Are MTT careers about surviving long enough to have a big upswing?
Is tournament poker about losing as little as possible until you run like God? Barry Carter applies some recent insight from Warren Buffett to the game.
Warren Buffett sent his annual letter to his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders two weeks ago. In it, he had a quote that summed up something I have been thinking about poker for a while now.
Buffett is the world's most successful investor and Berkshire Hathaway had revenues of $302 billion in 2022. He has been investing since a teenager and is now 92.
In the letter he was modest about his success saying it was built on "about a dozen truly good decisions — that would be about one every five years." He added that "Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders".
A handful of big upswings
The quote got me thinking about poker. You have to make hundreds of good decisions every day in poker, but in tournaments at least I think the second part about "a few winners work wonders" is relevant.
I have been a bit obsessed with understanding variance recently and wrote about this graph, from a crusher in tournaments:
This player has profited over $1 million since 2006 but it had a lot of long losing and breakeven stretches over 55,000 MTTs. It has a four-year breakeven stretch and a four-year losing stretch.
But what I marveled at in this graph is the determination of the player to keep going during the breakeven stretches. It was that grit that kept them in the game long enough to enjoy four or five big upswings, including a $700k score.
A game of attrition
Tournament poker seems like a game where just a few big upswings make or break a career. We have certainly seen this when a relatively unknown player bursts onto the scene after one big result and uses that success to go on to greater things.
Most tournament poker is losing. Most tournament poker is a downswing before a (hopefully) bigger upswing. The player in the graph above had 830 winning days and 2,425 losing days. Tournament poker is a game of attrition more than anything else.
It sounds reckless, but I think tournament poker is all about surviving the game long enough to experience the periods of extreme rungood we fleetingly enjoy. If so, it really is a testament to the players who manage it because showing up knowing you are most likely going to lose is a tough ask of most people.
Is tournament poker all about a handful of career-changing results? Let us know in the comments:
