Multi Table Tournaments: Fund your multiple table tournaments (MTTs) by playing single table sit-and-gos (SNGs) and cash games:

Playing MTTs are the only way to make significant gains in your bankroll. The problem with this is that it difficult to make significant gains playing MTT’s… (Huh?) What I mean is that typically, MTTs are structured so that the top 10% will be “in the money” (ITM). AND, the payouts are top heavy, which means that you need to make the final table to win some major cash relative to your buy in. Anything less than that is basically SNG prize money (with a lot of extra time and effort)

To put some real numbers into this… a good poker player's MTT’s ITM is at about 16%, or 10 out of 70 buy-ins. Now out of those ITMs, a good poker player will usually make a final table 10% of the time, or about 1 out of the same 70 buy-ins! (I hope that you’re still with me here…) For example, imagine that you only have $70 and you only play $1 MTTs, which usually has a 1st place prize of about $200.

The minimum ITM average (10th-100th in a 1000 entrant tournament) would be about $4 for simple math here. Out of 70 MTTs that were played, you would win back $36 from the 9 out of 10 ITMs based on the 16% from earlier. You would then have to win 4th place or better in the ONE chance you get at the final table to equal, or beat your starting bankroll (BR)! BTW, a good poker player’s top 3-finish percentage is about 1%. That means that you would need to play 700 MTT’s before making a top 3-finish!

The point of all this (if you got confused, just take my word for it!) is that you can’t keep a bankroll by only playing MTT tournaments. You’ll either be back to freerolling, or depositing. Neither is a good option once you’ve had a workable bankroll. It’s up to you to decide which method or combination of SNG’s and cash game sessions are right for you.