How often should I win my 40 person hold em tourny b4 I can consider myself 'good' ie able to make a living?

Question

I play in a 40 person texas hold em poker tournament every week. Same players every time, some are very good... a few very bad, but pretty much everyone knows how to play... At what rate should I be winning b4 I start entering bigger buy in events?

Or should I judge on hitting the money? (top 6 paid)

I guess what I want to know is... if a REALLY good poker player sat down at this tournament and played the same number of times as I did... how often would he be expected to win. I have read that playing online one table SnG's that if you are 'good' you should win 1 out of 3 times with typical players.

For added info... 3 of the players I play in this tournament with have one their way in to the 10,000 main event at WSOP... there truly is some 'good' players there. We have another private tournament (most of the same people but on a different night that I don't play) and one of the regulars hit the money in the main event.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, your results in this tournament really aren't going to be all that revealing of how good or bad you actually play. Someone could win a 40 person tournament three times in a row, but end up losing money after playing the tournament 1,000 times. Most pro poker players make their money in cash games. If you can play 300 tournaments and be ahead money wise then it's pretty likely that you are a winning tournament player. If after 1,000 tournaments you are ahead then you are almost certainly a winning tournament player. If after playing 20,000 cash game hands you are ahead then it's very likely you are a winning cash game player, if after playing 60,000 cash game hands you are ahead then you are almost certainly a winner playing that cash game.

Money is what keeps score for you in poker. If over the long run you are ahead the more likely it is that you are playing a winning game, if over the long run you are behind the more likely it is that you are playing a losing game. So keep track of your results over long periods of time to find out how good you are. Cash game pro's win almost every month. The best cash game players can easily go many years or even a lifetime without a losing month. I don't know as much about tournament pro's, but I would say that losing months for them are a lot more common.

Answer 2

When you are able to realize that this is a very small sample. Try entering a bigger tourney with some NEW people and see how you do. TH is a very demanding game and it has more luck involved than you think. TH is also becoming harder because you keep getting bad beats from people who shouldn't even be playing. More and more people get in for the "quick" buck and that increases the chances of LOSING just by bad luck. (I used to play in other tourney formats in the 80's and as more and more people started joining tourneys the Luck factor was too hard to get over so I quit and found better endeavors) The biggest factor in making a living in poker is to already have enough money that YOU DO NOT NEED TO MAKE A LIVING at it. Then you just might make it.

Answer 3

I think you have to mix up the people you play with. Once you play with certain people you kinda know how they play. When playing with strangers, its a lot harder to read them. Also practice playing in tournament that last a long time. Professional poker tournaments last for days (usually 5 to 7). That requires a lot of patience a lot of decieving. So work on that.