Chip Management

Do you want to be more consistent in increasing your chips? Even if you lose in tournaments?
With the proper motivation from your poker buddies, confidence, excellent knowledge of your skill level, and a winning tournament formula...You can't go wrong!

Try to figure out how many tournaments on average it takes you to 'place' (1st, 2nd, or 3rd).
Eg.) If you know that you can place say 1 out of every 3 times on average, then you have a relatively good knowledge of your Tournament Skill Level .

Next, focus on ending the week with more chips than you started with. Easier said than done, I know, but if your primary goal is not to increase your Chip Wealth , then you can be sure that someone else will be increasing theirs at your expense. We all have or will come across a player that says, "Well I only play facebook poker (Zynga's Texas Holdem) for fun". Don't believe them. Poker is a game that we all play to win. After all, winning is what actually makes it fun.

Now that we know our skill level and set our goal, we must work out how to go about achieving it.

We all have a tournament cost that we are comfortable with. Whether it is 1K, 10K, or 50K, there is usually a certain priced tournament that we play the most. The more chips we attain, the higher this price becomes.

If we place 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, we win back our original buy-in amount plus more. This is straight forward. But what if we were to play in more than one tournament?

For example, let's assume that we have 30,000 chips and we usually play 1K tourneys. The cost will be 3,000 chips plus an additional 50 per tournament.
If we play 3 tournaments, the total cost is 3,150 (1,050 x 3).

If we win just one of those tournaments, our reward is 4,500 chips. Enough to cover the cost of all three 1K tournaments (reward does not include original buy-in cost), or an increase in total chips to 31,350 (about 5%). Imagine if we win all three...

If we place 2nd and 3rd in just two out of three tournaments, our reward is 2,700 + 1,800 + 0 = 4,500. The same amount.

If we place 3rd and 3rd in two out of three, our reward is 1,800 + 1,800 + 0 = 3600. This just covers the cost of the three tournaments with some chips to spare. This should be our minimum goal.
Just keep in mind that if we play 3 tournaments:
1st+1st+1st = win
1st+1st+2nd=win etc.
All the way down to:
Lose+3rd+3rd=win

This is A Winning Tournament Formula.

Your 'poker buddies' can be good motivation. If a few of them have slightly more chips than you, it serves as a reasonable goal to catch them. If they win, you should find ways to win too.

We all know how important confidence is in our playing styles . This is why finding the right tournament price is so important. Generally, it is best to play at a cost that we are most comfortable with, so that we don't play like we are afraid to lose.

This Chip Management Strategy is to be continued...stay tuned for 'Varying Tournament Costs to Your Advantage' and 'Table Game Chip Extraction'.

Legend (I know you know, but some people might not)
Tourneys = Tournaments
K = Amount of chips x 1000
Buy-in = the amount you have to pay to enter a tournament
Place = Finishing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd

Chip Management