I'm considering playing some MTTs below the $5 buy-in. I just looked up the achievable ROI in such tournaments and an 888 article said 30% is excellent. If this is true it would make playing a colossal waste of time and variance would be huge as I'd only be 4 tabling, so my volume would be limited. The few MTTs I have played have featured such atrocious players at the stakes I mentioned that surely, much higher is possible? What is the typical ROI of a good MTT grinder at the micros?

30 is definitely super solid, but 50% is, without doubt, achievable, higher with the proper game selection!

Tbh though, study and shoot higher.

Thanks for replying. What has me conflicted is although I'm sure being +EV in the micro stakes games will be quite easy, the variance in MTTs scares me a little. I'll do some more playing around with the Prime Dope tournament variance calculator, inputting 30% and 50% as ROIs and make an informed decision.

Variance in MTTs in insane, and much worse than you can imagine before you've experienced it. This is mostly true at higher ABI where you can't have 50%+ ROI in smallish fields, but even at low stakes you can have long runs of mincashes and bricking tournaments.

I would recommend starting with a bankroll that is an amount of money that doesn't mean a lot to you, but that you wouldn't be happy to donk off.

Start with a small number of tables, you'll need to be able to notice things like how many bb everyone else before you act and which players are doing weird **** that you can make huge deviations based on. Even at $100 buyins you will see huge punts in early levels occasionally, and at micros it's guaranteed.

Max late reg most tournaments especially if you're a cash players transitioning to MTTs. You already know how to play deep with no ICM, why practice that? Get experience playing 15bb, bubble scenarios and final 1-3 tables. Max late reg gives you that experience at a much higher frequency relative to your time spent playing, and your hourly will be much higher so you can move up much faster.

Hourly winrates even at micros can be so much higher than anything achievable in cash with similar BRM strategies. As long as you can handle the variance don't worry too much about your hourly being low to start, just learn as much as possible and it will increase soon enough as you move up in stakes.