Dear Pokergods,

I have a theory which I try to get confirmation on but could not find the answer on 2p2 or the rest of the www.

I want to be a good mtt player 1 day, but for now I just want to increase my roll by playing micro turbo sng's. This way I practice a lot of ft/HU play and short late game ICM situations. I am just wondering which SNG is the best to build a nice roll(9's/18's/45's). Obvious the STT's have lower variance but I can put up a lot of volume so I don’t really see variance as a problem. I have a theory about why the 45's are better but not sure if it is correct. Tried to look on the forums but could not find support for this theory.

My assumptions are that in larger fields you can get a higher ROI because you play more hands so you can use more of your edge. But the rake for STT’s and 45’s SNG’s is almost the same.
So say without rake you make 15% ROI on STT and 25% on MTT’s. With the rake of 10% you only make 5% for STT and 15% for MTT’s. So the benefit of playing STT’s because you can play more in 1 hour is smaller than the ROI advantage of MTT’s because rake is a bitch.
Is this theory correct? Or am I missing something or making wrong assumtions

Wasn't going to answer as you addressed to the poker gods and there are much better persons on here to comment. But as it so far unanswered I will give my thoughts.

Firstly your post seams to make sense to me.

I started in STT's. Like you say It gives a good grounding in short handed poker and heads up. Developing these skill set is vital as so much equity is decided on the FT in MTSNG's and MTT's.

Also while building a roll the lower variance offered by stt's is super helpful as well as building confidence. A losing week is extremely rare in stt's. Your game can build with your confidence. If I had had a losing month at the start after the initial learning period I think I would of just quit.

You say you don't think variance is a problem as you will be playing high volumes. Play with an roi simulator to see how sick variance can be in certain formats over surprisingly large volumes.

If poker is your main income use correct BRM (including a life roll) and also work on mental game to cope with the inevitable downswings.

Scope my stars account (mariboman) for an example of my transition from stt's through 45 man (briefly) to 180 man. The graph starts of at a pretty small gradient but its fairly smooth. Its pretty obvious when I make the switch my graph gradient increases more markedly. (as do the swings) my roi in stt's (mostly 6 max) was 8.1% my roi (only2.5ksample) so far on mtsng its 21.95 (only 1.1.k sample).

My roi was running above adjusted c net on stt's and below it at MTSNG's.

Notice I had a $890 downswing since playing MTTsng's though.

I play MTT's on 888 as the field sizes are smaller and I cant play enough volume to even out the variance on stars mtt's due to the field sizes.

Now obviously I'm only a part time grinder so take everything I say with a pinch of salt. But I have made the transition throught the game types you mention as illustrated by my stars graph.

Hope this helps in some way.

i would suggest playing with this bad boy to get an idea what variance is http://pokerdope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/

also, i would suggest playin a format that YOU LIKE. At the end of a day, poker suppose to be fun (cant believe I said it lol)

to compare stt to mtts sngs tho, you need to find someone who played both formats, was winning at them at good roi and then compare and HOURLY RATE. This will show you what games are the most profitable. Remember that you cannot buy time of your life and hourly rates are very important in deciding what to play.

Additionally (only my point of view), if you want to play mtts in the future, you better of focus on the format with high variance and big fields like 180s. It will give you an idea how swingy game poker is and what to expect in mtt world, without ruining your roll.

GLGL

Well thanks a lot for your answers!

As poker is not my main income and not planning it to be variance is not that big of a deal.
It looks like a lot of people only think of variance as a negative think, but a downswing for one is an upswing for an other. But let's ignore variance for my question.

If you play poker I assume you think you have a edge over the rest of the field. The problem is, just beating the average field is not enough, your edge has to be so big that you can even win over a 10% rake.

Assume you make like 10BB/100. This means that you can get a higher ROI at mtt's then at stt's right? Because your edge over the average field gets bigger and you play more hands but the rake remains the same.

lets say I make 11% ROI without rake at STT's and 20% at MTT's.
Then with rake it is just a 1% ROI at STT and 10% at MTT's
So it looks like it becomes way more profitable to play MTT's

If this is true why are people still playing STT's? All because of the low variance and the fun factor?

If my theory is right I just cant believe that it is not mentioned in other threads and that so many people still play those STT's.

I don't think you are looking at roi in the normal way and getting things a bit confused.
Normally people state their roi after rake, the rake does directly impact your roi.

It is always hard to know the possible roi for a decent player at different sized fields and it gets more complicated as it is quite normal for people to play higher buyins for lower field sizes. Playing higher buyins is usually the correct move and is governed by a sensible bankroll management plan.

(I'll calc for a hypothetical case with completely made up values - do the calc with your own estimates of roi and equivalence of buyins etc.)

Lets say someone could 5 table STTs with $10 buyins at 5% roi, but could also 10 table 180 $2 ones at 15% roi. One question is - which of these two approaches brings in the highest return? (There are other issues to think about too.)

Typically the time to play any turbo STT, taking into account early finishes etc, is perhaps 0.5 hours.
For 180's the equivalent time is maybe 1.0 hour.

If playing 5 concurrent tables of STTs you get through 5 * 1/0.5 per hour = 10 games per hour.
For 180s it's 10 * 1/1.0 = 10 games per hour.

So how much $ per hour is returned?
In 1 hour of 5 tabling STT the wager is: 10 * $10 = $100, and the return is 5% = $5

In 1 hour of 180s the wager is 10 * $2.0 = $20, and the return is 15% = $3

Generally you would want to calculate your $ return per hour and this is the roi * the amount wagered per hour.

Other factors like burn-out, ability to learn/improve, ability to take the expected swings and more come into the choice of games.

IMHO, you're correct. STTs are ridiculously over-raked at most sites. Where I play it is usually 10% for an MTT, 6% for an 18 man and 5% for a 5-man SNG, which makes it a bit better, (but there are no HUDs there so hard to know what effect it has on ROI).

Imagine a 9 man winner-takes-all versus an 81-man winner takes all shootout (i.e. each table plays down to a qualifier before you go to the final table). In the second case it seems clear that the rake should be double the rake of the first case - effectively the first table is a satellite to the second table.

With real tournaments you have a similar effect - the bigger the tournament the more play for your rake - though it's not quite in that proportion - as the payout structure tends to start distributing from e.g. 15% regardless of the size. The more play for rake thing also shows why turbos are overraked compared to reg-speed.

The pre-rake ROIs obviously depend who's playing in the particular player pool though - the archetypical net-depositor recreational player has a short window to play between putting the kids to bed and having them fall asleep so he can bang his wife - he is much more likely to play an STT than an MTT. On the other hand MTTs are more "fun" or gambly so they attract a certain kind of recreational player too.

Yeah thanks a lot LektorAJ.
The shoot-out example makes it really clear.

@Basemetal I know ROI is usually calculated included rake this was just for the example.

So it can be possible that a person does make a long term profit in 45's but not in the 9's while he is evenly skilled in the two disciplines and so are the opponents.

Considering that it is more important for me to just make profit instead of trying to make as much as possible in 1 hour.

So I will try to focus more on 180's/45's instead of 18's/9's from now on

this makes no sense to me

the more you make in 1hour the more you can make period

because you have a limited number of hours in a day/month/year/lifetime

play STTs...and not just because of the hourly....but because you will become better player here:

-play is deeper and you get better @postflop witch is vital
-ICM heavy situations more often
-HU more often(a lot more often)

these things will prepare you a lot more for MTTs than than the nitty ass play @ 45man final tables with 7bbs

i might be bias since i grind STTs all day but anyway, thats my opinion and i fully stand by it

also you can move up in STT...mttsngs are sort of capped at 15$,
except 18mans, but they are something in between the two TBH

also, "dear pokergods" makes no sense...we are not gods

you'll make more hourly the bigger field SNG u play stat, providing you know what you're doing, that's what u wanna be concentrating on, beating any game at all

Doubts on which line to follow,

I know that the amount of games is like a spit in the wind.


http://imgur.com/a/ZlqWr

just play what you enjoy the most

if you enjoy what you do you will play more, if you play more you will earn more..
...this will make up for the POSSIBLE fact that one game type might be more profitable than another

also, you can mix game types(thats what i do)...but if you do i suggest skipping on the hypers cause the smaller time bank can mess you up if youre not use to it

cheers

@Pop, I understand what you are saying.
It is just that my point is that rake plays a huge role in deciding what games you want to play and I think it is overlooked.

I just wanted to check if my theory was right, and looks like it is.

@Leandro thanks for the input but yeah that sample size does not give significant stats at all. Please grind 1000 of each so you can help me decide