When you hear poker players talking about game selection, the vast majority of times it will be a cash game player talking about how they select which table to sit down at. They look for things such as average pot size, percentage of players to the flop and of course who is in the game already.

While most of these considerations don’t apply to MTTs, there are a plethora of other issues to think about before choosing which tournaments to play that are often overlooked, that will ultimately affect a player’s bottom line.

1) Bankroll Management

The variance involved in Multi Table Tournament Poker is huge, and until you have experienced a proper downswing, it is very difficult to comprehend. To withstand these sometimes brutal downswings it is important that you have a bankroll to fall back on. Lots of numbers have been quoted in the past, ranging from 50 buy ins to 200 buy ins. Personally I think 50 is far too low and a bad run could easily see your roll wiped out. 100+ buy ins is really a necessity, and to emphasise, this is minimum. Ie if you dip below 100 buy ins, you need to move down a level.

A mistake many players make is that they move up too quickly. Sure they can afford it according to their bankroll rules, but that’s irrelevant if you’re not good enough to beat the game. You need to be constantly looking for the games that will provide you with the biggest return. Say for example that you won a $150k payout in the lottery. Great, now you’re rolled to play $1k games. Well perhaps, but unless you can cut it in those games you won’t be for long. This is obviously an extreme example, but I see it every day in online poker. Players who can comfortably beat $50-$100 games jump into large field, large guarantee events in search of that elusive big score, blissfully unaware that they’re lowering their expected ROI, lowering their expected hourly rate and increasing variance.

2) Site Selection

A common question I get asked is “Why don’t you play in the $100 rebuys on Pokerstars, you can afford it right?”. While the answer to the second part of the question is yes, there are other factors to be considered, mainly the field strength. While I have no doubt I could beat the field over a large sample size, I would definitely not have the same edge that I have over a $50 rebuy on Ipoker or Ongame.

There are plenty of tournaments available to play if you look hard enough, but many players only play on one or two sites. This is laziness and can often mean they miss out on the best value tournaments. Be aware of the tournaments on offer on all sites across the net. Don’t just look for the size of the buy in, tournament structure and field size are also very important, and to a lesser extent payout structure.

On a daily basis, I play on eight different sites and I find the standard and the style of play differs on each. Take time to play on all the sites available to you and find which ones suit your playing style best, or simply where there are more gamblers or uneducated poker players. Personally, I find Poker Stars and Full Tilt to be the toughest sites, and the sites that chose to block Americans to be the softest: Ongame, Ipoker, Party, Cryptologic, and Paradise amongst others.

3) Multi-table

Multi-tabling skills are key to be successful in the long run at online poker. How many tables can you comfortably play at once? This is a very important issue, and I must stress the word comfortably. There’s no use in you launching 10 games if you have to be clicking “I’m back” buttons every 30 seconds. If you can only play two at once without affecting your game considerably, play two. If it’s four, play four. Simple. If there aren’t many suitable tournaments running when you want to play, launch a sit and go or two. Being at or just below capacity can only increase your hourly return.

Note there can be an exception to this, and it comes when you are deep in a tournament or two. I would then suggest that you try and concentrate fully on those tournaments and not launch any others, unless you’re really confident in your ability to play the new tournaments completely on auto pilot while focusing almost all of your attention on the final tables.

4) Schedule time for poker

When selecting which tournaments you want to play, you need to be sure you have enough time to complete the tournament. This may sound obvious, but say for example you need to head out at 9pm, and a tournament starts at 6pm that you figure will last for four hours, you shouldn’t play it. Sure you may think that you could change your plans, but there are other factors. In the past I’ve been playing tournaments with half plans for the evening, and as the time approaches when I would have to go out I have been guilty of making somewhat negative EV plays in a bid to “go big or go out”. Other times it is less obvious, but I’m sure subconsciously I can also be guilty of it, for example calling an all in with 77 in a bid to gamble that they have AQ/AK when you really know their range is JJ+, AK.

To further this idea, plan your schedule in advance. Sure it’s easier to jump into tournaments when you feel like playing, but this can cost you money. Unless you know the tournament schedule on all of the sites you play on off the top of your head, you will likely miss one or two tournaments, and be a few tables off your multi-tabling capacity, which will affect your hourly rate.

Every one of these points is very basic, but that’s the beauty of them, as they are very easy to implement. I’m constantly looking at ways to improve my daily tournament schedule. Adding in new sites, looking for new tournaments on existing sites while still staying within my multi-tabling capacity. I suggest you do the same.