Poker has some strange math sometimes. The little tip I’m going to share with you here is one of those arcane poker tips that many people don’t tend to think about as being advantageous. The topic: buy-ins.
Sometimes, just by buying into a tournament you can gain a financial advantage. Now the events that set up this advantage is an extremely rare event, so I wouldn’t try to build a career around it, but if you get the chance to take advantage of it, I’d hop on the opportunity.
Here is the breakdown. The secret is in the prize pool overlay compared to the number of players. Let’s say a tournament has a guaranteed 100,000 dollar prize. Now, in order for you to have an advantage, three things have to be met. One, the number of poker players has to be low enough to already be making money just from buying in. Let’s say the buy-in is 100 dollars. This means that if less than 1000 players register, you’re buy-in is already making you money.
Now the math: 100000/1000 = 100. That’s the guaranteed prize, divided by the number of players that equals the amount of the buy in. An easy way to figure this out is to divide the total prize by the buy in amount. 100000/100 = 1000. This gives you your maximum number of players that the tournament can hold and still have your buy in making you money.
Let’s say the tournament only has 550 players. We do the math: 100000/550 = 181.81. So you’re buy in is now worth 181.81 and you only paid 100 for it. This is a net gain of 81.81. This amount is the added value of the tournament. This means that you can add 81.81 to your winnings as that is the amount you saved (i.e. didn’t have to risk) to win whatever amount you won. Don’t you just love intangible financial instrument, ha ha?