 42% of the prize pool.

A few of successful tournament pros that I had a chance to meet have told me the following:

Play in tournaments only if you are trying to win a bankroll to move up to meaningful stakes.

Do not spend on tournaments more than 15% of your annual poker income.

Do not let tournaments take away from your cash game play since it's your true bread and butter.

Tournaments are good for becoming famous or winning a bankroll. It would be wrong to call them a "glorified lottery", but they are mostly about luck.

Oh, and whoever thinks that there is such thing as "professional live tournament player" that doesn't play any cash games- you're being naive.

Not very many professional players can afford to wager a million bucks in order to clear a 6 figure income. It's also physically impossible unless you also play in the $100ks and other high roller events. As we know there is only a handful of people in the world who play in those. For 99.9% of pros the main event is the biggest tournament that they'll ever play in.

Many talented poker players would literally starve if all they were allowed to play was live tournament poker. The travel expenses alone can easily wipe out all of your gains and then some.

Speaking of travel expenses: I always find it both comical and sad when I see confirmed poker millionaires sharing a single hotel room with four other guys in order to cut down on hotel costs. Probably not the most enjoyable way to live your life months at a time, but the only way to beat the rake.

This is why one of baselines I used was from one of the best online players: Chris Moorman. It's why I used the WSOP data as a guide for a lower bound for likely ROI.

I think people have somehow misunderstood the point of the article. I wasn't looking for the highest possible ROI for live tournament players. I was looking for the statistical norm. There are going to be players both above and below the norm. Some players' ROI will be far, far above the norm, others will be at the lowest possible: -100% (although they're not likely to be professionals for long at that figure).

Ths is wrong. There are about 75,000 entries in WSOP events during the summer, about 150,000 total during the years 2011-12. The sample is more than 5% of the total number of entries in the two-year period, and a much higher percentage of professional players entering WSOP events. The ROI figure for the group is just slightly lower than the median ROI figure I calculated for players who made final tables and played 20+ events in 2011.

That's actually the same thing I wrote.

I'm not sure why you think I "penalize" anyone for anything. I just pointed out that for a lot of players, a big win can make the difference between profit and loss. That does mean that a player may be a "losing" player for a while even if they have the ability to win a tournament.

I didn't pick the title for the article. I just tried to put some numbers behind Bryan Devonshire's remarks about the difficulty of being a live tournament specialist in the US. Of course it's possible. But it's not the norm.

Looks like Hendon Mob's ID for tournament is wrong. Second Saturday tournament is $200, which includes $20 house fee, $14 staff fee, and $50 bounty.

$200 - $20 - $14 - $50 = $116
$116 x 79 = $9,164

So you just need to clear $650 to make a 250% profit. If you get a couple bounties, you could come in 5th or 6th every entry to do that. If you take eight bounties, like I did when I won one of their bounty tournaments, you'd only need to take first place one out of every five entries to maintain a 250% ROI. (5 buyins = $1,000. $3,114 for 1st + $400 in bounties = $3,514).

Thanks for the catch.

Thanks. I have long wondered what my ROI would be if I moved to Las Vegas and played full time. Probably 250% is too high. I do have a lifetime ROI online of around 130% in over 10,000 tourneys and when I looked at my results in Colorado over a 6 month period that I played full time I won 54K with 14K of entries. Colorado is where most of my experience has been and they have great tournament structures. Many $200 tourneys that take 8 hours to win with 80+ players.

I found your article very interesting. I work full time as a CFO. I have tried to figure what I could make if played the circuit or moved to LV. I believe I may have been a bit optimistic. Thanks

The simplest answer is "Don't gamble for a living"
Do something useful for society.
That is the best job security ever.

99.99% of people who try to live off gambling end in tears and misery.

99% of statistics are made up on the spot.

People have posted some ridiculous stats they are likely just on the very good end of variance. When you look at how difficult it would be to achieve a 250 ROI you know its impossible. I see horrible players win these tournaments every day sometimes a few days in a row. You still can go 15 or 20 without cashing even against the softest of fields. 60 to 100 ROIs might be acheivable by really good players but they would move on to playing bigger tourneys.

You started out saying, "LOL sample size" and then followed up with your personal MTT record. Your second to last paragraph should read, "In conclusion: conclude nothing."

pretty sure all the "red" pros/whenever a pro is sponsored the site pays for their buyins right?

I didn't read the article and therefore have nothing to add.

I'm more than happy to have an argument though.

lol, I love it when theres no point in reading past the first reply of a thread

As if this is something new to any one? Live tournaments are a joke and hurt poker. Sure if you want to gamble you can play one but nothing beyond.

I agree and that's why I stopped playing on Mars a while ago.

On my home planet though (Earth) live tournaments is what made poker the mainstream success that it is today.