Don't glorify re-entries!
At some point, re-entering in tournaments became a badge of honor. It's also a great way to go broke.
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A few years ago, Alex Foxen famously won the Five Diamond WPT World Poker Classic by re-entering five times for a total of $50k in entries.
This is just one of many stories of famous pros re-entering multiple times to go deep in a tournament. Hell, I’ve even made jokes about it:
But re-entries are no laughing matter when it comes to your bankroll.
Let’s take an example:
Player A plays the same tournament schedule as Player B, two $1k tournaments a month for 10 months. Player A only buys in once for each tournament, while Player B enters twice.
Example 1: both players min cash for $2k for half the tournaments (10 total).
Player A total buy ins: $20k ($1k * 20)
Player B total buy ins: $40k ($1k * 40)
Player A and B total winnings: $20k ($2k * 10)
Player A total profit: $0 ($20k - $20k)
Player B total profit: -$20k ($20k - $40k)
—
What if Player B, bought 3x instead of 2x?
Player B total profit: -$40k ($20k - $60k)
Player B would typically need to finish in the top 18-27 players in an MTT just to break even on 3 entries. I very much doubt firing that many bullets will lead to the results that people assume are happening. Player B would need to outperform player A by beating roughly 10% more of the field, during the tougher later stages of the tournament.
—
What if Player B with 3 entries, final tabled 3 of the tournaments he cashed, for $80k?
Player B total profit: $194k ($14k + $240k - 60k), ROI: 323%
What if Player A also final tabled 3 tournaments?
Player A total profit: $234k ($14k + $240k - $20k), ROI: 1170%
These are massive differences in numbers. If you are lucky enough to go deep, it cuts dramatically into your earnings. If you don’t go deep, you will be deep in the red instead, and will take a while to claw your way back out.
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So why do tournament pros glorify re-entries if they can make you so unprofitable? Well, many pros are staked, meaning they raise money to play in poker tournaments, and give some of their winnings to their investors. The better they do in tournaments, the easier it is to get staked. And some players will even charge markup, which gives more of the profit back to the player, presumably because that player is good enough to command the extra profit. Again, the more success you have, the more markup you can charge. Markup in general is a pretty controversial topic in tournament poker.
On top of staking, players who can demonstrate success can attract more players to their own coaching sites, or land profitable sponsorships with poker sites or poker rooms. And content creators like Rampage and Brad Owen can grow their views and subscribers, making themselves a lot of money without having to gamble for it. The more you can succeed in your tournament results, the more opportunities you will get in the poker world, even if your ROI is negative (no one can ever really know).
So if you’re just a part time player trying to grind out some extra money every year, know that too many re-entries will absolutely kill your results, and the players you might be modeling after have very different goals in mind.
Daniel Negreanu had a brutal 2022 WSOP. He cashed for almost $260k, which might seem really good. And if he weren’t so transparent and public on what his buy-ins were, no one might have known he actually lost $1.2m for the summer! Very few pros are this transparent about their profit and loss, so just because you hear about a pro making $1m in one year, it’s probable their actual profit might have been $200-300k, with some of them actually breaking even or even losing money for the year. Tournaments are hard.
With all this being said, know your skill level, and know the skill level of the players in the tournaments that you’re playing in. Any buy in that you make will have it’s own expected ROI. For example, a $200 tournament at your local casino will be quite soft, and your expected ROI for that tournament might be 20%. A WPT $10k buy in would be significantly harder, and your ROI might even be negative, or just a few % above 0. But for the $200 tournament, *each* buy-in has a 20% expected ROI, assuming you’re not tilting your face off from all the rebuys, or trying to enter very short, like 10bb. This means your chances of winning are not reduced with each re-entry. What does get hit is your profitability, as the more buy-ins you have, the more your profit (if any) gets cut.
So it’s fine to re-enter if you feel you have significant edge, and it’s not something you make a habit of. But if you find yourself re-entering a lot every single tournament you play, keep an eye on your month over month and annual profitability. You don’t want to bust your bankroll and be out of action.
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Re-entries are a great way to corrupt poker tournaments. I know of large teams that are doing just that!