As I suggested last week ‘Rounders’, on the Microgaming network, provides a rare opportunity to win money with minimal risk through the process of token building. The best players reach the point where they may never lose any actual money in this format; surely a unique boast to be able to make in a game with the variance of poker. Of course the variance still exists, but the impact of it is absorbed by the token count not the bank balance. The Rounders ‘pros’ will simply play a few Round 5s a week or month after reaching their personal token targets courtesy of the lower levels. This way they effectively freeroll at games that can reap them $3000 on a regular basis. So how do they do it?
The secret of success is to never move up a level until you’ve given yourself a buffer of tokens to protect against a bad losing run. This way, if you are losing, you take the time to rebuild the token count while the bank balance remains the same. Psychologically, this is a huge morale-boost. Furthermore, you’ve almost inadvertently created good financial practice for your poker bankroll!
Another important benefit of this approach is that you’re not heading back to square one every time you have some bad luck. Many players come to Rounders for the first time and have three good games to race them through Rounds 1-3. They then go to Round 4 full of hope and expectation as the prospect of turning a small initial investment into a big cash prize looms large. One bad beat later and they are out with nothing to show for their efforts after three good games out of four. From excited, they become instantly demoralised and decide that Rounders are a waste of time, vowing never to play them again. This is a shame, but with their logic, quite understandable. Of course it’s unrealistic to assume you will have five good games in a row without bad luck destroying you at some point. But the canny players have taken the time and shown the discipline to ensure that they never have to play the lowest levels again.
Here is a token-building strategy that I would suggest, beginning on Round 2, where the entry fee is $27.5. (See last week’s blog for the full Rounders structure). As I’ve outlined already a novice will probably take the 124 tokens earnt by way of a top 2 finish and head for Round 3. Instead, resist the temptation and re-invest in Round 2. In the long term, given the relatively poor standard of opposition at this level, a good player could hope to finish in the top 2 once every three games on average. (Note that a 3rd place finish redeems your tokens for another shot at Round 2 and therefore doesn’t count as a loss in this calculation.) So for every 72.5 tokens invested a return of 124 seems possible. If this did occur then the token count would be progressed from 124 to 175.5. At this rate of accumulation it would be realistic to play 14 or 15 Round 2 games to reach a token count somewhere in the region of 372. What’s the significance of 372 tokens? That’s the amount required to buy into three Round 3 tournaments.
At this point I would consider moving up to playing Round 3, although this decision is very arbitrary. I know for a fact that some cautious fellows would want quite a few more tokens before make the step up. I would argue that a good player wants to spend as little time as he can get away with at the less productive levels where his skills are being under-utilised. That said, I allow for the possibility of dropping back to Round 2 if the first couple of games go badly. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained from becoming impatient at this stage. If I lose the first two Round 3s then I can return to the previous level with 124 chips (or more if I’ve finished 5th in either) and all is not lost. But hopefully this will not happen.
The beauty of Round 3 is that if you win one (top 4) and lose 1 (6th or lower) you don’t just break even, you come out 55 tokens up (82.5 tokens up if you finish 5th in the ‘losing’ game). So put simply, a player who can finish in the top 4 out of 10 half the time will accumulate tokens quickly. For example, let’s say with the acquired 372 tokens I finish top 4 in the first but get unlucky and end 6th in the second game. That’s ok; I now have 427 tokens. If I hit the top four 50% of the time after 22/23 games I’ll hit the magic mark of 1000 tokens. Note that it only requires 605 tokens to play Round 5 but we’re looking for the best way to play lots of those with minimal risk. Consider also that a player with a 50% success rate on Round 3 will prosper even faster if he ‘bubbles’ in 5th position very often at all. The booby prize of 27.5 chips seems irrelevant and disappointing when you just miss out on 300, but these consolation prizes still add up over time.
On Round 4 five out of ten players can earn the 605 credits that represent a Round 5 entry. This is my favourite level in many regards as the realisation that finishing 5th out of 10 equals mission accomplished seems encouraging. A good player may realistically aspire to progress about 66% of the time or twice in every three games now. At this rate of success I would miraculously turn my 1000 tokens into more than 3100 in just 21 further games. That’s enough for five cracks at the big money of Round 5 there and then.
But having put in all this hard work to set-up this position it would be almost criminal to play five big games in a row and return to 0 tokens. My suggestion would be to only play the money level when you hit your target buffer level – for me that’s 3100 tokens (more than 5 buy-ins). After playing that first Round 5 I’ll be down to 2500 chips, regardless of the outcome. Hopefully I’ll have another $3k in the bank but no matter I want to return to 3100 tokens before I play that level again. At this stage I may opt to only play Round 4s in the interim, and this target may be reached again in just a few games. So my reward for all that slog and patience is that I can now be regularly playing Round 5s, effectively as freerolls, for the foreseeable future. You can’t argue with that.
Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker