I do something like that.

my POV is that I don't play enough and don't play high/well enough at cash to make any real improvement to my life/life roll - winning 10k ish per year from 300 hours ish is great as a profitable hobby but doesn't change anything in my life at all.

I enjoy playing cash and work hard to get better at it, but I use my profits from cash to fund shots at big ish buy in tournies where a win/top few finish really could make a difference. Likely I'll play 5ish 1-2k buy in tournaments a year and then about the same number of $400 buy in ones

of course, I have to hope I run well because I'm never ever gonna conquer the variance of tournaments and it still really sucks busting out of a 2k tournament. To date, I've run/done pretty well in the tournaments and I'm probably up more overall in donkaments than in cash games, but this year's losing streak...which is only about 5/6 tournaments overall and thus nothing in the scheme of things, does really hurt.

I have a short/intermediate term plan of getting the BR back up to 50k and then siphoning off maybe 5-10% of profits thereafter for a tournament roll. I'd like to get to the point where I am playing the $500-1000 buyins that occur every 3-4 months, but short of hitting a score early on that looks to be a 12-24 month proposition to be properly rolled for (ie: being able to do multiple Day 1's). Not sure how feasible that is but I think incorporating tournaments into the equation once the cash game machine is firing on all cylinders seems inevitable.

I think a successful cash player who buys into tournaments with life changing prizes is like a non-******ed version of buying lottery tickets. Similar concept but with say +10% EV over cost instead of like -70% or whatever.

I pay my mortgage 3-6 months in advance. I never feel any pressure to "pay bills" when I hit the brick wall of variance, which is nice to have one less thing to worry about when you lose like 10k in a week.

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I haven't really put in any real thought into this, so take it for what its worth.

If your hourly is $40/hr and you spent $500 each shot and 6 hours on average (something like 7, 5, 4, 2, 2, 9, 8, 6, 7, 10hrs), the cost alone is:

$40 * 6 * 10 + $500 * 10 = $7400.

Assuming you are ITM 15% of those times for average cash of 2x tourney BI.

-$7400 + 1.5 * $1000 = -$5900.

I mean, how do people actually make money playing tourney?

You don't make money long term by min cashing. Werebeer already explained it well.

yes, exactly - you made my point far better than I did

The standard of play on day 1 of most 1500 tournaments is so incredibly bad that there's a real chance of some decent run good leading to a big stack and a great foundation for a big score.

for johnnybuz though, trying to make a living out of poker, I think the equation needs to be far more conservative than for somebody like me who has a stable income stream outside of poker and can be far more aggressive around shot taking

RP, in your example, the player has a massively negative ROI without even factoring the opportunity cost of the time. So, of course it looks really bad, because he's losing $350 per tournament to begin with. If you give him a 20% ROI (good but not insane) it's closer at
-$1400 when factoring in opportunity cost.

So, I would make 2 cases for tournaments (at least). For one, you could attempt to find larger buyin tournaments to a point where your ROI would make it a more cost effective decision, but I don't think that's really feasible for a lot of reasons. Secondly, and the best reason which was alluded to earlier, is the lottery concept. You're capped at $40/hr by not playing the tournaments. However, if you play the tournament, you're only sacrificing a short amount of ev and there's a small chance you strike it rich.

Rp seriously relax... this isn't some contest.

I thought his response was relaxed, and despite his numbers being inflated, his larger point remains solid. There are other considerations though, such as if the person finds tournaments as a form of entertainment, or if they can play tournaments at times that would not interfere with their normal hourly, etc.

Most donkament regs can't beat cash games for $40/h.

I know a local guy who plays mostly donkaments. Usually everything from dailys to 560s. He absolutely crushes. Always at FTs, binked a few 20k+ scores last year. He sometimes plays cash and I estimate he's a 5bb/h winner. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the only long term tourney player in the tournament player pool there with a +ROI.

This is really the huge huge important part of this notion.
You absolutely can not be playing for a min cash. You need to be playing for 1st place every time you play. (Except even more lol survivor tournaments)
And that's what a lot of people playing tournaments at levels =<$500 don't really understand.

Because of how top heavy the payouts are for all of these tournaments if you're not getting 1st 2nd or 3rd with some decent % of your ITM times, you are just going to be a massive losing player.
The average 100 - 150 person tournament that I play in pays between 9 and 15 spots. With the top place taking ~28%. 2nd gets 18% and 3rd gets 14%.
The last 3 spots normally get a min cash of 2.2% or so. So in a 9 person payout, the other 3 aren't doing too bad, averaging 10% each. But in a 15 person pay out they are getting a measly 4% on average.

It's such a gross way to pay people out but it is what it is.

This is also very true.
I drool over the thought of some of the 'better' tournament players coming to sit down at my cash table. They are completely different beasts, and most people don't have the skill set (or don't want to apply it) to be good at both. You get into habits that work well in on setting but not in the other.

+1

Its amazing how different the same game is when played in a different format.

Maybe you guys actually agreed or didn't understand my quick example, but that was the point. The quick calculation was to show that a decent player at $40/hr has very little incentive to play $500 tourney.

Plus isn't it pretty obvious that everyone plays to win, not to min-cash? But these donkaments are designed to have much bigger element of luck than in cash games, almost like a fail-safe way of making sure that even the worst players have a shot of winning to keep them coming back.

Or that most players who can beat cash game for $40/hr wouldn't become a donkament reg.

That was my point.

Lol, awesome!

My 2016 1/3 NL giraffe looks pretty similar to your 1/2 NL: a dip, a rungood, and now ~flatlining, over about the same amount of hours (although half as many sessions, lol).

Ganyplansforthe$1?G

Sort of agreeing.
Sort of clarifying that the way that most people play which is to min cash first, then then try to get 1st place *after that* is is a terrible way to play and it is one of the reasons that they do so horrible. So your point is valid for the vast majority of players.

And yes they do have a lot of luck in the short term, but just as little luck in the long term as a cash game. The long term in a cash game is just much easier to reach. The best players still win in the long run in a tournament though.

This.

The notion of having an MTT roll is silly unless you are specifically going to be a live MTT pro.

MTTs are mostly lottery tickets where hopefully you have better odds of winning vs. the other ticket holders.

While I agree we obv have to go deep there are weird decision points within a tournament that are at odds with our desire to say top 3. As an extreme example, on the stone bubble of some MTT and we have top 2 stack in the room. But big stack on our left is the bigger stack.

We open XX, he jams it in our face. It's possible to build a scenario that we should be folding almost our entire range in that spot even though calling and winning sets us up to go super deep.

As I type it realize may not be relevant to winrates but bottom line is play MTTs for a change of pace or when you think you have a significant edge but don't expect to realize that edge.

Interestingly enough, tonight's NBA draft order was determined by a similar concept.

Basically your edge is in number of lottery balls you get to put in the machine and hopefully the commissioner draws your ball.

No, this is not obvious at all.

In fact, its almost certainly the opposite. Most MTT players are probably unaware that merely cashing (even if its not a min cash) is "not good enough".

Perilous to use personal contacts, but the majority of MTT donks I know are just there to cash.

I guess it never actually crossed my mind that players would play tourney with intent of just cashing.

Anyhow, now we're talking about strat, not WR.

Yeah - despite people echoing "playing to win" almost the entire field has no element of that strategy in their play. There is a huge relief to most when they make the money and many people simply give up after as if that was the goal. Given everyone plays buy ins much higher than sustainable, the min-cash in many ways their goal on top of entertainment. It is the same thing as saying "everyone at 1/3 is trying to win, right?". Even if "trying" was accurate, implementing it is the issue.

There is a lot of EV in tournaments - still doesn't necessarily mean it is a better choice than cash games.

Calling and winning doesn't really set you up to go super deep tho.

Suppose you're chip leader with 100,000 in chips and there are multiple 40,000 chip stacks left at your table.

You stack one of the smaller stacks, and now your lead is 140,000 to 40,000.

But the next hand, one of the 40,000 chip stacks doubles up to 80,000, you now have another stack that can cripple you again.

Battling another big stack doesn't actually change your chances of going deep, unless it means you have such a big stack that there are no longer any stacks at your table that can cripple you in one hand.

Given your example, regardless of the bubble, the situation is still almost certainly a fold.