Smart poker tournament players measure their performance by looking at their "return on investment", or "ROI" for short. Poker players are looking at their tournament results when they talk about this measure, not their ring game play. The formula for calculating your return in a poker tournament, or a series of poker tournaments is simple:

Poker SnG Tournament ROI Divide your total profits by the total amounts of your entry fees. Then convert that into a percentage.

For example, if you play in a $30+$3 SnG at Full Tilt Poker, the total entry fee is $33. Let's say you win 1st prize, which is $135. Your profit is $102. (You have to subtract the entry fee to determine your profit.) $102 divided by $33 is 3.09. Convert that into a percentage by multiplying it by 100. That gives you a return on investment of 309% for that tournament.

If you play 10 SnG's for $33 each, your total buy-in is $330. Let's say you place in the money in half of them, and your total amount of prize money is $405. Your profit in this situation is $75. $75 divided by $330 is 22.7%.

Try getting a 22.7% return with any other investment.

A good ROI for sit and go tournaments is between 20% and 50%. Achieving a percentage as high as 50% probably means you play extremely well and you're sticking with the lower level games. As your buy-in goes up, the quality of your opponents improves too. But 20% of $109 is better than 50% of $11 all day long, so don't stay at the lower levels just to keep your ROI high.

Keep in mind that if you're losing, your ROI will be a negative number.

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ITM% - In the Money Percentage

Another measurement serious tournament players keep up with is their ITM%, or their "in the money percentage". This is just the percentage of time that they actually place high enough in the tournament to receive some type of cash prize. If you play 9 player SnG tournaments, where they pay out the top 3 players, you should be able to expect a 33% in the money percentage if everyone plays equally.

Your goal, of course, is to have a much better in the money percentage than 33%. Assuming you're twice as good as the other tournament players at that level, you could make the money 66% of the time, or 2 tournaments out of 3. I don't know any tournament players with that kind of ITM% though. I'm running good when I'm hitting the money 36% to 40% of the time.

Unless you have records for at least 100 SnG's, you don't have a good feel for what your actual ROI% or ITM% is. But once you've got records for 100 games, your numbers should be accurate within 5% or so of what your real percentage is. And the more records you accumulate, the more accurate your evaluation of your skill level will become.

Hourly Rate in Ring Games

Poker Hourly Rate A ring game is different from a tournament because it doesn't have a distinct beginning or end. You can play forever or until you drop from exhaustion, whichever comes 1st. Some players measure their ROI in ring game play by dividing the amount they win by the amount they bought in for. But most ring poker game players track their "hourly rate", or how much money they're winning on average per hour. Hourly rate is a far better measurement of results in ring game play.

Measurement and Management

You can't manage what you don't measure.

You keep score in poker by how much money you're winning or losing.

By tracking your ROI, ITM%, and hourly rate, you're measuring your poker performance. That's the 1st step in managing and improving your poker performance.

How you track these numbers is up to you.

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