Easy Money (or as close to it as you can find in online poker)

This is my first post on my blog. I am not going to bore you with my background, etc. etc. I am a amateur poker player, and I am not all that great. I have my moments, but I tend to play bigger than I probably should and I tend to blow through my online roll pretty quickly. I have just recently started playing better live, which has lead to a few cashes and winning cash game sessions. But nothing serious at all.

And I figure the majority of poker players are in my boat these days. We cannot all be winning players - that is impossible. The fish don't lose enough money to make everyone else winning players. That being said, I am trying my best to get better. And hopefully I will eventually turn that corner. I hope to learn a lot from those who post comments here. And who knows - you may learn something from me too, although I am thinking those will be rare occurrences indeed.

OK - the one thing that I think I have got down pat online is the art of the cheap satellite tourney. Specifically, the satellite tourney to win $26 tokens on Full Tilt. The one in particular that I love is the $8.70, 18-person tournament they have to win a token. You have to finish in the Top 6 to cash ($14) and the Top 5 for the token.

Why do I love this tournament? For starters, it is just cheap enough to attract really bad players, especially players who do not know how to transition from a regular tournament to a satellite tournament. And what is so great about them? You simply have to play ABC poker to regularly win. Wait for premium hands and pounce. There are just enough fish to pay you off when you hit, and just enough other good players to stay out of your way while you pick off the fish. And, of course, you should stay out of there way while they do the same.

In order for this to make sense, you need to win slightly more often than every 3 tournaments you play. If you play ABC for the greater majority of these tournaments, you should easily win every other time you play. That would be on average spending $17.40 to win $26, which is just under 50% profit.

Unfortunately, you must use these tokens to play in other tournaments, so you do not realize the profit from these tournaments immediately. But Full Tilt runs $24+$2 tournaments several times during the day. If you have a tournament you regularly play that has this buy-in, you MUST start playing these token satellites. You immediately will reap in the benefits by saving yourself around $10 every time you play. And the better you get at the satellites, you ROI should get even better (I have recently started scoring about 2 tokens for every 3 satellites I play). And one good score in the $26 tournament can make your investment in the satellites even feel more rewarding? What's better: winning a tournament you spent $8.70 to get into or $26? Psychologically, you would be amazed how much that $17.30 savings means to you when you cash.

Another way to invest those $26 tokens is by using them in another satellite tournament. There are $24+$2 satellite tournaments for $75 tokens as well. Same format as the $8.70 tourneys. The only difference is that with the $8.70 tournaments you have both Turbo and Regular tourneys to choose from, while on the $26 tournaments you merely have Regular speed to choose. But in this format, 6th place pays $60+, so even if you bubble the token you still end up with a decent payday. All for the initial investment of a mere $8.70. You can then use the $75 token to play in several higher dollar buy-in tournaments for a fraction of the price. Or you can even use these tokens on special single table SNG's where the top prize is $310.50. For those keeping score at home, if it takes you two times to score a $26 token, two times to win a $75 token, and two times to win, that is a 220% ROI if you are able to win the single table SNG.

As most people know, I am a Razz fanatic. While I play ring games a lot, I mostly like to play the nightly $2,000 Guarnatee at 8:15PM on FTP. It is a $24+$2 buy-in, and I am now at the point that if I don't have a token to buy-in, I just don't play. It just makes sense to play that way. It forces me to makes good decisions while playing my satellite tourney so that I am ensured to win the token so I can play the nightly tourney. In fact, I am in the process of stockpiling tokens right now so that when I go on my business trip next week I don't have to worry about a thing and just hop online at 8:15 each night and play. Right now I am 4-for-4 in that endevour. With one cash in any of the 5 tourneys I play next week, I will be an overall winner. And all I have to say is if I don't cash at least once next week, then I may quit playing for awhile. But the Razz tourney is a topic for another post on another day.

So make sure and take advantage of the $8.70 satellite SNG tourneys. It saves me from losing more than otherwise normally would. Hopefully it will help you as well.