A lot of live venues have low buy-in MTTs with fees in excess of 50%. I would imagine that these are unlikely to be very profitable...what point do you guys think it becomes worth playing?

Assume a fairly standard 1-day tournament structure, and that you are a solid MTT player and your opponents are mostly bad, as is standard for a live MTT.

50%? Really? That would mean a $50 tournament would have a buy in total of about $80 in order to exceed 50%.

Keep in mind that fees have two purposes.

1. Profit for the casino
2. Pay the dealers

The lower the buy in, the higher a percentage of the buy in is required.

A $100 event with 50 players will take just about as long to complete as a $50 event with 60 players. If they charge $10 for the $100 event,(10%) they have to charge $10 for the $50 event (20%) to realize the same amount of money to pay the dealers and make some money on the process.

Moving this to MTTc-Live, should get better responses there.

I think I remember seeing a $35 tournament where 15-16 dollars per buyin was taken out (> 40%). I do not think these tourneys were offered for very long as the interest in playing them dwindled quickly.

The answer changes depending on what you think your ROI is.

It'd probably still technically be profitable for a good player to play a tournament with a 40% entry fee filled with awful players, but that doesn't mean I'd find it worthwhile. Personally, I won't go near anything where the fee is >15%. But whether it's "worth it" depends on why you're playing - if you're playing $60+25 (or whatever) live tournaments in the first place you're probably not a pro. If your goal is to just play some poker and have a shot at coming away from it showing a profit, then there's no reason not to play those events provided you think your ROI in the field exceeds the rake.

I'm taking a trip with some buddies to AC for the 4th of july Tues/Weds. We usually play $0.05/$.10 at home and $1/2 in the casino (real ballers). I've read that the blind/ante structure for the Taj regulars is OK as far as these "SNGs" go in AC. (which is where we are staying and probably playing most of the time, we've played at Borgata a ton in the last couple of years so mixing it up)

Here is the buy-in structure:

11 AM $53 + $12
3 PM $40 + $10
7 PM $53 + $12
Midnight $53 + $12

Vig looks like it is terribad unfortunately. But with $600 in cash that I'm bringing with my underrolled self on the trip I think I'll have better chance at playing poker the whole trip via tournies.