Tournament variance in livepoker is through the roof, even compared to how bad soulcrushing many people think it is.

I would bet that the amount of truly winning regs in live tournament poker is alot smaller than many people convince themself. The slow speed/small amount of hands,high rake compared to the buyin,travel/plane and food expences and more make them almost impossible to beat for a good winrate.

I strongly suspect that the "crushing" winning regs you see here and there is the group of players that find themself on a heater this time around. Then in 3 months its a new group of players, then after 6 months another group and so on.

A tourney that costs 2.5% of your bankroll would get you in 40 tourneys - expenses.

A $300 tourney [$12K bankroll] x 30 = $9K & if my worst downswing would be an avg return of $100 per tourney, I'd still have $6k left - expenses. I think I'll stick with cash.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, as I hear more and more discussion, I'm sort of inclined to stick with cash games. I thought it would be fun to mix in some tournaments here and there, but where I am the rake is 20% which just seems really high to me ($360 tournament, $300 goes to prize pool) and I just dont' know if my expected winrate will be as high in a tournament as in cash....

As an aside, is $10k really considered an adequate br for 2/5? Especially if we are buying in for $1k, 10 buyins seems really short. I don't currently have 2/5 availability where I play, but I would want more than $10k to feel adequately rolled if I did.

joey - there will always b back and forth about how much is needed for a 2/5 roll. Obv the better you are the less u guunna need. My giraff is in this thread somewhere. I have a pretty large sample of 2/5. My largest DS is somewhere in the neighborhood of 7.5K. Of all my poker buddies whose games I respect mine is the largest that I know of. This includes dudes like robfarha, cushlash, goose, etc.

I had assumed $500 BI for $2/5 (pretty standard for those stakes) for a BR of 20 BI. That's on the small side for a full time player IIRC, but it's at least in the right range. The point that I was making wasn't about the absolute size, just how to compare tournament and casb BR requirements simultaneously.

I started with 10k at $500 max buyin, so maybe you'd want 20k or buyin for $500.

I also went on a snap $5k downswing in week 1 which sucked by never really went on a bigger downswing in the last 1200 hours.

you may not downswing for more than $10k but good luck playing on the last $2.5k after losing $7.5k

Very valid point homer. The whole bankroll thing is something I have not thought of in a very long time. I have a cache of cash. If I were to run out I would simply obtain more. That being said of all my poker pals my DS is the worst that I know of. There is combined north of 30k hrs of live 2/5. So if you can really stomp the game your roll will grow quite quickly assuming you are not incinerating $ away from the tables. The problem is not a lot of dudes stomp. Many play fine when running well; but when things go wrong the wheels fall off (which is a major problem). I do not advocate a 10k roll. Just stating my experience

This and GL playing close to your A game and not playing scared money after almost torching through your 10 K roll.

I am not saying that you shoudnt shottake on 2/5 if youre sitting on a 10 K roll, but i will add that negative variance can hit you harder than you may think.

I witnessed some of the worst runbad ive ever seen for an extended amount of hours (around 200 hours of runbad), when my friend went on a big downswing when we was grinding in Vegas in November/December. Couple of examples:

-Stretch of being set over setted 7 times in a row, being on the wrong side every single time for full 100BB+ stacks.

- Stretch of bricking out 10 high equity combodraws in a row (12 outs or more). At least half of them for deep stacks.

-Running KK into AA repeatedly (like 5 times in 2 days) allin pre for stacks and never getting there

And so on and so on. Its not rocket science, but i will say that the money flies by at a very scary pace if something like this strikes you. Now i am not saying chances are big that youre gonna hit a downswing like this or that it is very likely to happen or something like that- i am just saying its wise and smart to keep a note back in your mind of how bad it really can get even in soft livepoker. Believe me, it keeps helping you stand on your feet and not lose your mind and being completely numb IF you should experience something like this.

Also what Squid said. Being able to maintain your composure,not tilt and keep destroying the game even when youre running like dogshyt is an amazing quality that i have found that must crushers have in them- and i think it is one of the absolute key skills to have.

Same with just being able to walk away from the table if you for x amount of reasons aint able to play your best game. Very very few people have the discipline and self realizations to swallow that pride during a game- quit and call it a night.

This

Is this in a rap song? I feel like this needs to be in a rap song

Brandon Adams - "I once played in a PLO tourney at the Bellagio that 147 entries & the person who won had never played PLO & barely understood the rules." - from his book "Broke"

As everybody's stated already, you're never going to play the same with your last 2.5k -- additionally, you shouldn't even play 2/5 at this point, as your roll is now 2.5k

When you flip a coin, no matter how many times you flip it your odds are 50/50. Well, it doesn't matter that we experienced a downswing and were at 10k previously, our odds of winning are still the same and we aren't "due" for a win, at this current time our BR stands at 2.5k and we should absolutely move down. Hence why I think this whole 10-20 buy in concept is complete bull****. You're never going to be able to play the same if you lose half those buyins and actually risk going busto.

I'd say its completely okay to start taking shots at that point like 1-2 times a week while continuing to grind your main game, but I'd want 30+ buyins to transition into a game full time. Hard to quantify the value of being over-rolled -- so much more you can do being able to push every edge available/experiment without having to worry about RoR considerations; plus you'll be able to really fight back against good regs instead of opting towards being weak-passive (which is not only common but possibly optimal for somebody whos just barely rolled).

Well .... yea. We rarely talk about the upper and lower limits of playing a stake, but we should.

If you've got $2.5k left then you've got a $2.5k roll. $2.5k < $10k --> No $2/5 for you.

The right way is to have move up and move down thresholds with some built in hysteresis. Maybe move up at 25BI for the higher stake, down at 20BI. Or 20/15. I know I've seen that talked about in a few books.

Being properly rolled is criminally underrated IMO.

Squid, have you ever done a win rate breakdown by chunks of hours?

iirc your win rate is around 11bb/hr. I'd be really interested in the max deviation from your win rate over say 200 hours, 500 hours and 1k hours. Obviously you could do that in 2 ways...either just go Hr 1-200, 201-400 etc etc and see what it was or the other way which would be to look at peaks and troughs in your giraffe and see where the biggest swings would be up or down.

both would be interesting, albeit I don't want to ask you to do a load of work if it's tough?

fw - Once I get my shyt outta storage and input that stuff I will be more than happy to ship the info to someone to do a full on breakdown. Right now I only have access to the little over 3k hrs of info and it isnt that interesting.

For now I can tell u that my worst 400 hours I won 14$ per hr. - and it was beyond painful

It's pretty easy to take each session and pull the data from the previous X hours in something like Matlab (I do it as part of my analysis). I know there's a way to do it in Excel with a little bit of logic ... I just don't know off the top of my head how. I'd be willing to crunch some numbers for anyone that's interested in sharing some data.

My feels on moving up and bankroll:
Move up as soon as possible. Shot take aggressively. The rake below 2/5 is very hard to beat, you need to escape it.

I would take 2 80bb bullets to 2/5 when you have around $7500. Stand up if you hit $1000 or if you lose both. Then grind them back, because you'll lose both often. Repeat until you get a heater or hit a downswing at 1/3

Or just play 1/3 with a full stack and auto top up which probably gives you a better hourly? You say rake at 1/3 is very hard to beat well rake at 2/5 with a short stack isn't much better.

the difference is the value of playing against the 2/5 lineups if the goal is to make that Hero’s permanent main game, it’s an investment

Come on, Man! Rake at 1/2 and 1/3 isnt hard to beat. The players in those games are for the most part really really bad. If you're struggling to beat the rake in those games, you just arent very good yet. If youre struggling to beat the rake at lower stakes, moving to 2/5 where there are better players is only going to get you crushed.

If we're talking normal USA#1 rake structures, then this is correct. Although, it depends on the game, as $15/hr might be a really good WR for a nitty, very short-stacked game. But achievable, sustainable winrates are higher than that for accomplished players in most USA#1 venues imo.

First 16 games in 2018 all 2/5

11W, 5L

93.9 hours

$26.94 per hour

$2,530 profit

Obviously I'm happy to be winning so far but I feel like this is horrible. This game messes with my confidence so much.

I have a hard time recognizing if I'm playing bad or running bad at times (and vice versa).

What's horrible? The winrate? The numbers are obv meaningless over this sample. Confidence will come with hours played.

Are you playing mainly for fun or profit? If it's just a hobby I say you made money and did something enjoyable, so be happy. If for profit it still isn't terrible by any stretch. With so few hours its very hard to say that that is an accurate winrate and profit is profit. Keep on rollin'