Advanced Poker Advice: Grinding From the Bottom on Bodog

by Smith Collins | Jan 8 2008

Even though poker hit the ground running in 2003 thanks to Chris Moneymaker's run along with the ESPN coverage, there are still a plethora of new players joining the game every day who are trying to build a bankroll from whatever spare change they have to work with. In my opinion, the easiest place to do this is most definitely at Bodog. I say this because I have done it and have helped at least five other players to financial freedom simply by following the path outlined below, which is actually quite simple.

No matter what bankroll you have to start, I highly recommend kicking off your poker career with beginner Sit and Go tournaments. There are 20-30 buy-ins to play at whichever level you choose with the $16 buy-in being the highest. The best part about these tournaments is that the top-five finishers place in the money! This is incredibly advantageous for bankroll building with players who don't exactly understand what "playing to win" means yet and who can slowly learn the game.

The strategy is very simple for these since you can just play very tight early on and keep the pots small until the blinds get bigger. Most of the time, you will probably make it into the money without the slightest double-up.

After you graduate from the beginner Sit and Go tournaments and you've beaten the $16 buy-ins silly until your bankroll is up to between $1,000 and $3,000, it might be time to start taking shots at the regular Sit and Go tournaments. For these, only the top-three places will receive money, so it's a good idea to have between 40-50 buy-ins for whatever level you plan on grinding just to account for variance. Again, the strategy for these is very simple and requires very little actual poker playing and more mathematically reasoned aggression than anything else. Sit and Go lectures are for another time. But for the most part, all you should be doing is playing tight early on and then stepping up the aggression whenever you sense weakness or are almost about to cash.

Once you get comfortable pounding on Sit and Go tournaments and have your bankroll up to a comfortable level where the short term downswings no longer affect your living conditions, you might be ready to splash around in the dangerous waters of the multi-table tournaments. These tournaments on Bodog are full of loose-weak players just begging to gamble without much thought. The problem is that there are usually between 100-1,000 people signed up for them. Even if there were only monkeys on computers filling up this tournament (which sometimes seems to be the case), you would still have a hard time winning most of the time due to variance.

Seeing this clearly is the only way to discipline yourself to not play outside of your bankroll, because it is pretty hard to consciously pay half of your bankroll to get into a tournament when you know you aren't going to see that money again 90 percent of the time. You should have a solid 100-200 buy-ins in order to be playing at the multi-table tournament level. But when you do hit that occasional home run hit, it will put all of that grueling Sit and Go grinding into perspective.

The easiest daily multi-table tournaments to play which are filled with the weakest players are the $2,000 Guaranteed that starts at 4 p.m. EST, the $16.50 Buy-In Turbo that begins at 6:45 p.m. EST, the $5,000 Guaranteed at 9 p.m. EST and the $3,000 Guaranteed at 10:45 p.m. The combined buy-in for these four tournaments is a measly $42.50, and you’ll have multiple shots at winning over $1,000 when you're finally playing well and getting lucky at the same time. It is very important to have this detached attitude with these poker tournaments. You lose so often that it would be silly not to. As you get more comfortable with your buy-ins or as your bankroll grows, you can begin to add in some other tournaments each day you are playing, which will increase your chances at having a big score.

Finally, this may seem like a quick and easy road to success, but in reality, it will take at least a year, sometimes longer depending on where you're going. Following this path takes discipline, patience, sacrifice and a little luck, but it has repeatedly worked for anyone who has put time into studying their poker game. I hope this helps at least one other person to graduate to the higher level tournaments. Maybe it will be you?