Poker tournaments have become a recognizable part of pop culture; The World Series of Poker on ESPN, the World Poker Tour, Poker After Dark, etc. While cash games have been played for almost two centuries, the advent of tournament poker has taken the game’s popularity and accessibility to new heights.
The attraction of tournament poker is that it allows every level of player to see a lot of hands for a fixed price with the potential for a substantial payday. You get a lot of chips and see a lot of cards but you can not lose more than your entry fee.
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Additionally, tournaments even out the value of each chip for every player. All players start with the same stack and unless it is a rebuy tournament, all players are eliminated when those chips are gone. In cash games a $100 bet could be a little or a lot depending on how much money you have. For a millionaire, it’s nothing. To a college kid playing online, it could be his whole bankroll. Tournament chips work to equalize that variation.
In horse racing we have tournaments too.
Like poker tournaments, handicapping tournaments offer newer players an inexpensive way to have a stake in a lot of races and start to learn the game. Tournaments are available for every taste and every skill level. You can play live or online. There are play money tournaments, and there are real money tournaments just like in poker. Some tournaments require you to lock-in your picks before the 1st race. Others allow you to change picks up until the post time of each race. Tournaments come in all shapes and sizes.
We all remember how long it took to get even the smallest clue regarding handicapping. We also remember how expensive it was to learn along the way. Pain is the biggest purveyor of knowledge in our sport. In handicapping you don’t learn much from your wins, but you can learn alot from your losses. Tournaments allow you to have those learning experiences while paying much less “tuition.” The maximum knowledge with the minimum investment. That’s positive ROI.
Twinspires.com is my favorite place to play tournaments, so let’s look at what is available there. Twinspires.com has several weekly satellites from April thru November for as little as $10 with a limited number of entries. Finishing at or above a specified level and you qualify for that Saturday’s $10,000 prize tournament. Top 2 on Saturday qualifies you for the November online championship. Ultimately you could qualify for the prestigious National Handicapping Championships in Las Vegas with a 7-figure prize. For poker players this is a familiar tournament satellite structure—a lot of potential for a tiny investment.
The Twinspires.com tournaments consist of anywhere from 8-12 races from several different tracks each day. Twinspires.com does a fine job of mixing up the race types as well. Maidens, cheap claimers, stakes, dirt, turf, sprints, routes….you name it. Exposure to every imaginable type of race conditions is a must-have in the toolbox of every handicapper.
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Also included with that small investment is free past performance data. Tournament players can peruse the different data formats and experiment along the way. Figuring out how you like to see your data can really expedite the handicapping process.
Poker’s popularity exploded with the innovation of exposed hole cards on telecasts. The handicapping tournament equivalent is the leader board. Many tournaments, including those on Twinspires.com, allow participants to see the picks of every player in the tournament after each race is run. I have used the leader board as a learning tool when my handicapping discounts a horse’s chances and that horse comes in. I check the leader board to see both who got it right, as well as how many players got it right. If the top players had it or if the number of winning players seems significant, then I missed something and I must revisit the past performance data. The leader board is an invaluable learning tool available to all tournament players.
While there are nuances to tournament strategy that are beyond the scope of today’s discussion, the basics are simple and the advantages of tournament play are numerous. Handicapping tournaments are inexpensive, expose players to all types of races, provide constant learning opportunities, and can lead to substantial paydays. They are a great place for new players to start.
