How Often Should You be Cashing?
As we all know, no matter how great you are, winning a poker tournament can be extremely difficult to do (unless you’re Jeremy Dresch). This is why it can often be difficult for a poker player to measure one’s success. It feels like we are failing so often…but are we?
I’ve always asked myself, how often should I be cashing? As in all poker discussions there are variables when answering this question. If you win one tournament or cash high enough your ITM (in the money) cash rate can be less. Conversely, if you are one to cash often but hit the money with a short stack and fizzle out, you’ll need to cash more often. This is obvious I know.
The best baseball players in the world fail 65% – 70% of the time if they are a .300+ hitter. The odds are even worse for a poker player.
When determining a successful cash rate, the level of competition is certainly a factor. The best online MTT (multi-table tournament) players generally finish ITM at a rate of 11-12% when the buy-in is $100+. THAT’S IT! About 1 out of 10! It is similar for medium stakes buy-in MTT players ($26-$75). It is usually true though that players with a higher ITM have a lower ROI% (return on investment). I’m using online stats here because there are sites that track this information, so apply it to live multi-table tournaments as you see fit.
This means that the players who hold on to simply get into the money often play less aggressive when just trying to cash and short-stack themselves. They will cash often but generally not go deep, earning themselves less money per cash.
This is why ROI is the number a player should be more concerned with. On the other hand, if you are putting yourself in position to cash often, eventually you will get lucky or bust through for a possible big pay day.
So what’s a decent ROI? Again, that depends on a few factors. What’s your primary motivation for playing MTTs? How many MTTs are you playing? Etc. Some good (high buy-in) MTT players have an ROI of +25% but are playing a high volume of tournaments. Others may be +150%.
Ultimately, you really want to shoot for the final table when playing MTTs. At first you might want to just play for the money, which is fine, but without a big score along the way it’ll be difficult to maintain a bankroll, let alone actually increasing it.
This is why I cringe often when I see players chop at final tables. Its hard enough to get there let alone wasting that rare opportunity for a big pay day (even if you’re short stacked). Typically you’re one hand away from turning the tide. Without that big pay day, you’ll always be grinding with your bankroll.
MTTs are a tough go, until you get a decent cash that is. This is why most MTT players suggest not playing an MTT that is more than 2% of your bankroll.
I think if you just focus on improving your game along the way, gaining more experience all the time, play with good bankroll management, etc., the bankroll will take care of itself (in other words…. you don’t need to calculate that you’d need to be cashing 40% of the time).
To show you an example from personal experience, and again I’m showing you online stats because they are tracked. In the calendar year 2007 (the last time I had time to play poker somewhat regularly to generate a decent sample size), I played 132 tournaments on PokerStars and was in the money 22 times for a cash (ITM) rate of 17%, which is considered very high. My average buy-in was $118. But most importantly, I won 2 tournaments.
On a side note, as we discuss in the Lance Harris article, some online MTT pros play 12 tournaments at a time or 17+ per day. That puts my 132 tournaments in a year sample size to shame.
So as a player in 2007, I succeeded 17% of the time (failed 83%), won only 2 of the 132 tournaments I played and from that was ranked in the top 1,091 of 145,624 players on that site. My ROI was 206%.
The moral of the story is this, its perfectly common to go 10, 15 or even more tournaments in a row without a cash. This can feel discouraging especially if you’re a live-game player since you’re probably playing one tournament per day at the most. It can seem like forever. That’s poker, it’s the law of large numbers. You need a large sample size which is hundreds of tournaments at the least to determine your success.
This is why its important to manage your bankroll, so you can withstand the normal and expected downswings.
Don’t forget, if you are good enough and fortunate enough to get to a final table, don’t be a pansy. Seize the moment. This is a bankroll defining moment.
March 25th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Good article Bryan. Glad you acknowledged that 132 is a tiny sample. You are quite lucky to have won 2 events in that period.
You get to the heart of why MTT play can be so discouraging but your numbers are a little off imho.
2% of your roll is a lot to put on an MTT, unless it’s a 45-man. .5-1% is a much better rule of thumb. If I put 2% on every event I played, I’d be busto weekly.
A lot of online pros play 12+ tables at a time. I prefer 8-12, though over-time I expect to move up to 12+. I played with a guy sunday who was 20 tabling, which is sick obv.
For players like us 17+ a day should read more like 60+ a day.
Finally 10-15 non cashes in a row is a daily occurance. This number regularly reaches 30+ for me. And my personal best is 61 non-cashes in a row (weeeeee).
Anyway, good article overall. I think lots of people underestimate how tough grinding MTT’s is. Glad you decided to shed some light on it.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:49 am
I totally agree with Nate on almost every point.
It is quite common to see 30 no-cash results in a row.
If you play live tournaments, the odds are pretty good that your results are fairly meaningless. The in the money results you achieve and the ROI you achieve will typically be pretty far off from what was expected to happen, and the long run for tournament poker is simply far too long for anyone to realistically attain. By the time you are approaching the long run, the player mix has changed completely, your play has changed (hopefully you have improved), etc.
If you want to improve your tournament play, my suggestion is to broaden your horizons and play some cash games deep stacked, and play some sit and go tournaments as well. Tournament poker requires all skills in poker. We need to play well with 100bb for the first few levels (especially because this is where the density of bad players remaining is the highest, and we should be taking advantage), we need to be good with a middling stack 20-50bb, and we definitely need to know our pushing, repushing, and calling ranges for short stack play. We must also be well aware of ICM, or the independant chip model. In tournaments, chips are not cash, and so generally speaking the chips in our stack are worth more than chips that we will win, so we need odds to be playing hands, and the closer we get to the money, the better the odds we need. Playing cash games until we learn how to have positive results will teach us how to play the early levels, and playing sit and gos until we learn how to get a positive ROI will teach us how to play the final table.
Focusing sheerly on “in the money” will tend to make a player’s ROI drop. We should be focused on taking a top 3 spot, and this will mean we are willing to bust somewhat often before the cash, in order to build a stack that we can take to the top 3. Focusing on maximizing our ROI is clearly what we need to do, but it is difficult because our results will be so often different than what was expected. A good winning MTT player might get to a 100% ROI, so for every buyin in a MTT, they are expected to cash for a 2 buyin score. The results will not look like that. Instead they will have 85% no cashes, with a small percentage of big scores.
Imagine playing dice, and being offered the following. You pay me 1$ to roll the dice… Any time you roll double sixes or double fives, I will pay you 30$. Any time you roll anything else, I keep your dollar. This is clearly a very advantageous game for you, and if you have a couple hundred bucks, you should play it until you have a million dollars. If however you only have 5 or 10 or even 20$ to your name, the odds are fairly good that you will go broke playing this game, its just too hard to roll double sixes and fives unless you are allowed to roll over and over and over.
This game is pretty similar to tournament poker results. We usually lose our buyin, but are occasionally awarded with large buyin return results. All the busting on the bubble and minimum cashing is fairly meaningless and serves primarily to befuddle the player pool, imho. The other huge difference from my dice game is that a tournament can take a full day live to finish, and the majority of players only get to play a dozen or two tournaments in a year!
Long story short, if you like tournaments fantastic, but if you want consistent results, this is not the game you should be playing. Only enter tournaments with the money you can afford to lose every time, and try to find the way to “get the most play” for your average dollar. Relax and enjoy it if you ever do make a final table, and above all else, try to maximize the monetary return on your decisions with each and every play you make at the table!
Good pokering
JustinT
March 25th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Thanks Nate, yeah I tried to reflect our more general audience with my numbers. What you and a lot of online pros do on a daily basis isn’t even possible or realistic for most people. You guys are crazy! LOL
For a lot of our local followers, I’m guessing 10-15 tournaments a month is a lot as most people have regular jobs. Its easy for some to go a month or two or much longer without cashing and that can be depressing. Because their volume is not as high they tend to think of it in terms of days or months, etc. Just wanted to let people know in terms of numbers (that they can relate with) this is common and not to get discouraged.
Stick with your plan and keep working at it.
March 25th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Thanks Brian! I’ve been running horrid for what seams like an eternity, your article gave me the perspective I needed.
Something I would ad from experience……when you do hit that big payday – don’t get cocky! It’s easy to do after a big win, you think you’re the “MAN” but reality hits hard when you go card dead for a longer streak than you’ve ever had. And keep your bankroll in check, it is easy to lose site of the big picture when you have a lot of cash on hand
Feast or famine gentlemen, that’s the life we choose to live. But it’s fun isn’t it?…!!
March 25th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
I believe chopping when 3 or 4 handed can be the smartest play for two reasons(assuming chip stacks are equal).
They become shove fests, and the majority of skill is removed from this point on.
Second, there is usually a huge dollar difference between 4th and 1st place. For example, at the Pot o gold Tournament first place waS 16K and 4th pace was $4200, so I accepted a four way chop for 9K, which was approximately 2nd place money.
I don’t see the benefit in risking 12k on one hand of poker, which is precisely what would have happened had I not accepted the chopped.
March 25th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
The only measure of success in poker tournament poker is whether one makes money at it. I.E., cashes minus all expenses = net profit. Merely cashing in a live tournament is not a very good indication of how one is doing in a live tournament because in a substantial number of times, a cash in a tournament still equals a net loss when one factors in their expenses (hotel, travel, food, etc.) Steve Badger has excellent articles online regarding this.
A better statistic would be % of final tables. (Or hourly rate playing tournament poker. See Badger’s article.)
Personally, I have made money playing live tournament poker. My final table % is is 14.3% (2/14) in buy ins of $1000 or more and 10.9% (6/55) with buy ins of $100 or more and 100 + players.
March 25th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Scott,
I wanted to contest this point:
“They become shove fests, and the majority of skill is removed from this point on.”
Some of the biggest mistakes I see in live play are players making poor push/fold decisions. It is very common to see a player with 8 BB’s to raise 2BB’s then fold to an all in, which is obv horrendous.
Also, why wouldn’t you want to risk $12k on one hand? I would happily take the most marginal of flips where 50.01% of the time I win another $12k and 49.99% I lose nothing. And this scenario assumes a near perfect flip. What if I was favored more heavily. Which would you choose:
1. a 66/33 where you win 12k 66% and win $0 33%
2. a chop for $6k where you win $6k everytime
March 25th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
We should consider making deals when they are to our advantage.
We should consider taking a “save” where everyone takes the same amount out of the prize pool when we are the short stack.
We should consider taking a chip chop when we have a huge chip advantage and are down to mostly good players.
I have seen worse plays, like calling a re-raise with a dominated ace and calling it all off on an ace high flop when down to the final 3.
Taking a chop can reduce your variance, and if you can find a way to “lock in” a near 3rd place finish, it can often be very much to your advantage to do so. Just do it because you think it is +EV or even close to neutral, not because you are fearful of busting. Theres nothing wrong with taking an EV neutral spot that will reduce your variance.
Its kind of like folding a hand like 44 vs a raise when we are near the bubble. Its probably close to even in terms of calling, raising or folding, but folding reduces our variance.
March 25th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Great discussion, its fun to hear both sides as most things in poker aren’t black or white. That’s why we love it.
I understand I’m probably in the minority since it seems a large % of local tournaments end in a chop.
There is a side to guaranteeing yourself a larger piece of the pie and I get that. I won’t hammer the #’s any further as to why I think its beneficial to play for it all but I will say this……there’s no better feeling than winning a poker tournament outright. After being there now a few times, a 3-way chop just doesn’t feel the same.
Not to mention, you won’t get any better playing heads up or short-handed under pressure unless you put yourself in that situation a few times.
Some day my time will come where I’m playing for even bigger stakes or life changing money with players who won’t let me off the hook, maybe a WSOP event, maybe not, who knows? But I will be more prepared if it happens.
Thanks for all the great feedback!
March 25th, 2010 at 9:34 pm
The 2nd comment on here about broadening your horizons is incredibly helpful and true and I want to repeat it.
A few months ago I went through an awful 6 week slump. I play mainly medium buy in MTT and I have regular success. I’m used to the ups and downs of being a MTT player, and I’m always mentally tough enough to get through them, usually with little or no concern about the down swing. This time though I began to wear down. I couldn’t isolate anything I was really doing wrong. My strategies, fundamentals, reads and calculations were always keen. I was just catching the worst of luck.
Around the end of the 4th week I started to think I wasn’t as skilled anymore. I thought I was losing my touch and doubted my skill, and felt I had hit my pinnacle and that everyone else was just passing me. For the first time I was really taking it hard. I never tilt, but I get tired. It was a Friday night and being tired I didn’t have the endurance for any MTT so I decided to join a few tad smaller buy-in SNG just to keep it light. I ended up cashing in 5 of 8, and winning 2.
This completely re-sparked me. Not the money, but because I knew I still had it. I played these great, didn’t make mistakes, and adjusted perfectly to them. (It had been quite a while since I’d done one). In other words, I played them exactly like I’d always played my tournaments, with my best skills doing the work. I decided after that night to take a week off and not do any poker at all, to detox myself of it and then go back fresh. A week later the first 2 went the way of the slump, but then the 3rd hit hard and I won the damn thing. The next day I snatched up a 5th, and 2 decent bubble cashes.
The point of this is not that winning a few SNG changed my luck, that is absurd. But winning the SNGs was a HUGE boost to my confidence again. It reminded me that I wasn’t losing my touch, and that I shouldn’t change my style, and that for the most part this awful brutal slump wasn’t my fault entirely (I’ll admit I played one drunk, and a few others super sleep deprived.)
SNG can serve as huge confidence boosters when you are hurting. I now know this and I will definitely use it again the next time I need a pick me up from the MTT endurance grind. I highly encourage people to mix up a few of these into your regular choice of game, for as BS as they seem sometimes they do incorporate a lot of different games into them. They make great practice for maintaining discpline to sit tight when its SOOO cheap to see a flop with any 2 cards early on, or blind pressure play, or heads-up.
They are good practice, and are great confidence pick-me-ups. I hope someone hurting right now will read this, try a few out, and acquire a high head through the slump times. I know I sure did.
p.s.- now when I river a set its because of skill. ;p