Ways to Work Out Potential Return on Tournament Buy In

Poker is a game of skill in so many ways: Not only does the player need to evaluate his own cards while assessing the probability of winning, they have to also manage their emotions at the table while looking to perfect that classic ‘poker face’.

The game can also feature a certain amount of arithmetic. High stakes tournaments can set stiff buy in levels and the player needs to decide whether they are comfortable in parting with thousands of dollars upfront.

Do the Math...

Serious players need to be able to calculate their Return on Investment which is relatively easy to do when they’ve actually won a tournament. However, it’s not quite as simple when you’re looking at the potential for returns ahead of that buy in. For the seriously stellar events such as the WSOP Online, there is a significant buy in that runs into seven figures. At the other end of the scale, a regular online tournament may only require an up front cost of $200.000.

Whatever option you decide to take, you will still need to do some calculations before parting with those hard earned dollars. Long term poker players should always keep a profit and loss account in order to modify their gameplay.

Poker Potential

For our example, we will assume that you have entered a poker tournament where the buy in is set at $200.00. It could be an online event or a tournament at any of the main casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City or anywhere else in the real world.

We now know what our outlay is going to be so what do we stand to gain in return? It’s vital, at this point, to be aware of the full range of prize money made available. Let’s therefore assume that in return for that $200.00 buy in, the top prize for the winner of the tournament is $10,000.

Someone has to win it and this is all about calculating potential so, a basic equation tells us that the final profit could be as much as $9.800.00. If we use an ROI calculator, we can quickly see that this arrives at a very healthy sum of 4,900%.

From this point, players can work through the prize money options and perform similar calculations. The worse case scenario is that you will lose all of your upfront fee and return with nothing but for many, they will want to begin with a more positive starting point.

Review Your Work

We would suggest that it’s important now to go back over your Profit and Loss sheet and to see where your numbers stand. If you’ve been on a disappointing streak then perhaps you should consider whether you’re chasing one big payday in order to balance things out. If that is the case, perhaps you should bypass buy ins and look for free entry tickets while your figures improve.

As we can see, those sums are all part of your overall poker strategy so keep crunching the numbers as you look for success at the tables.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.