What it takes to win an MTT

I was playing this $25 buy in tourney over at Cake Poker the other night. We were almost to the bubble, 27 players left, 20 got paid, blinds were 400/800 and this was the situation


As you can see from the screenshot, I was in 15th place at that time. But that is actually not the point of this post. If you will take a look at the standings again. You will see 3 players with a comfortable chip lead. Wallst00 was in 1st place with about 33k in chips, Mantech in 2nd with about 25k in chips and grampstol was in 3rd with about 23K.

Just for fun, I decided to sharkscope the 3 chip leaders and these were the results

Wallst00 is a certified fish with an average ROI of -52%, Mantech had lost almost $1400 playing only 320 games and grampstol was also a loser with a -10% ROI and was even on Tilt at that time. And these were the guys with the huge chip lead in this tournament. heheh. As added info, you should know that Sharkscope captures the results of MTTs and SNGs in their Cake stats. So this is pretty much a good profile of these players.

So what does this mean? Is there a conspiracy going on ? Why the heck are certified losers doing well on this MTT? Does this mean I should also play like a fish to win an MTT ?

Not necessarily. But it does point out something important about the dynamics of MTT play. In order to win an MTT, you need to accumulate chips. To accumulate chips, you need to take risks. You cannot expect to win an MTT by playing straight up ABC poker. You may get in the money, but you will be so shortstacked that you would have a slim chance of making the final table where the good money is.

The 3 players happened to be in the chip lead because they are fishes. And fishes love to take risks. They just need a lucky streak or two and they accumulate huge stacks. But 95% of the time, they also bust out early and hence the negative total profits.

I am not saying that you should change your style and suddenly become loose and aggressive. I am just saying thru this example that sometimes to win an MTT, you will need to take certain risks that goes against normal poker logic. It may be something like chasing a flush draw during the early part even if the odds are against you. Or doing a squeeze play in the SB with a small pocket pair. The most common situation is going all-in even though you already know it will be a 50/50 race. It is finding the right balance between your normal tight/correct play and looking for situations where you can take a risk with acceptable odds. That is what it takes to win an MTT.

Just in case you're wondering how I did, I busted out shortly after taking these screenshots when I went all in with 3-3 and got called by Jacks. It may be a dumb move in restrospect but looking at the situation, I was shortstacked with an M less than 10 and was definitely not going to wait until I was blinded out. There are many situations where I would have been called by AK or AQ. And then I would have been slightly ahead. So I was just following my own advice. Heheh.

A Comedy of Errors

Warning : Non poker related post.

If you've been wondering why I haven't updated my blog for a while, well its because I've been out of the country. I was on a one week journey to INDIA. Emphasis on the journey as it was really an eye-opening experience. Imagine 5 hotels in 6 days including 7 hour car rides, crazy Indian drivers and multiple flight transfers. It was like being part of the Amazing Race except that the prize for finishing first was diarrhea and malaria. A quick summary of events below:

It all started when I arrived in the Mumbai airport and was immediately met by a thick white smoke and a burning smell. It seems that one of the airport lights had a malfunction and was actually burning up as we were passing through immigration. It was suffocating and our eyes were stinging from the smoke as the queue slowly inched its way to the front.

We came out of the airport and our pick up service was nowhere in sight. We had to call him up multiple times before we figured out that the driver was waiting in the wrong terminal. Once we were on our way to the hotel, he decides to take a shortcut and we ended up entering a street filled with tons of people, food stalls, cows and not another car in sight. Obviously, this was his cue to get lost and he had to drive around a couple of times before he found the correct hotel.

Once we got there, the receptionist told us that the hotel was fully booked even though we had a guaranteed reservation. They were nice enough to transfer us to a different hotel but that took another car ride by the clueless driver who didn't speak english. All's well that ends well as we finally booked a room and sank to a blissful sleep.

Next day, we had to take a 4 hour car ride to the factory we were visiting. When we were about 15 kms away, this group of truck drivers decided that they were going to hold a protest about the high toll fees and basically just barricaded this major intersection. (see pic) This caused a huge traffic jam and we were pretty much stuck in the middle of nowhere for another 2 hours. The police eventually came and we expected them to finally break up the barricade. But we were wrong, it appears that a politician was already there doing a dialogue so the policeman were just lounging around eating guavas in the shade. Parang pinas ah.


Eventually we gave up and just turned around. We were hot, dirty, tired and there was really no toilet around. During the barricade, we had to go to this huge field filled with crows to pee. You can hear them going SQUARK, SQUARK and looking at you with an evil eye while you had your schlong in your hand and trying to do your business. Mweheheh

Some notes about India

1. Crazy Drivers - seriously, if you thought it was bad in the Philippines. They don't compare to the average Indian Driver. Horns are continually used by everyone. They drive up to 80 to 100 kmh in these really narrow streets, honking their horn for people, bicycles, motorcycles and trucks to get out of their way. They even do double overtakes. This is when the car ahead of us decides to overtake the car in front of him and our driver decides it was the correct time to overtake both of them at the same time. So we were three cars trying to get ahead of each other in a parallel line in a narrow street going 80 km per hour while a huge truck was barreling at us from the other way.

2. Dirty - foreigners are always complaining about the dirty streets of Manila, but the good news is, the streets of India are dirtier. You can see pretty much garbage everywhere you looked. I went to this shopping mall in Chennai which was highly recommended by some of the Indian people I talked to. I was expecting a kind of SM like experience. Well, I was wrong. It was basically a dark building, dirt smudges everywhere, warm and smelly. Granted it had the usual brand names like Guess, Nike, etc. But the rat walking down the aisle sort of gave it a unique flavor.

3. People - Indian people are actually very nice and warm. Everywhere we went, we always found them accomodating and eager to talk to us. They are hospitable similar to Filipinos. The main difference is probably the smell. Heheh .... to put it politely, let's just say that 1 out of 2 people you meet might have a funky smell. But I don't think its really their fault, but more because of the food that they eat. Which brings us to ...

4. Food - the food in India is unique. If you're used to white rice and adobo and is not flexible culinary wise, then I don't think you'll have a good time. Traditional fare is a flat bread called roti or naan. And then you'll have some curry that you can dip it in. Curry could be chicken, mutton or vegetable based. But majority of the people are vegetarians. Hot and Spicy is standard and should be expected for everything that they serve you unless you make a special request. Personally, I found the food quite OK and had a nice time with the different tastes and textures. Obviously, bottled water is a must, anything canned like Coke or Sprite is also OK. No beef in general as cows are considered sacred.

5. Expensive Hotels - I do not exaggerate but the hotels in India are one of the most expensive in Asia and maybe even the world. A four star level hotel would cost you 8,000 pesos per night at the minimum and the quality is not even that good. I wondered about this and my Indian colleague told me that it was a matter of supply and demand. The hotels there are almost always fully booked so the rates were much much higher than everyone else.

Generally, I found INDIA quite a feast for the senses both visually and otherwise. Although I had a hard time adjusting to all the noise, crowds and smells at first, I have to say that it kinda grew on me in the 6 days that I was there. It is not as bad as some people would have you believe, but obviously it will not be a popular tourist attraction anytime soon. You can see obvious signs of economic growth with all the infrastructure construction going on and I hope to see improvements in the years to come.

Usually, when I come home from a trip to let's say Singapore or Hongkong where everything works efficiently, I usually feel a nostalgic sense of regret as to why the Philippines could not be like those places. Well, this time around when I came back and arrived at the NAIA. I actually felt relief and elation that I was back in Manila. Even with all the crazy politics, crime and corruption, we're actually not too bad. If that barricade had happened here lets say at the corner of Edsa and Ortigas, you'll probably see our police hosing down the protestors and dispersing the rally. And all the drivers in the cars going "Yep, hose them all down, they deserve it for making me late for my meeting, throw in a tear gas canister there just to be sure" Heheh ....

Diversify your Bankroll

We always hear people talk about the importance of bankroll management in poker. It is one of the cardinal rules that one must follow in order to be successful in this fickle game.

For newbies out there who are somewhat confused as to what it is, bankroll management is basically playing within what your money allows. You only play at certain limits and you make sure you have a buffer such that a sudden bad run of cards will not eat up all of your bankroll. As sure as the sun rises, there will be times when you lose money not because you are playing like a donkey, but just because of variance (cards not falling your way even though you get your money ahead). You have to make sure that you have enough money to absorb these downswings and live to fight another day.

Even the best players in the world would go bankrupt in an instance if they did not follow good BR management. So its importance has to be emphasized again and again.

There are many rules out there being touted by different pros as to what is the correct level. From 20x your buy in to 100x your buy in. Another advise that we usually hear is to make sure that only 5% of your total bankroll is in play at any one time. If you ask my opinion as to what the correct level is, I would also not be able to give you a definite answer. I think it depends pretty much on your comfort level. I am a somewhat conservative player who only plays SNGs and MTTs. So my current bankroll is usually falling somewhere between 50x to 80x my playing limit. I am not saying it is the correct level. Some would probably say its too conservative, but I have been moderately successful following this personal guideline, so I stick with it.

But enough of bankroll management for the meantime. That is not actually what I wanted to write about. There are many great articles in the net which discusses this topic better, so just browse around and I’m sure you’ll find something that would suit your style.

What I wanted to talk about is DIVERSIFICATION. In finance, diversification is basically a risk management technique where you mix a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. You want to make sure that the fluctuations of any one investment has minimal impact on the overall performance of your finances. So if you have let’s say $1000 to invest. You wouldn’t want to put everything in the stock market even if it offers the highest return . The ideal move is to put some in the stock market, some in bonds and keep a small portion in liquid cash. So if the stock market suddenly crashes overnight, you are still protected.

In simple terms, it’s basically saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

So what the heck does this have to do with poker ? Well, in much the same way, it is highly risky to have all your bankroll in one poker site. Yes, that poker site has been good to you. Yes, that poker site offers the best rakeback deal. And yes, that poker site gives reload bonuses every 2 weeks.

But you have to also know that there is very limited regulation governing the operation of online poker in general. Poker Site offices are usually located in remote places like Kahnawake which is actually an Indian reserve located somewhere south of Canada. There's a good reason why they're located in such remote places and I don't think they have customer service centers where you can go and personally complain if you suddenly find your account short of one thousand dollars. Also, don’t fool yourself into thinking that there is some almighty Gaming Commision that has regulatory and control powers over these sites. The poker site could just decide to close for any arbitrary reason and your bankroll is pretty much fucked. Just read the horror stories in the different forums. If these guys decide to fuck you over, you pretty much can’t do anything but bend over and take it.

Let’s take the case of the Ultimate Bet Scandal where Superuser accounts have been proven to exist for more than 4 years to cheat players of millions of dollars. You know what the Kahnawake gaming commission decided? It asked Ultimate Bet to refund these monies back into the player accounts that have been affected. But the commission really doesn’t have any idea of the actual amount scammed nor who were the players affected. You were probably born in Mars if you think that Ultimate Bet will reveal the true extent of the cheating.

Then they fine UB $1.5 Million for the violation which UB would probably gleefully withdraw from their secret account where all the cheating money went in the first place. As my daughter would say after acing her tests, CHICKEN!! If the commission was actually regulating, common sense dictates that they should have caught on to the scam years ago.

Just think about it, why would you cut the hand that feeds you? In much the same way that the wall street CEOs got away with murder in the ongoing US financial crisis. UB is basically getting just a slap in the hand. In fact, I have just received an email from UB yesterday with another great reload bonus in celebration of their highly successful asshumping of the ordinary poker player. =)

Another great example is Moneybookers. Did we have any recourse when they suddenly decided to shut us Asians down? Heck, we can whine all we want in our forums but at the end of the day. They said FUCK YOU to us and we said THANK YOU. If you had all your bankroll in a site where they only accept Moneybookers, then its highly irritating to have to figure out a way how to get your own hard earned money back in your grubby hands.

So how do you protect yourself? Well, you can’t really do anything except cry to your mommah if a poker site decides to cheat you or suddenly freezes your bankroll or worse, closes shop. But you can reduce the risk by keeping your bankroll spread in 3 or 4 different sites. This way, even if something happens to one, its basically just 20% to 25% of your total bankroll.

If you’re a beginner, don’t worry too much about diversifying. You probably don’t have enough online money to do this anyway. But I hope you get the point that I’m trying to say. Bankroll management (having enough buy-ins) is key and should be every player’s primary concern. But there is nothing to lose if you also diversify your bankroll. You actually gain many advantages other than reducing your risk. You can avail of continuous bonuses by switching from one site to the other and personally I find it’s a good way to avoid tilt. Going from one site where you are on a losing streak to another site usually makes a big difference on my outlook. Also, you are kept aware of all the promotions and tourneys being offered by the different sites such that you can choose the fishiest tables or the juiciest MTTs to play anytime of the day.