Hi--

I have been playing poker tournaments both live and online for about four years now. I also have been subscribing to "Card Player" magazine, which comes out about every two weeks or so. Whenever I flip through that magazine and read about some of the great successes that various tournament pros have been having , I kind of get the feeling that these players, if not either winning or making the final table all the time, are at least cashing almost all the time. It is kind of intimidating, and it kind of gets me down when I consider my lowly position in relation to these players.

That being said, the rational part of my brain says that even the best tournament players cannot actually be at least cashing all the time. I have heard various figures used for how often the top tournament players do cash, and the number that seems to come up the most is 15%, but I really have no idea how someone could actually crunch all the data on that. I don't need an exact figure--a general estimate would be fine, actually--but does anyone have some valid info on this? I would really like to know.

You aren't that far off ... I think there's a general rule that high volume tournament players should cash in about 10% of their 'entries' in order to turn a profit. This can be affected by the structure (turbo/deep stack) for sure. I would assume that at least 1-2 out of those 10/100 scores would need to be a 'top' finish as well.

When I played SnGs I felt that I should 'easily' be in the last 5 and then let variance take over from there.

If you aren't consistently (and mentally comfortable) surviving tournaments until the average stack dips down below 40BB then you may want to look at your play. Then you will need some help to cash .. and 'lots' of help to score big.

Are you looking to cash or are you looking to win? That will affect your play and 'scoring' average as well. If you want to dink and dunk your way into cashes I think you should have a higher percentage (Allen Kessler style) of cashes than an 'older' DNegs/JMercier style who is in it to win and presses his stack a little harder earlier ... like AK AIPF with 50BB). GL

PS .. Who does it 'right'? That's a matter of perspective. I've rarely seen AKessler on a FT, but he keeps bread on the tabel somehow. Others have the big scores behind them, but they happen far less often and that may be mentally draining on them.

lol at live mtts. its all about running good. sure there's some skill involved. but if you don't get lucky you won't be profiting.

Number of entrants probably affects how often a pro cashes.

What's better, cashing half the time where you double your buy in, or cashing one in ten but increasing it 30x?

If you have the bankroll to weather variance, the knowledge that your game is good enough to win big 1 in 10, and the guts to play all or nothing poker, obviously win big 1 in 10 is better. And a lot of pros play exactly that way to squeeze out nitty regs. But it is, in truth, a much more difficult way to play.

30x would mean first place at the tournaments I play on occasion. I don't think taking first place every tenth tournament (in a field of 250 players) is realistic.

Cashing double your buy in every second time is obviously +0...so not exatly what the pros are doing.

I'm asking the OP to think more about how he's structuring his thought processes and not necessarily to be a nit about the particulars as you are... cashing percentage is irrelevant if you're pissing a bunch of $EV up the wall to increase it by not concentrating on finishing really high in the tournament which is where all the money is in MTT's

The variance you're willing to accept should be relative to the payout structure. If one gets hung up on "cashing x% of the tournaments" then I feel there's something missing from the data. That pros cash in 15% of their tournaments tells you next to nothing.

Is there any pro who is not concentrating on finishing really high up in any tournament they play? If you don't go into it wanting to win (as a pro) then I think you're doing something wrong

It's in the region of 15%, but it depends on number of entrants and/or payout structure. For online players, we can type screennames into Sharkscope/Playerscope/OPR and find out someone's ITM%, and for any winning MTT player with a large sample size it's always in the 12-20% region.

Here's Chris Moorman, with a large sample size ($10 million in cashes) and an ITM that's never been over 17%: http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...89491.html?t=2

How often? Well except for a select few, I would say certainly not often enough to stay viable in the long run.

U have some got answers there. For example if 10 percent of people gets paid in tournament, even the best player on earth will not get paid in more than 20 percent of times(in long run offcourse) in real world.

I do not know if u guys have thought of that but for me it is kind of a rule (somebody correct me if I am wrong):

It is impossible to cash in x2 % number of people that are getting paid in a long run even if u are the best in the world. With this I mean if in tournament 10 percent of people gets paid, it is impossible for the best player on earth to get paid 20 percent of times; or for example if you play heads up game, where 50 percent of people gets paid it is impossible to win 100 percent of times, and so on.

Ok , I have said this a bit strange, but english is not my maternal language. Hope you guys understand what I meant.

If you know the percent of time a player cashes on average, you can statistically calculate what he might do in the future if he maintains the average. Assuming cash percentage is binomial, the standard deviation is sqrt(pq/n) for a sample of n tournaments, where p is his average cash % and q=1-p.

The probability of cashing in m or more times in n tournaments is then
1-Binomdist(m-1,n,p,True) where Binomdist is Excel’s binomial function.

Example: A player cashes in tournaments 15% of the time. In 20 tournaments, he is expected to cash 3 times. What is the probability he cashes at least 6 times:
Pr = 1 – Binomdist(5, 20, 0.15, True) = 6.7%.

Daniel Negreanu got some numbers on World Poker Tour success. Jonathan Little analyzed the information. He found that the biggest net winners (cashes minus buy-ins) were clustered in a group that cashed between 8% and 16% of the time.)

Little concluded the following:

1. Players who cashed less that 8% of the time were not cashing often enough to make much profit.

2. Players that cashed more than 16% of the time were not taking enough risks to get the big cashes from which most poker profit comes.

3. When you factor in travel and other tour expenses, it would be difficult for players outside of those ranges to make any profit.

I've seen Kessler on a final table but it was the Heartland Poker Tour. He was one of the top guys on the HPT for a while.