Travelling the world for poker is a dream for many in the poker community. Attending a live stop, whether that’s in Prague, Jeju, the Bahamas, Brazil, or one of many US cities, the opportunity to score big while seeing what the world has to offer is just one of the many perks that come with playing poker. In a sense, poker travel is the nuts.
The majority of poker tournaments are “open.” Any poker player can catch the next flight, pony up the entry fee and go for glory. However, not even full-time poker professionals take every opportunity to travel. Why? For an MTT pro, only one thing matters: ROI.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI is the measurement used to determine the profitability of an investment. Unlike cash game players who are more concerned with an hourly winrate, tournament professionals think about how much on average they earn per game played minus average buy-in and fees. Converted to percentages, you have an ROI.
Like every person entering the field, tournament professionals hope to make a run in this one and maybe even visualize themselves taking it down. However, professionals think in terms of large samples. While positive outcomes on the day would be welcomed with open arms, to a professional, today’s results don’t really matter.
In poker tournaments, the prize money is heavily concentrated around the final table payouts with the heaviest concentration around podium finishes (1st, 2nd, 3rd). If a player attends a 1,000-runner tournament — all luck and skill being equal — they should win the tournament 1 in 1000 times. They should finish runner-up 1 in 1000 times. They should place 3rd 1 in 1000 times. However, there are only 8 or 9 final table finishes available. In this tournament, maybe 150 runners will make the money (ITM). That means 850 times out of 1000, a player should expect to leave with a memory, a lesson, or heartbreak.
Even once in the money, they will have played all day for a min-cash or slightly more. But a tournament poker pro, with a more developed skill set than average, wagers they will min-cash more often, run deep more often, final table more often, podium and win more often than their average opponent. This translates to more money won than average. In other words, they have a positive ROI. As long as they can get enough volume in (play enough games), they anticipate profit. Unless…
Expenses: The ROI Killer of Poker Travel
One of the greatest deterrents to poker travel is the cost of travelling. You can think about travel costs — flights, lodging, food — as business expenses. A business takes on expenses assuming they will help in being more profitable. For example, a company that manufactures goods may send a rep to an international trade show with the expectation of finding enough new buyers to make up for the expenses incurred from the trip. If they expected that the rep would fail in getting business, they might save their liquidity for something else. Similarly, a tournament professional, when considering a live stop, is thinking about their trip’s ROI. If they determine, the expenses are such that the trip can’t be profitable, they might duck out.
READ MORE: Wanna Be a Poker Pro? Calculate How Much You’d Need to Earn
Example:
Let’s say you know without a reasonable doubt you make 40 cents on the dollar for every tournament entered; a coveted 40% ROI. You hear about a poker series in a faraway land that starts next week and decide to check out the schedule. You could afford to play five of the events, totaling $5,500 in buy-ins. Long-term, with your approximated 40% ROI, you expect to make $2,200 on top of your buy-ins. This would be a 11-day trip when you include travel.
Estimated Costs:
- Last Minute Return Flight: $500
- Lodging: $1000 ($100 per night)
- Commuting: $250 ($10 Uber to and from card room from hotel/AirBNB per day, $25 to and from airport)
- Food: $750 ($75 per day)
- Lost Income: $1650 ($150 per day)
In total, you would incur $4,150 in costs. But you only made $2,200 in expected tournament ROI. Even though you won at poker, you end up with $1,950 poorer than when you left home. Does this mean you are bad at poker? Absolutely not. A $40 ROI is very good. Your ROI suggests you are great at poker.
So what’s the problem? Well, while you are really good at poker, it turns out you are… kind of bad at business. Sound business sense will have looked at that series, calculated the costs and deducted them from your expected ROI and found that the trip was not worth attending. Unfortunately, love for the game alone does not make you a pro.
How does a Professional Player Plan their Poker Travel?
There are 3, maybe 4, factors that a poker playing professional considers when determining if a stop will likely be profitable:
- Expenses: Covered earlier. Basically, if you keep your costs low, you keep more of the money made. Live within or below your means. In the earlier example, you could have booked your flight in advance for a lower ticket fare, booked a room with a friend who would also split your cab to cut those costs in half. While those two things may not have made your trip profitable, they would have reduced the amount of bleed.
- Volume: Rather than attending a trip with five events you could play, you could hold out and look for an opportunity where you can play 10 events at the same average buy-in within the same time frame. Now you are slightly profitable on the trip. For something like this, you might want to consider some of the major series in the poker calendar (WSOP, December in Vegas).
- Game Selection: In the earlier example, you had a 40% ROI. On rare occasions, you may have the opportunity to play games where the ROI is significantly higher. If you play cash games, it might be that this particular stop has very good cash games. In any case, the available games can sometimes increase your ROI such that taking on a premium for last-minute travel or a pricier stay can be worth it.
- Happiness (a.k.a., “the maybe 4”): Professionals aren’t robots. Sometimes pros will attend live stops where they are breaking even or maybe even slightly losing because the destination provides enough overall value to make up for the additional spend. In this case, it’s a trade of poker ROI for happiness value. Don’t we pursue ROI for happiness anyway? Money isn’t everything. Likewise, you might read this and accept that the next trip you are planning is a losing one but you’ll go because competing and/or the destination have some $ value to you.
There will always be live stops and opportunities to go for it. A mistake many make is FOMO-booking poker travel for events they consider must-plays that are outside their bankroll, above their skillset, or poorly considered. However, not all profitable spots are must-plays. You are allowed to wait for the most profitable ones. Saying “no” to one good trip in favor of the best ones and for your poker longevity is usually a good thing. But, you only live once. I, for one, would not condemn FOMO-booking a trip that involved beaches on the Virgin Islands. A little frivolity never hurt anyone but remember, you can have too much of a good thing.