Remember the Epic Poker League? I know, I know, most poker players are trying to forget the massive fail that was the Epic Poker League, but there were plenty of lessons to be learned from the failed endeavor. At the top of that list is having trust in any business fronted by Annie Duke (or any member of the Lederer family for that matter), but perhaps the most important lesson tournament poker players and tournament organizers can take away from the Epic Poker League is that exclusive tournaments do not offer enough value to attract players. Professionals, semi-professionals and amateurs were put-off by the EPL’s competitive nature and there just wasn’t enough appeal for most people to play in these events.
Now, there are plenty of tournaments out there that don’t offer all that much value to players, and while not as bad as the Epic Poker League, these events feature everything from really tough player pools to massive fees and/or bad structures. That being said, there are some good-value tournaments to be found, even in today’s ultra-competitive poker world. In this column I’ll try to identify some of the tournament “soft spots” out there that you should be taking advantage of.
Finding Overlays
Locating tournaments that consistently have overlays should be very high on your priority list, especially in today’s poker world where guaranteed tournaments are becoming more and more the rule and not the exception. The best place to start looking for overlays is at some of the mid-tier online poker sites where traffic is strong enough for the site to host a major weekly tournament, but not to the point where the event is a lock to always meet its guarantee. There are plenty of weekly events that usually fall short of their guarantee, as do off-peak-time daily guaranteed tournaments.
So how lucrative can finding a tournament with a consistent overlay be? Imagine a $20 buy-in event with a $2,000 guarantee that only attracts an average of 80 players; creating a $400 overlay. All things being equal, playing in this event is the equivalent of playing in a $25 buy-in tournament. Taking this a step farther, imagine if you play the same 20 events a week for a grand total of $250 in buy-ins; if you can find a half-dozen of these events each week, where you are gaining $5 or $10 in added value, the overlays have basically increased your ROI by 5%. If you’re ROI is 25% (which works out to $62.50 in profit on your $250 in buy-ins) by finding a few events with overlays you should see your profits jump to $75/week, without spending an extra dime.
Satellite’s to Weekly Guarantees
Weekly Guaranteed events produce the biggest prize-pools and are high-value tournaments in and of themselves, since they attract a larger number of fish. Furthermore, many of these terrible players don’t have the money to play in a $215 buy-in tournament so they need to play in the tournament on the cheap; which is where satellites come in. As I said, and as you’ll see in the next header, weekly guarantees are good value themselves, but the satellites into these tournaments are even softer and one of the best values in poker.
The vast majority of players in these events are going to be well below-average in terms of skill, and if you come across solid players it’s easier to practice avoidance since these are super-satellites that award a certain number of seats and not progressively higher prize-money. These fish are simply playing the lottery, trying to spend $2 or $5 for a chance to win $100,000. If you’re a good tournament player there is no reason you should ever pay full price to play in a major Sunday tournament, you should be able to get in for at least (yes at least) half-price by playing in satellites –and that is a HUGE overlay!
Weekly Guarantees
If you’ve ever played in the Sunday Million on PokerStars or any other major weekly tournament you know that these events play more like a $5 buy-in event than the $200+ buy-in tournament they are. As I outlined in the previous header, one reason for this is the sheer number of satellite winners that play in the event, but this is not the only reason.
Another reason these tournaments have some of the softest fields is the massive prize-pool, which draws in the gamblers on the site, or players who are running hot and decide to take a shot at the big time. Not only are these players basically the definition of the proverbial “dead-money” but their style of play is pervasive, and the early stages of a major Sunday tournament can sometimes seem like a freeroll event, with wild bluffs and overbets, and crazy all-ins.
I should point out, that once you start getting close to the bubble in these events, and many of the fish and gamblers have been eliminated, the level of competition keeps going higher and higher, but because of the massive number of bad players these tournaments have a lot of value, even if you have to deal with BigDogPckt5’s and other tournament pros of the world when you make a deep run.
Freerolls
Yup, I went there; freerolls. Believe it or not freerolls are not necessarily a waste of your time… provided you’re playing in the right freerolls. In a second I’ll show you how you can quickly determine if a freeroll is worth playing, but before I do let me give you a little crash course on the level of play in a freeroll. The first thing you should know about freerolls is that they are not free, unlike a freespin slots bonus offered by most online casinos, a freeroll tournament will require you to make some kind of buy-in.
If you’ve ever wondered what tournament poker was like in 2004/2005 just play a freeroll –which will explain why poker from 2003-2006 was like having a printing press full of, “$50 dolla bills; hundreds and hundreds of $50 dolla bills,” as Data would say –Google The Goonies if you don’t know what I’m talking about and then go watch one of the best movies of all-time.
Because the competition is so soft in freerolls you will have a huge edge, which should play a major factor in your determination of whether or not the freeroll is worth playing. Ok, so how do you determine if a freeroll is worth playing? It’s pretty simple actually; all you have to do is divide the prize-pool by the number of players and you’ll see what the buy-in would be. So, if a freeroll has 250 players and has a $500 prize-pool than it’s the equivalent of a $2 buy-in tournament. But, as I said above, because the field is so damn soft I would double this number since your ROI should be at least double what it would be in a typical $2 tournament. This tournament would more likely be like playing in a $4-$5 buy-in event.
So don’t scoff at freerolls, especially if they are exclusive freerolls, which will have larger prize-pools and fewer players.
One other thing to consider is the sheer number of players who will be sitting out –players who registered for the freeroll and simply forgot about it or decided to do something else, because “it’s only a freeroll.” This just adds more value, since the number of players compared to the prize-pool is artificially inflated.