??

What line would you take? I think it's good to just jam & get value vs worse flushes and even Ax against fish. We're not exactly c/folding and villain checks back a ton hands he calls with and never bluffs Ks, I don't really see what other line could be taken there OTR.

Would you limp Q6s UTG? There's several reasons not to. You're in horrible position. It might get raised behind you. You're going to won small pots and lose medium ones for the most part. Playing it in the SB is a bit less bad because the odds are the pot wont get raised, but you have even worse position. Most of all, you're just not going to win any real pots with it. You flop a Q and hate life if you get any action at all.

I normally play 2/5 but when I play 1/2, I sometimes play hands like this from the SB since I figure I have a pretty big edge over the field. I actually kept track of every hand I played from the SB that I dont play at 2/5. After about 100 hands I was within a few dollars of break even. There no equity advantage to playing these type hands.

As for the river, Im probably checking. If I wanted to get all in I would've done it on the turn when maybe there's some chance the button calls with just the Ks.

The 3 cards that arent aces are 7, 8 and 3. Since the pot wasnt raised, there's a pretty good chance one of these guys has A7, A3 or A8. Id feel a lot better about getting all in in this limped pot if the 7, 8 and or 3 were cards like K, Q and/or J.

One of them can also easily have 77 or 88. Im checking the river and seeing what the button does.
A7, A8, A3

Cheers Mark! She was a good one. Spent far too much on drinks last night and have vague memories of marrying some girl I met at the bar??

Thanks brother, a bit of luck would not go astray at this point in time!

Many thanks to you sir, thanks for sweating!

Yo I just subbed to your thread. I think I only really check the general PGC forum maybe once every other month so I'll quite often miss the new live cash PGCs coming through. Will definitely check out some of your hands and will keep an eye on it for sure.

This is a 2/3 game, folding pre-flop is absolutely criminal. I think there was roughly $20 in the pot come the flop, so it would have been a ~5 way hand. With Q6s vs 4 other players each with a range of 30% (not quite accurate because the top of that % will raise pre), which is extremely generous, we have 15% equity (I gave Equilab a hemorrhage working that out). So we have 15% equity and we only need 5% equity to call profitably ($1 to win $20). 5% and 15% Mike. Very different numbers. And then of course we assume we have an advantage post flop. Not calling pre for $1 is very, very bad.

To your point about the river being really really bad, obviously I disagree as well. We're never check/folding for <1PSB vs this player absolutely ever and we 100% get called by Ax and worse flushes here. Completely standard spot which I agree COULD potentially become bad vs the wrong player type.

Pretty happy to either iso or call behind with KTs. I like big isos with hands like this in position though - we get so much fold equity on the right table and have a brilliant hand post flop vs a limp/call range. Pretty sure I take it down pre maybe 30% of the time I would guess? By isoing to $45 we're risking $45 to win $42 (-$4 rake) so $38.

We autoprofit here if we win the pot ~55% of the time. Now if I win the hand ~30% of the time just by isolating, that's a pretty huge win imo. Ofc we have a great hand vs a l/c range and a positional advantage as well as a skill advantage.

I'm all for variance reduction where possible which is why I think overlimping this is cool but I think there's probably a fair gap in EV between overlimping and isolating. I also don't think isolating with position drastically increases our variance too much anyway because our opponents are capped and short. I'd honestly rather overlimp ATs here than KTs because our implied odds going multiway are better. A hand like QTs I think definitely benefits a lot from being isolated pre as opposed to overlimped (not that the latter is bad ever).

Think vs the player we've outlined and for the reasons we've outlined that shoving flop would be bad. I agree that turn should indeed be a fold.

^_^

Agreed. The whole "we're never check/folding" thing really handcuffs us to shoving. Even if we value-town ourselves occasionally, it's the only possible play.

One should not conflate completing Q6s in the SB getting 20:1 odds with limping under the gun. They're actually completely different spots. In one spot, for example, and this is something you seem to have completely overlooked, we only need 5% equity to break even on a call. 5%.

I also don't agree that we're going to win small pots and lose medium ones. If anything, we're going to win medium/big pots when we make a flush or trips. We're likely not going to be value betting top pair or anything of the like and so I actually don't see how we win any small pots.

You say we're not going to win any real pots with it but I'm morre than fine losing 95% of pots with it tbh.

Based on that (terrible) logic, this actually justifies my call with Q6s because otherwise I'd be losing at -66bb/100 by folding?

Checking is a terrible play here unless we're check/folding. And we're never doing that vs this player. Once we decide we're never check folding, the ONLY option becomes shoving.

Now that would be a truly horrendous/awful play. Shoving $385 into a $75 pot is going to literally never get called by Ks. Not hyperbole Mike, literally never. You really seem not to have thought about the spot at all - what villain do you honestly think is going to call off with Ks on an AAXY board given that price? The answer is absolutely no one whatsoever.

All we'd accomplish here is potentially blowing out the player with $80 in their stack and owning ourselves vs boats while making it almost quite literally impossible to get called by the exact range of hands we want to get called by on the turn.

This seems like a very shortsighted strategy. In reality, there's only two things the BTN can do. He cannot begin playing the ukulele while oscillating on top of a giant citrus fruit. He can only check or bet.

Now in a spot like this, you must make a decision before you act on the river. By all means if you want to check/fold here vs this player type, go ahead and do that. Personally, I'm never ever check/folding here in a million years. And because of this, combined with the fact villain will never bet the river with a worse hand but can definitely still call a bet, the only option if you like money is to shove river yourself. This is why it's important to make your decision before mindlessly checking the river to "see what he does". You cannot check the river to see what he does. You can only ever check the river to fold to a bet. That's all you can do.

Admittedly, when playing 2/3 (as opposed to 1/3 or 2/5) completing with Q6s isnt as bad as I said. I guess you can make a case to play just about any hand based on those pot odds but tons of hands are going to get you into trouble post flop. The whole "I was priced in" thing is greatly over rated IMO. If youre going to check/fold the flop with TP then its fine I guess.

I like your reasoning regarding raising the KTs and measuring how often you need to take it down preflop. If you can take it down 30+% then I like it. I dont agree though that you are in necessarily in great shape vs limp/callers. People limp/call KJ/KQ and even AK lots of times.

When I said I would rather shove the turn than the river in the hand with the A87A3 board, I was talking after one guy went all in and the other guy called but I just realized that you cant reraise there so disregard that. I didnt mean to shove $385 into a $75 pot.

I disagree that you cant check/call the river. Why cant I check and decide if Im calling or not based on any live reads I get from him?

Yeah and you know I pride myself on avoiding reverse implied odds in live poker. The "i was priced in" argument IS overrated 100%. And that's why I'm folding a ton of SBs in 2/5 games. Like a lot. But in a 2/3 I think we have a mandatory call with any two.

Yeah that's fair. I think the domination argument isn't super compelling here though. When we're in position with initiative and with ANY suited hand we can really swing our dick around a lot and apply pressure on weak ranges. Like KTo is obviously just as "dominated" as KTs when compared to a l/c range that contains KJ/KQ, but obviously KTo would be a terrible iso because it hasn't the same playability as KTs. It mightn't seem like much difference but that little 2% equity advantage we get from our hand being suited is in reality more like 10% since it allows us to mobilise our stack to generate fold equity in ways we couldn't with the unsuited variety.

Oh, of course.

BECAUSE I SAID SO, MIKE.

But really the answer is because sitting there looking at a guy behind sunglasses praying he gives off some sort of super sick and reliable live tell is NOT an efficient way to decide what to do.

Vs a select player type I will check/fold the river. If this guy isn't that select player type, our decision is therefore made.

When we shove $300 and get called by worse even if it's just ~20% of the time, that's EV$60 better than check/calling 100% of the time. It doesn't take a genius to see that. But it all comes down to whether we are prepared to check/fold vs this player or not.

So I've been sat in the library for the last 6 hours reviewing some hands on another PGC. But I think now it's time to do some study of my own. I made note a couple sessions back to look at the following spot:

"Single raised pot, 3 handed, Hero UTG vs BTN & BB, flop: 537r"

I want to be a little more certain as to what I should be doing with hands like KQs w/ BDFD on this board. As well as hands like AKo. I want to know with more clarity what my cbet strategy should look like, what my fold equity looks like, and a barreling strategy.

In terms of where I'm at currently, from a psychology perspective, I'm thinking that we probably aren't going to get a lot of fold equity all that often because ranges should contain a high density of pocket pairs and they'll never fold. So I think I'm probably under-cbetting this board.

In general I don't like to triple barrel bluff because lollivepoker players just call down too wide and it's probably torching money, but I think I could probably improve my game by selectively increasing my turn and river barreling frequencies. I've already said one of the biggest things I'm going to work on is merge betting flops and turns wider and checking less, but the purpose of this little study segment will be to look at how I'm playing my air.

Range visualisation is something I think I struggle a bit with because of the transition from online to live. Online people are playing much narrower ranges, people are mostly playing cold call ranges the same, 3betting ranges in most spots are fairly uniform across the player pool. But live is a whole nother beast.

Anyway, here's my guess as to what a random "average" 2/5 casino player is cold calling on the BTN vs UTG.



It's actually really difficult to know just what people are calling with and with what frequencies and how these ranges deviate from player type to player type. Some guys might call all offsuit aces here. Some might call a bunch of suited kings and suited one gappers all the way down, some might fold way more than this. I simply have no idea. But this is my best guess? I guess I should probably do a few different simulations vs say 3 different player types... Maybe an OMC range, good reg range, rec range, and a spastic range. That'll take ages though so I think what I'll do is just roll with the above for now and then speculate as to what our adjustments should be vs certain player types.

Let's just pretend it's HU for the time being and that we have opened KQcc from UTG+1 on a 10 handed table and only the BTN has called.



As you can see, only 36% of villain's range can "continue" on this flop IF we make the assumption that he never floats.

Bet or Check?

The pot is $55. Action is on hero. What do we do? I think we should be cbetting for the following reasons,
A) We have two overs and a BDFD - i.e. we still have equity! 25% of it actually vs top pair!
B) We can deny equity to his rando overcard holdings (i.e. offsuit broadways)
C) We can get him to fold ace high
D) We can begin applying pressure on a board where our range has all the really strong hands (QQ+).

Sizing

In terms of sizing, since we're really only interested in getting him to fold his air, i.e. we don't expect him to fold a pair, I think ~55-60% is fine. The point is to make sure we're not getting floated too wide by population here.

Adjustments

If BTN is going to float us a lot here we're pretty phucked but I don't think that means we shouldn't cbet. When we check with this hand we've essentially waved the white flag and that's a bit of a disaster considering our actual equity as well as fold equity.

Barreling

Any club on the turn and I think we should be turning this bad boy into a triple. Depending on stack depth, I'll want to be betting turn BIG on clubs to maximise fold equity.

Obv any K or Q turned we can bet again, I imagine if I were to have cbet the flop and a K or Q comes on the turn, a very large part of me will want to check for deception/balance/whatever but obv I'm trying to break this habit by barreling a less polarised range. Realistically though a BXB line is more than fine in this particular hand - it might even be preferred when OOP.

So what am I doing with the rest of my range on this board? I imagine my open range on most tables will be something like {99+, ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, T9s, AJo+, KQo}. Because we expect so many offsuit broadways to be in the IP CC range, I think we should opt for a high frequency cbet. Probably entire range is fine.

=============

Where this spot gets really interesting however is when it's 3-way. Us (UTG), BTN, and BB. Suddenly we only need to be winning this hand 32% of the time to break even, so that means we shouldn't necessarily continue as frequently. We imagine BB's range to look fairly similar to BTN's range in all honesty. Maybe slightly tighter? The fact that BB is OOP is somewhat offset by their enhanced odds to call pre.

This is a spot where I'm not really sure how wide I should be cbetting now. When it was HU, I'm very happy betting range ~1/2 pot. But now with another player, I'm much less happy doing that. Maybe cbetting $45 is still best even 3way here. I just feel like there's so much air in peoples' ranges that it's going to nearly autoprofit - that combined with our ability to turn equity I think we should be cbetting here still.

I think definitely KQs w/ a BDFD it's a no-brainer cbet because we can do cool things on more turns.

If BTN calls and BB calls, we are obv in give-up mode.
If BTN folds and BB calls, I think we can pot turn.
If BTN calls and BB folds, I think we're in give-up mode unless club/Q/K/A comes off OTT.

What are we doing with the rest of our range 3 way here? I'm happy cbetting all hands with BDFD but I think we can just x/giveup with hands like AJo and KQo and the suited ones w/out BDFD. That just leaves AQo and AKo. I'm genuinely not sure tbh whether we bet or x give up multiway here. Equity when called is nice but unless we're willing to 3barrel all combos of AQo/AKo on bricks, I'm not sure if there's much point betting.

I think the best option might be to cbet flop with AQo/AKo, if BTN calls, give up, but if only BB calls, 3 barrel? Issue with that is BB might have a stronger range to begin with, i.e. hands as strong as JJ even. We could also just x turn and see a free river which is cool because we can't do that if BTN calls. Maybe a BXB as a bluff, even though it looks FOS might be the best line vs BB here?

Really interested in your opinions on this spot guys. Here's some questions I'd like to see some answers to!

Questionnaire!

1. How wide in general are we cbetting 573r as the UTG+1 PFR vs BTN and BB cold callers?
2. Do you cbet AQo/AKo? If so, do you plan to 3barrel or take BXB line?
3. Giving up with KQo or cbetting?
4. How does your turn play change if there's only one caller? I.e. how do you play your range differently vs just BTN or vs just BB on the turn/river?
5. If BTN is an OMC/nit, their range probably has a lower density of offsuit broadways, are we still cbetting fairly wide?

Thanks guys!

Interesting questions and don't feel confident enough to have an answer, but fairly sure you want to be sbetting KQo HU and checking it mostly 3 way. HU vs btn rec I'm cbetting most/all of range ~half pot depending on BTN flatting range and aggression. Following up with a lot of large turn bets on various runouts with various hands.

AK/AQ multiway I think x/c vs btn bet BB fold is a reasonable line. Weather or not to barrel depends on runouts imo. When it's hard to find better barrels its a solid option.

No BTN folds JTo+ vs utg open in my games.

Good situation to go over and curious to hear more insight. Kind of spot thats probably worth running through a nodelocked solver.

Yeah that's some good stuff you've worked up. I think a lot depends on how much of a floater btn is. IMO most decent but not crusher regs will float one street some % of the time, but almost never float 2 streets, so I think we need to bet any turn card J+. Like you said, no need to get too crazy with sizing, strong hands won't fold anyway.

In the 3handed hand, btn has to float a bit less since they're squeezed, so even though it's not as attractive to bluff into 2 vs 1, I think in this spot we're still in good shape.

Is your 2/5 capped BI at $500 or 1K? Makes a pretty big difference as to how wide they can/should be when calling our EP open.

i think when deciding to c bet or check in these spots the ev difference is probably minimal so either option is fine. i think what should weigh you should be the tendencies of the villains (whether they fold to much or call too much etc). another option is to split your range so that you are betting your lower SDV hands like Kx and checking your Ax.

1) i think in the specific 3 way spot there is an interesting dynamic where over c betting is probably a good play. button has to worry about a player behind him so will be less inclined to float wide and BB has a very wide range that is just going to fold here oop a lot.

2,3 &4) i much prefer to c bet Kx over Ax here since we are folding out more hands that beat us like A high. 3 barreling vs button is not a bad idea if they are capable of folding hands like 88 if not it's basically burning money. don't think 3 barreling vs BB is a good idea since his range can have more hands that call down

Yeeeah, in general though I think check/calling AQ/AK on boards like these OOP just puts us in an awkward position on rivers if BTN x behind turn. I'd rather cbet than xc in this spot about always. Since it's 3 handed we don't need to be defending that wide vs a bet too.

But yeah would def be cool if someone could ram this through Pio, but at the same time it largely comes down to player-type adjustments and what frequency the IP player floats us. Those two factors prob account for 80% of our success in this spot, not how perfectly we're playing our range.

Yeah bang on dude. Largely depends on what BTN decides to float hey. I think multiway vs most opponents I wouldn't be too worried about BTN floating that wide and would largely be happy to give up. But HU we're definitely going to want to barrel I think because we're much more likely to just get floated by something like KQ.

My game plays as a $500 cap. That's actually something I'd not considered. Realistically though if a fish wants to float they're probably not too concerned about being only 100 deep vs 200 deep here.

But yeah, good points! Thanks man!

Beautiful stuff man. Yeah I thought a bit about blockers and whether we'd rather be cbetting Kx or Ax. On one hand, as you say, cbetting Kx is good because we unblock his Ax folds. Cbetting AQ/AK has the advantage of only holding 1 blocker to the "offsuit broadways" portion of his range that'll fold.

The thing is though, with regard to showdown value, if we're largely giving up when we check the flop we're not going to realise our showdown value anyway... I don't really think we should play AQ/AK as a check/call even though it's fine in theory - it is just so awkward/makes the EZ gaim of live poker way harder than it needs to be.

Also agree re not barreling off vs BB. Barreling off vs BTN though, if we assume they can fold 88 is interesting. Question is whether we have fold equity vs 99-JJ if we 3barrel. If the answer is no, then we need to ask the question of whether we can get 7x/88 to fold to a dbarrel. If the answer is yes, then we only need to bet flop and bet turn BIG and then give up on river.

Thoughts?

I agree with the poster who said people are likely to float one street much more than they are two. I play in games that likely have similar amounts to yours in terms of £/$ but it’s a 1/1 game so effective stacks are far deeper, therefore you have much more manoeuvrability post flop and can apply far more pressure as SPR’s are much higher (£5-8 opens compared to $20-$35).

I think at 100bb you might be somewhat handcuffed and forced to play much more straightforward and check fold a lot more hands that at deeper stack depths you’re able to barrel more profitably. Conversely, villains in my games are likely much more comfortable playing 250bb deep + than in your games so when you find yourself playing this deep you can likely apply much more pressure and realise higher fold equity as villains will be much less used to this stack depth given the 100bb cap on buy ins.


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Yeah, can definitely agree with that.

yeah i also don't think check calling is good in this spot live OOP. you're right that we aren't going to reach showdown a lot but i don't think that matters too much. even if it checks down and we have the best hand with Ax ~5% of the time i think that's more than enough whereas Kx will be good much less vs villains Ax that check down. it doesn't matter too much but if you were to hand select what to c bet and had to choose between Kx and Ax, Kx would be better imo. Also another small benefit of not c betting Ax over Kx would be turning an ace and getting value from worse Ax that would've folded to your c bet.

w/r to 88 i basically equated 88 the same as 99-jj since a lot of the time in this spot you're barreling AA-QQ so 88-jj are only beating bluffs. 88 might fold more than jj but i think these hands are roughly equal. in my experience whether or not 3 barreling vs these hands is profitable depends heavily on your image, villains tendencies and if it seems like he might fold (this is where lol live reads might help). but... if you are not sure i probably lean to giving up on turn since you're just going to have so many good hands to triple off here and get paid not to mention you will sometimes hit your 2 overs on turn and river if v checks turn behind

Not sure if you have access to rio elite but Ben Sulsky did a brilliant video "responding to various c betting strategies" that goes over optimal cbetting and strategies used by various live player types.

In the example used hero opens hj (or Lj not 100% sure, been a while since i watched) and is flatted by the button using a similar btn cold calling range as you posted. Flop j45r and oop is checking 85% (If I'm remembering correctly) which is astronomically high compared to many live players cbetting strats. I can't say for sure and they aren't the exact same texture but I'd assume a similar strategy would be used on 573r, checking a very large percentage of our range oop especially 3 handed.

If you haven't already i can't recommend rio enough, even though most of the content is based around 6max online play there is plenty of amazing theory and live play content. Plenty of videos to familiarise yourself with strategies used by Pio aswell without having to buy it. One month is $130~ Which is expensive but sooooo worth it.

In Melbourne yet bro? Saw in your op about moving to melbourne, best times for some good games right now while the am is on.

Yeah the hands are equal but there's obv got to be a cut off at some point regarding what sort of fold equity we get. I think stack size is quite important here too - unless BTN is maybe ~$700e to start with I prob wouldn't be trying to get him to fold 88. Average stack in my game is typically pretty short. 5x opens + 1 extra caller prob give a 100bb stack too good of a price on river if I go bet bet jam - which I think is why betting flop then potting/overpotting turn might get us the same fold equity as 3 barreling vs some opponents.

Nah, have had the Essential sub plenty of times but never gone Elite. Cool that there's some live stuff on that site though!

IMO I think J45r is quite different to 537r and I'd much rather be checking that at a higher frequency than 537r. Like HU I think we should bet range on the latter but J45r it becomes harder to justify when more of his offsuit broadways can continue.

I'd definitely look into it if it was a live goldmine, but US$130 is prob slightly too much for me. :/

In Melbourne yet bro? Saw in your op about moving to melbourne, best times for some good games right now while the am is on.[/QUOTE]

Hey mate, will be heading to AM in 10 days. Just gonna stay for a week, play the opening and then some 5/10. Not actually living in Melbourne yet - could well be if I wanted to but have decided to save a bit more before making the move so I can get a nice place and be comfortably rolled for 5/10. =]

In the OP I'd planned to be moved to Melbourne and settled in by December/January so I can A) escape the bullchit Brisbane Summer and B) get there for the juicefest that is Aussie Millions. Think I said I needed a $30k networth to do that? I now have clooooser to $50k and want precisely $57k so I can afford A) 6 months living expenses in a deecent apartment in Southbank and B) have 30BIs for 5/10 - don't really want to be paying so much in rent per week if my main game is only 2/5 or 5/5. So hoping to have a profitable week down there from the 19th to get me closer to that number!

I also have a plan C which I've not told anyone about yet. And I'll be doing a big write-up on that very shortly. =]

J high flops tend to favour IP caller, especially if they 3b KQ AQ etc. 753 preflop raiser would definitely have a small equity advantage though potentially less sets depending on position.

Would recommend an elite subscription if you get the itch to put some serious study in one month. You'd pay almost that much for an hour of decent coaching and there's good content for anything you want to work on. Some live specific stuff as well. Nothing that will blow your mind and not super important in rec heavy games but even a tiny winrate increase/one spot you take advantage of is a good payoff. MTT content especially is valuable I think. Lots of rare spots that are good to have thought about before they come up.

Plan C - The MTT Cyborg Grind & Asian Girlies

One of the pros I play with/talk strat with/have traveled with mentioned to me that him and a couple regs were thinking about starting a grind house in Manila. They're MTT pros and the idea would be to grind in Manila for 3 or so months and see what happens. I told him he was bat **** crazy. I was like man, do you know you need like 500BIs to play MTTs professionally!? And even then unless your ABI is like $200 you're only going to make peanuts! And even then who tf wants to grind behind a computer screen for 12 hours a day!?

Obviously he disagreed and so I decided I would look further into it. You know, get some numbers together and show him how terrible playing MTTs is. Oh how wrong I was. And the numbers actually have put the notion of grinding MTTs into a very optimistic light.

My research started in this thread, "Mid-stakes+ MTTs in 2017 are just 10% ROI variance-fests" Does 2+2 agree?" and I spent a few hours last night mucking around with the Pokerdope tournament variance calculator and looking at some bankroll management stuff.

The cliffs I discovered were,

ROI% - Even though the games are getting tougher all the time, i.e. poker is dead, stables are breeding very competitive regs, etc. - very decent ROI%s are still possible to those who put the work in. Someone said that stables are teaching their horses to run before they can walk and so you end up with a bunch of badregs misapplying strategies etc. Basically, 30% ROI is not impossible even in today's environment.

Importance of Field Size - If you play 8,000 tournies a year each with a 2,000 man field size, there's something like a 35% chance of you losing after having played for the entire year full time. And losing A LOT too. But if your avg field size is something like 150-300, then suddenly things become COMPLETELY different variance-wise. I'll show you what I mean with some sims a bit later on but basically MTT variance is only a ***** if you're playing lots of your volume in really big fields.

Tourny Speed & Hourly - Another thing people oven overlook is the speed of tournies and what impact slow/fast structures can have on your hourly. Compare playing a $20 turbo that goes for 90 minutes to that of a $55 deep freeze that goes for 8 hours. Say you're able to reg and play ~10 of the deep freezes in that 8-hour window with an ROI of 35%. That's an EV of $192.50 for the 8 hour day or $24/hr. Now say your ROI in the $20 turbo is lower, like 25% because of the faster structure, there's less room for your edge to manifest. On average you're going to win $5 from each of these suckers. You're able to 8 table them comfortably and so you're able to get 42 of them in per day. In the same 8 hour period, you're going to make $213 or $26/hr playing a lower ABI even with a lower ROI% and playing fewer tables concurrently. That's pretty mind blowing if you ask me.

=============

So then I got thinking, well you need a crazy bankroll for MTTs right? And then I realised, hypothetically of course, I have $30k in the bank that could, of course hypothetically, function as a pretty decent MTT bankroll. That would be 300BIs for $109s which is more than conservative.

So this got me thinking, how feasible would this really be? What would yearly projections look like if one were to play MTTs full time? Say you wanted to play roughly 40 hours a week - not sure if this is possible or not because it seems that MTT players are degenning 12 hour days constantly? So let's say you'd have to "work" 50 hours a week, that's 5 days a week @ 10 hours a day. Again, a lot of this comes down to field size and structure you'd likely be playing. I think if I was degenning such long hours each day that I'd want at least 2 days a week off completely. Ideally I'd have a 6 day grind at 7-8 hours a day but I don't think that's possible with MTTs?

Anyway, 50 hours a week probably gets us at the absolute very least 30 MTTs a day on work days - assuming you're game selecting well and stop registering at sane hours etc. So this gives us 30x5=150 MTTs per week. Say you work 48 weeks a year, you're looking at a total sample size of 7,200 MTTs for the year. I honestly know MTT guys who do a lot more than this and this number seems VERY low to me. Truth is I actually don't know how many MTTs you can play in a single 10 hour day, but the whole idea of this post is to be as conservative as possible with estimates. So we'll stick with 30.

Let's fire up the ol' Pokerdope and muck around with some stuff... But before we get to that, we need to look at roughly how we'd break down that 7,200 tournies with a $30k bankroll and what games we'd like to be playing in. We've already said we'd much rather be playing smaller fields if possible because they GREATLY reduce the overall variance. Here are some extremely rough estimates of buyin size, field size, ROI%s, and what % of our 7200 volume would be played at what level.

$22 Level - 150 Man field - ROI% 20 - 20% volume i.e. 1,440 MTTs
$22 Level - 500 Man field - ROI% 20 - 7% volume i.e. 504 MTTs
$55 Level - 150 man field - ROI% 15 - 25% volume i.e. 1,800 MTTs
$55 Level - 300 man field - ROI% 20 - 10% volume i.e. 720 MTTs
$55 Level - 500 man field - ROI% 20 - 4% volume i.e. 288 MTTs
$109 Level - 150 man field - ROI% 14 - 26.4% volume i.e. 1,901 MTTs
$109 Level - 300 man field - ROI% 14 - 7% volume i.e. 504 MTTs
$215 Level - 2000 man field - ROI% 20 - 0.6% volume 43 MTTs

Now I'll be the first to admit, I have nooooooo idea what sort of MTT spreads even run. I have no idea whether it's possible to play a schedule that consists of that particular spread. I imagine if your volume was spread over Stars, Party, 888, ACR, & Ignition, you could probably play whatever tournies you wanted. But I simply have no idea. This is all hypothetical af. As you can see though, I've selected larger field MTTs at a much lower frequency basically as a way to reduce variance. If we throw these numbers into Pokerdope we get the following...

And this **** absolutely blew my mind when I looked at it last night...

EV US$73,041 or AU$92,098
Average ROI 15%
Standard deviation is only $32,214
Probability of loss is 1%
70% confidence interval: $41,247 - $103,730
95% confidence interval: $9,862 - $140,825

Now a couple things to note here... first, I was using very very conservative ROI%s for each of these. I think @ $22s a 30-40% ROI is very achievable and yet I've only input 20% as the number there. For buyins around the $50 mark, I think 30% ROI is achievable and yet I've used 15% for the smaller fields and 20% for the larger fields. At the $109s, I think 25-30% is doable but I would be much more comfortable saying 20-25% is more realistic for very good players. Even then, that's on the high side. But even if we say 20%, that's still 6% higher than the figure I used of 14%. And then you've got the Sunday Mills which I've put at 20% even though there's evidence that the BitB stable beats it at 30% ROI, so 30% is definitely achievable there.

In these simulations I've used conservative numbers regarding total number of tournies played in a year and I've also used very conservative ROI% figures.

Would need to win @ $46/hr playing cash to achieve the same overall EV as the above. I THINK this is possible in Australia with 5/10 as a main game but that largely depends on the availability of good 5/10 games. And I'm not yet sure there's the correct availability outside of Sydney.

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Now I'm not saying I'm jumping ship and throwing in the towel re live poker, but looking at these numbers last night made for a very compelling counterargument to the whole Melbourne live poker thing. Honestly would be happy doing either - I miss being able to degen behind a computer screen. But at the same time, I'm very excited about getting my own place in the heart of the world's most livable city, Melbourne. To do the MTT thing, I'd have to leave Australia and go to Manila or Thailand or something, which is fine, but I'm just so over the heat atm lmao. I do have dat dere yellow fever though which I guess makes Asia a plus?

IDK, what are your thoughts? Are the numbers way off? Am I crazy for even thinking about it???

Can you confirm how many live-specific vids there is? Like particularly multiway stuff if at all available?

If you haven't already done this you might check out some of the long running PG&C threads by guys trying the internet MTT route - one that I occasionally follow is by Redsoxnets5. Sounds like a tough grind to me. Of course he is in the US so it may be different if you have international access to the main sites.

Cheers, I'll check it out. Had a poke around for some MTT PGCs but couldn't find any in the first 3 pages? :/ I'd be playing from SEA most likely so access to all sites which is nice.

Have you thought about doing both?

In the end it comes down to the format you enjoy more. I started in the online world but can’t fathom sitting behind a computer 10 hours per day again.

However, it could be a good switch up for you to avoid monotony

I feel like I'd want to stick to one or the other. Like to play online I'd need to move out of Australia so it's a fairly big change. Could probably do 12 months of each and see what I like more for the longer term but I think it would be -EV to constantly chop and change - would want to master whatever game I'm spending most of my time on and if I'm changed every 6 months the transition period would suck.

Many benefits and negatives of both as far as I can see. Think EV is probably quite similar actually.

Playing MTTs full time online would also be best prep for live MTTs. Grind online 6 mo/year and grind live series when they come up.

Why Manila and not just NZ or whatever though?

Only issue I see with this plan is risk that you might not actually have the ROI you're hoping for. I think you probably would but something to consider. Live edge is 0 doubt.

Manila only came up because that was what the boys were planning on doing. Would be cool having like zero living expenses as well. But I could also see myself grinding away in a cosy cottage in Queenstown or some sht - South island is the nuts.

Wrt expected ROIs, I think it wouldn't be too difficult to reach the numbers I simulated. Even if it means playing more like a $40ABI than a $70ABI, projections are still very attractive long term. I have also been given access to all the best MTT training material from all the training sites and I think my cash background would be a huge advantage.

Ofc it's just something to think about at this stage.

Be wary of making career-defining decisions w/o weighing up ALL the risks. There is an ever-present threat to online poker, anywhere in the world...government intervention (as an Aussie, you'd get that).

As a matter of interest, the UK FCA has just written to every online gambling business operating the UK instructing them to get their anti-money laundering up to snuff, or expect to be shut down. With brexit in the offing the possibility of UK player pool segregation has never been higher (or if Corbyn's lot gets in...total game over).

These intervention risks are waaaaayyyy lower in live poker, as we know from the States.

Your live game is bound to get ever stronger and your edges ever bigger....think on it.