Plain-English guides to tournament poker math.
The Kelly criterion, MTT variance, bankroll management, staking markup, mystery bounty math — explained without the graduate-stats notation, with the receipts available if you want them. Each guide connects to the long-form essay on the topic and to the platform feature that runs the math on your real numbers.
- poker bankroll management
Bankroll management for tournament poker players.
Tournament poker bankroll management isn't 'keep 100 buy-ins'. It's a question about geometric growth under variance — what fraction of your bankroll you can risk per event without going broke and without growing slower than you should. The honest answer is fractional, calibrated to your edge, and almost always smaller than the conventional rule of thumb.
Read guide → - kelly criterion poker
Kelly criterion for poker tournaments.
The Kelly criterion answers one question for a tournament poker player: what fraction of your bankroll should be in a single event so that your long-run geometric growth is maximised? The closed-form answer is g = μ − ½σ². For top-heavy MTTs, this means risking less per buy-in than most rules of thumb suggest — and selling action above a threshold markup whenever you can.
Read guide → - tournament poker variance
What tournament poker variance actually looks like.
Tournament variance dwarfs cash-game variance at the same nominal ROI. Top-heavy MTT payouts mean a 1,000-runner event concentrates most of its EV in finishes that happen 1–2% of the time, so your realised year is shaped by a handful of deep runs that may or may not arrive. Most simulators get this wrong; here's what an honest variance picture looks like.
Read guide → - poker staking
How poker staking actually works.
Poker staking is a contract market built on top of a high-variance game. A staker buys a fraction of a player's tournament action at a markup; the player gets variance reduction and capital, the staker gets exposure to a player they couldn't buy on the open market. The economics are tighter than they look — fair markup, makeup, swap pools, and audit are all consequences of the same incentive math.
Read guide → - mystery bounty tournament strategy
Mystery bounty strategy and variance.
Mystery bounty tournaments concentrate even more variance into the post-bubble field than standard MTTs. The bounty pool's lottery structure rewards survivors disproportionately, distorts ICM relative to standard payouts, and changes optimal bankroll sizing for any player who runs them seriously. Here's how the math actually works.
Read guide →
The full essays live on Substack.
These guides summarise the topics. The Substack has the full derivations, the worked examples, and the periodic posts that don't fit a topic page.