Internet Tournaments for Fun and Profit (1)

I have been playing on the Internet for a couple of years, mostly tournaments, mostly breaking even. I am about £1000 down, mainly due to a brief spell of trying $100/$200 comps and some poor cash play. In a nutshell it is not easy to make significant, consistent money in Internet tournaments, especially playing the most common form, NL Hold-em. I have detailed the difficulties with HE tournaments below. On the Internet there is an additional problem which is that there are so many runners. While 10% of the field gets paid, sneaking in the money (B&M and online) tends to minimise your losses or at best keep you afloat. You make your profit by finishing top three, and preferably winning. When your tournaments have anything from 100 runners up, you can go a long long time in between making the big scores you need. By the way the same argument applies to playing festival tournaments on a regular basis.

However I am on an upturn online recently, having cleared $500 this week. Of course I had some luck along the way, but I’m now much more sure that I am playing in games which have significant positive expectation. These games are : super-satellites, speed tournaments and Omaha Hi-Lo. As I have the week off I will (probably – no promises) post a little bit about each one and why it’s more profitable than a standard Internet NL tournament. Without giving away too many secrets – coaches in the car part after all :-)