If you are a serious online poker player you no doubt have a Poker Stars account. The largest online poker site in the world is also the best, for a variety of reasons. For one thing the game selection is unbeatable, which is the number one concern of a professional online poker player. The second concern is the rake, and not by coincidence Stars also has the lowest overall rake. There isn’t a whole lot of reason to play anywhere else, truth be told.

But the real attraction here are the tournaments. It doesn’t take an online poker player very long to realize that MTT’s are where the real money is in online poker. You simply aren’t going to have a $20,000 payday any other way (outside of being one of those rich knuckleheads who play the really high stakes games). Besides this, tournaments are a better deal than cash games. If you are selective in which ones you enter you will have an automatic edge in every one that you enter. This is very difficult to do in cash games because of the rake.

When in comes to MTT’s the bigger they are the better for the serious player. This may run counter-intuitive for some, as large fields seem like a lottery at first glance. But it’s the large fields that create the overlay, as many people simply have no chance of cashing whatsoever. Also, the tournaments shrink at an exponential rate so all the extra tables really do is sweeten the prize pool. Just play smart and hit your hands and you’ll be fine - which is what you must do in a smaller tournament anyway, so you may as well play for a heck of a lot more prize money.

Here are the best ones for your buck:

• Daily $32,000 at 12:00 noon EST ($20+2)

• Daily $80,000 at 3:00 pm EST ($50+5)

• Nightly $70,000 at 10:00 pm EST ($10+1 with rebuys)

…and of course the huge Sunday tournaments with the bigger buyins, which you may need to satellite your way into.

Then there’s the special events like the WCOOP and the January Caribbean Adventure. You’ll want to keep an eye on these and play satellites for them as the events approach. Scoring a high finish in one of these special events should be your ultimate goal, using the dailies as a stepping stone. If you do well in the dailies your bankroll should finance them comfortably. Even if your satellite efforts fail, you might want to buy into some of the special events directly.

Technorati Tags: Poker, Poker stars, Poker tournaments, Poker strategy, Online poker

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 6:59 pm and is filed under strategy. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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