Don't get blinded by prizes

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
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It’s the holiday season…

After you have gone through the Xmas motions you might find yourself with some free time in your hands. And possibly like few other folks you head over to online poker tables.

If this is you and you are not a regular player, I want you to pause for a minute. During the holidays there is more fish in the sea, but if you are one of the fishes you are not making any favours to yourself by going with the flow.

Even if you are not a seasoned player you can increase your chances of making some money by selecting your games carefully.

I want you to think of two example games that are quite common at least on some sites, and contemplate on the differences.

The other one is a normal speed $500 guaranteed deepstack tournament, and the other a PKO tournament with $1.5k guaranteed. The structure in both games was quite similar, and so was the buy-in - $5.50.

Off the top your head which one would you choose?

Most people would choose the game that seems bigger. But is it the wise choice?

Let’s see…

What if I told you that in this sample, at the end of late registration 137 players in total had registered into the $500 game, and 404 players into the $1.5k game. And I’m not excluding the players who had already been dropped from the tournaments.

Does this change your view?
The prize money in the bigger game seems triple but is it really?

True, the bigger game is PKO but since you can sail your way into ITM without knocking out a single player I wouldn’t count-on on the bounties unless you are able to go really deep in the tournament.

The eye opening factor reveals itself when we look at the payouts.

On the $500 game there were 29 ITM positions starting from $10.32 to $132.95 for the first.

But the bigger game must have bigger prizes?

Nope, not really.

Bigger player pool dilutes the payouts. In this case there were 69 ITM positions starting from $5.71 and ranging up to $132.26.
So in fact the first prizes were pretty much identical!

Would you still choose the bigger game? I wouldn’t. Smaller field = less variation = better chances to make your way into money!

The takeaway here is not to start looking for these spefic games but to understand how field sizes effect the the prize money, and your chances of succeeding.
However, if you choose the smaller game you might come against opponents who have already understood what I just told you and they are not there just to enjoy the holidays.

Now go and have a good one, but be careful out there!

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NOOOO, the opposite please:)—EVERYONE with extra money (especially fish lol) please play online small cash games and look for me:)----Have a great and safe holiday everyone.

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I would probably go for the smaller game anyway because I like smaller fields. They take less long to finish and u might see players u already know. Plus u need a big run anyway so in the end it does not matter that much.

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r300xounders-john-malkovich
r300xounders-john-malkovich300×300 30.4 KB

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As our wise OP has laid out, smaller fields don’t just reduce variance—they give you a fighting chance to actually see some ROI before you start writing “Dear Santa” letters for your bankroll.

The moral? Choose wisely. The smaller game might be less glamorous, but your wallet will thank you. And remember, it’s not just about the prize pool—it’s about playing smart, not just playing festive.

Good luck, merry poker, and may your bad beats be few and your rivers kind. And if you’re the one who knocks me out with J-4 offsuit… well, let’s just say the holiday spirit only goes so far.

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Really should compare apples with apples. In a PKO tournament half of the prize pool goes to the bounty pool and half to the payout pool. So yes the payout pool amounts actually are less since the number of players cashing is higher and the payout pools are approximately the same but the total payout comes from both pools. You definitely can’t compare the top prizes to each other because the winner of the PKO gets the (payout + Bounty payout) and even if they only win that 1 bounty the total payout is nearly doubled. So if you outlast 330+ players to make the money odds are pretty good you collected a few bounties along the way. Is it possible to not win any bounties and your point is valid in those limited cases but to completely disregard the bounty pool isn’t being accurate either.

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True, but this post was aimed for the recreational players who play less often and most likely reach only min cash if even that.
Although I doubt they are readers of this forum.

Happy holidays :partying_face:

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Thank you for sharing this way of looking at events. It is often tempting to try for the bigger events but I see the wisdom of choosing smaller fields with similar payouts. We want the glory of beating a large field in a more prestigious event but at the end of the day, we want to earn money to build our bankroll or to use for special purchases. Game selection is super important but sometimes forgotten in the moment.

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I only player 7 stud my whole life-until i watched this great movie and learned texas-holdem by watching it, awww 12 times:).

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Smaller fields really do make a difference…
I always thought the bigger prize pool was better, but this opened my eyes
Definitely picking smaller games next time!

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I like big prizes . Big prizes can deliver you big surprised at the FT . Ok I am also trying to find such a different game , which might. have lower prizepool , but maybe better chances to win sth . Untill now I have found none . Maybe in the future who knows

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This post was relatively meaningless while pretending to have something to say, I’m afraid.

As @southwestmba points out, the fact that you excluded bounties from your comparison makes the resulting math pure fantasy. The numbers you’re using are not real numbers. They don’t reflect the actual value of placing in one tournament vs. the other.

Basically what you’ve done is start with the premise “the smaller field is better” and then used fraudulent accounting to reach the conclusion you want. At least, to be fair, you were completely transparent about the fraud.

Further, your whole hypothetical line of reasoning is based on a weird strawman with “but the bigger game must have bigger prizes?” I’m not sure why anyone would think this way. Clearly the game with bigger payouts is the game with bigger payouts, and this could either be the game with more or fewer entrants, or the game with bigger or smaller GTD money. None of these factors are necessarily related.

The whole setup seemed weirdly contrived as you first only told us the difference in the GTD money, then acted as if anyone would use that information to make assumptions about which tournament is more lucrative to enter—I’m not sure why anyone would do that. It seems trivial to observe that the amount of GTD money tells you literally nothing other than the amount of GTD money. Why would anyone think to make any other inferences from that obviously incomplete information?

Basically you’re like “Hey here are two tournaments with the same buy-in but different sized fields, which would you choose?”

Then you pretend that most people wouldn’t just say “uhhh idk, what’s the payout structure?”

Then you go on a weird rant about how this illusory assumption that the bigger field is better, which again it’s not clear why anyone would assume that, is wrong.

Anyway, good luck at the tables :smiley:

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You are most welcome to feel any way you like about my post.

What I replied to southwestmba applies to you as well. What I wrote was not written for those who already have a good understanding of poker or who have been around for years. It was written for those to whom poker is not important at all and come to tables maybe only during the holiday season. To them poker is pure entertainment.

You clearly underestimate the simplicity of some people. Just because you and I would not do that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who obviously don’t use their braines when it comes to poker. If people were actually that logical no-one would play actual lottery games and yet people do.

Good luck at the tables to you too :+1:

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Lovely topic Naforole,

on the logic side of math you have to play the smaller tournament because if you play against 137 players, your chance to win or reach the paid prizes is always better than to try your luck in a bigger tourney with 400 and more players.

2nd thing is the time you spend while playing because a torunament with over 400 players needs more time@ table and if you dont reach the top 15-20, the prize structure is always your enemy because with at least 404 players, the paid rankings in the last rows are nearly a bad joke.
In relation to your wasted time such results cant be satisfying ;-).

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The best games to play are the ones that don’t meet the guarantee. It doesn’t matter how big or large the field is once the guarantee is met - unless your play style is better suited to one or the other.

If you’re a fairly tight passive player who’s just looking to make it into the money as often as possible, you can probably fold your way there in large fields. If you’re more aggressive/willing to gamble and looking to win rather than cash, you’ll have more success in small fields.

If you fall into the first category though, then PKO’s are not for you. They don’t reward that style at all, and that easily overrides whatever influence the size of the field has.

Neither of these things is necessarily true. Fields with more players are going to have more bad players. They pay more places, so it should almost always be easier to make the money in a larger field. How long a tournament takes is almost entirely dependent on the blind structure. How many entrants there are doesn’t make much difference.

Anyway, whether one is better than the other or not, the differences rarely matter much, and the takeaway for recreational players should be that they just don’t need to care and can just play whatever tournaments they like.

No, they really don’t. Just play whatever tournaments are convenient/appealing and don’t worry about field size. I wouldn’t even worry about the guarantee honestly.

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Smaller fields is not always better in a 1 size fits all way, as has been noted by others, PKO being a example.

There are Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large field tournaments.

Say there is a pro named Sam, that is going to beat you, in a small 9 player tournament. Sam probably wont get knocked out before you in hands losing to Sam. But in a large tournament, Sam can be eliminated from the tournament before you would end up playing Sam.

Thats 1 way larger tournaments can be better.

Another way, is that larger field tournaments have more fish, donks then pros, which altho increases variance thru getting bad beat out by a fish, that is balanced by not playing as many sharks.

Another way large field tournaments can be better for pros, sharks, at least, is that very good, great players can often cash, win quite frequently in mid to semi larger tournaments, as long as not a extral large, largest tournament.

Example if a pro had to choose between a 16 player tournament filled with sharks, and a 100 player tournament, and a 1000 player tournament, the Pro would probably choose the 100 player tournament because 1. They can still cash, win it quite frequently. 2. Does not have all the sharks in the smaller tournament. 3. The 100 player tournament probably will have a better prize pool, then the smaller tournament, and even if the prize pool is more spread out, the pro know the can finish high to win enough that would be more then what would get in smaller 16 player tournament.

The pro probably would not choose a 1000 to 5000 player tournament over the 100 player, 16 player tournaments, because 1000 to 5000 players would be too much variance, etc.

Now for Fish Smaller fields would probably be more profitable for them over the long term, assuming they are up against other fish, and not sharks, etc.

But if the fish has to face sharks, pros in the smaller field tournament, then the fish is better served playing in the mid sized tournament, instead of the small tournament, because the pros, sharks might get knocked out before the fish has to face those sharks.

And for those who like the challenge of larger tournaments, if they are fish, etc, then it doesnt matter if they play larger tournaments or smaller tournaments, as they probably are going to lose over the mid term to long term anyways, unless they get very lucky, no matter what size tournament they play.

So smaller tournaments are NOT ALWAYS better for everyone.