What would be your guess for the ROI in the WSOP Main Event for:

top 5% of players (best 337 players of the fiels)
top 1% of players (best 67 regs)
top 0,25% of players (that's 17 top top top regs)

and what about the bad players?
bottom 10%
bottom 5% ?

Years ago I made this chart for the main event in 2010 with 7319 players. If you were an average player your roi would be -6%. But if you were 3 times more likely to win than the avg. player, then your ROI would be 80%. You could do this if you were able to go all in every time vs an equal stack as a 54.47% favorite to win. The power 25, 27, 29, 31 show different ROI if the payouts were flatter. 31 would correspond to about 4.1 mil to 1st from over 8.5 mil actual. But note how even as a 3x avg. player, if you NEVER have a top 36 finish, your ROI falls from +80% to -24%!!! And the bottom chart shows as a 3x player, your chances of making the final 36 in a 7319 player field is only once every 105 years. So good luck trying to have a winning lifetime record play the main event or any series of big buyin live tournaments.

The best players are probably way higher than 4x or w/e the avg player they are almost non comparable. I think the average players are pretty much drawing dead in the main to win though.

I am not interested in the variance, I get that it's insanely high. And what is "3 times better than average" supposed to mean? You can't be twice as good as someone else in poker. You can have double ROI, double hourly, double winrate, you can be in top 5% and compare yourself to someone in top 10% perhaps? X times better than someone seems like a weird measure.

It can't be solved with some excel math, it's more of a guess based on large volume of other tournaments and adding the fact it's so deep and pretty easy. I'm just interested what other people guesses would be.
I think most would agree that this is one of the few tournaments where you can get roi over 100%.
So maybe 100% for top 5%, 150% for top 1%, 200% for top 0,25%. And like -80% if you are bottom 10% and -90% for bottom 5% ? That would mean top 5% reg has 10x times higher chance of winning (let's pretend winning the bracelet and EV is the same thing, even though it's gonna be a little different) than bottom 5% fish? What do you think?

half the final table are probably average players. Now the bottom 5% of guys may be drawing dead nearly/

two times the average player in the charts actually means two time more likely to win than the average player.

eh i was more saying that the best players probably are 100x more likely or some absurd number to win the main than the average 3500th best person in the field.

That's a wrong way to think about the question. Biggest edge of superior players comes from winning a lot of hands w/o showdown, not necessarily having 55% or 60% or 65% equity on all their all-ins...

From my experience as a high volume investor, more aggressive preflop play in recent years has lowered the edge (since most competent players know how pushbot/resteal these days). I would guess a top 5% player is likely to return $1.60 to $1.70 on a dollar invested (before markup of course). Top 1% is not that important to me as those guys typically do not sell action, but I doubt anyone can return more than $3 on a dollar invested.

Also an average player is definitely not drawing dead and has winning chances as long as they are somewhat tight and aggressive. Think Neil Blumenfield, Jay Farber and Zvi Stern. With some more luck, one of them could be a main event champion. I would say an average player with some aggression can return 60 to 70 cents on the dollar.

Now, bottom 20% of the players (your home game qualifiers and some of the celebs) are really dead money. They can probably return less than 25 cents on the dollar of buyin.

This begs an interesting question. Does anybody want to compile all Marketplace Main Event action for the last 3-4 years and see how those players performed? If anybody is willing to compile the data, I'll be glad to do the Statistical Analysis and post it for the community.

I think the difference between the top .25% and the top 5% is not going to be that great because once you get to the top 5% everyone is going to be playing very solid. It's not like the top .25% are going to be constantly finding these hugely +EV spots that everyone else in the top 5% misses. I think the idea that top 5% would have 100% ROI and the top .25% could somehow have double that ROI is pretty absurd.

I would randomly guess the top .25% have a 100% ROI and the top 5% have a 90% ROI. But who really cares? No one will ever play enough main events to get even close to their long term expectation.

I would guess that the difference between an absolute beast like Colman, Mercier and a top 5% player is rather significant.
For example I would gladly pay 2.0 or 2.1 Main Event markup on Colman, Mercier or Vanessa Selbst and would expect their true value to be around 2.4-2.5. Of course, nobody can get 400% ROI these days despite claims of some pros to the contrary.

You're right that it's largely irrelevant in the long run. Aside from that I think everything else you said is completely wrong. If you can hypothetically determine A to be top .25% of the field while B is top 5%, what data or theory or proofs do you have to have to make that assertion? You're talking about the top 16 players vs the top 320 in the field if we're going by this years # of entrants. You're out of your mind if you don't think the skill gap between the top .25% vs top 5% isn't MASSIVE.

Top 5% compared to top 25% is way different than top .25% versus top 5%. The edge all these guys have over the field in general is going to be way bigger than the edge the best players will have over slightly less excellent players.

How do you define "top"?

http://www.mutantpoker.com/?p=1379

2 big comments on this bet.

1) I would guess that true ROI for such a sample of top 100 players (top 1.5% of the field roughly speaking) is around 100-110% (not 150%) compared to the ROI of 60-70% for a top 5% player.

2) Any small or even medium sized group of players is not going to actualize their theoretical ROI most of the time. The reason for that is a top heavy payout structure inherent in poker tournaments, where a significant portion of the overall theoretical ROI is contained in the possibility that one member of the group finishes in top 5. Statistical term for that is: "The distribution is heavily skewed to the left".

With that in mind, a fair bet would require the following conditions (and I would be willing to wager under those premises for WSOP 2017)

a) I pick 100 players with no exclusions
b) They need to cash for $2,000,000 (100% ROI). If a player does not play, I get $20,000 back to my total
c) If they cash for less than $2,000,000 combined (after refunds for non-participants), I pay you $1,000
d) If they cash for more than $2,000,000 - I receive proportionally higher payout depending on how much they cash.
For example, if they cash for $2,500 combined, I get $1,250. If they cash for $3,000,000 combined, I get $1,500. If they cash for $4,000,000 combined, I get $2,000.

Otherwise, its like limon would be betting on a single given top pro not cashing in a given Main Event. Of course, any given player is not going to cash more often than not. Same logic applies to the conditions of limon's bet.

originally the bet was structured on stealthmunks insanely stupid contention that there were 100 players with 400% ROI. I knew this was so stupid that he wouldnt actually bet on it so i tried to pretend to back off his ******ed contention and structure a different bet that i could easily win. Stealthmunk bitched out the whole way but unfortunately for some other players they jumped in at the 150% roi bet. obv i have them drawing near dead but thats their fault.

true ROI for maybe 6 elite players is over 200%. maybe another 60 are in the 100% range. its all pretty much a joke as most top tier pros have an roi less than 50% in UNARGUABLY the best tourney of the year which isnt any hourly to write home about when you factor in food, lodging, travel taxes AND OPPORTUNITY COST!!!!

w/e live tourney "pros" are a complete joke and children who chase that are dupes to the poker industrial complex. just buy a lottery ticket and grind cash.

If theres still any morons out there touting these insane 300%+ roi's for top 100 players PM me and well figure out a bet.

The bet was also statistically unfair even beyond the ROI aspect.

If the true ROI for this group of 100 players would be indeed 150% (I think its 100-110% personally), they would still only achieve a return of $2,500,000 or higher less than half of the time (guesstimating maybe 20-25% of the time). The reason for that is that part of that 150% theoretical ROI is a probability of one of the players finishing in top 5 or better. Therefore, if there's no incrementally higher payout for the anti-limon side in the case one of the players binks and the total payout is 5 or 6 million, then the odds of such even money bet are heavily skewed in limon's favor even if the ROI itself would be correct.

To use PowerBall analogy: Suppose the expected value for each PowerBall ticket is -$0.60 (you are expected to get $1.40 for a $2 ticket).

Then, if you buy 1,000 tickets, you are are expected to get back $1,400 (when you spent $2,000 to buy those tickets).

However if you buy a batch of 1,000 tickets a 100 times, you will not get $1,400 or more back anywhere close to half of the time. The probability of you winning one of the major prizes is a part of that expectation. When that does not happen (most of the time), the remaining expectation falls.

Same logic applies to 100 top level pros playing the Main Event.

This is just saying "When I lose I don't make any money."

You should read post #16 very carefully.

If anyone is interested, my bet is open for next year.

I read it. Did you read the part where even if Negreanu's 11th place finish had been included in the selection that the group would have missed 100% ROI by a significant amount?

You are free to take my bet for 2017 and I am willing to bump up the stakes (within reason). You can also split the action on the other side of the bet if you would like. I am a very frequent marketplace investor and buy $20K+ worth of action every year and we can obviously find someone trustworthy to escrow.

My point is essentially that a big part of 100% ROI for 100% players is going to be a chance that one or more of the players final table or better (especially better). When I play cash, I win most of my sessions. When I buy tournament action, I lose on most of the individual packages, but win big on occasional deep runs. This is the game.

In our setup, you could essentially have 5 years of total cashes that are $5 million, $1,500,000, $1,350,000, $1,250,000, $900,000 (this is just an example as 5 is clearly a small sample size, but it is what it is!). This is standard for tournament poker where distribution of prizes is significantly skewed to the left.

However, if the bet is a standard over/under, the under side has a significant advantage as in scenario above the over side would win only 1 out 5 despite the fact that the overall results are consistent with 100% EV.

Therefore the over side needs to be compensated for the times when the winnings exceed 100%.

If you think top 100 players are close to breakeven, it is a slam dunk bet for you!

So, here are the following conditions for next year that I think would be fair and I would gladly take the over side on:

a) I pick 100 players with no exclusions
b) They need to cash for $2,000,000 (100% ROI). If a player does not play, I get $20,000 back to my total
c) If they cash for less than $2,000,000 combined (after refunds for non-participants), I pay you $1,000
d) If they cash for more than $2,000,000 - I receive proportionally higher payout depending on how much they cash.
For example, if they cash for $2,500,000 combined, I get $1,250. If they cash for $3,000,000 combined, I get $1,500. If they cash for $4,000,000 combined, I get $2,000. I am wiling to cap your side's losses at $5,000 (in the extremely unlikely event of $10,000,000