To win poker tournaments then you simply have to take risks. You have to take risks for one very important reason and this is that if you want to win a significant amount of money then you cannot do this playing safe or getting lucky from start to finish. Top players often say that you don’t win poker tournaments…… “you steal them”. There is an awful lot of truth behind this statement because with escalating blinds and antes then you simply do not have the time to amass chips by getting good hands.
The delicate balance in poker tournaments means that you are always trying to balance between surviving in the event and amassing chips. This means taking risks but calculated risks and not wild aimless risks. But you must embrace taking risks otherwise you will never win a large field poker tournament. Let us look at the difference between a top tournament player and a novice in terms of results in one hundred poker tournaments.
The top player cashes in 10% of the events while the novice cashes in 20%. This may seem strange at first but with a pay out prize pool of $100,000 and $100 for a minimum cash then you will quickly see what I mean here. The novice player plays far too tightly but as a result cashes more often. A total of 16 of those cashes are for the minimum making $1600. Another two cash for $150 while another two go quite deep and cash for $450 and $650 respectively!
So his total cash is $3000 which falls far short of the amount that he bought in for in total. However the top player wins an event and makes $30,000 and also picks up a further $12,000 in other major finishes and so amasses $42,000. This is despite only having a 10% cash percentage to the novices 20%.
