Hey guys, just curious as to your thoughts on playing online MTTs on the different sites. I have exclusively been playing on Poker Stars since I returned to online poker in 2016. They seem to be the most famous of the sites with plenty of advertising, as well as brand name longevity, so it feels like that is where alot of new players will go. At the same time, there are alot of winning regulars who I come across in games. I've gotten accustomed to the software, layout as well as the rewards/rakeback. But is this the best place to be playing online MTTs in the $5-$25 range?

Years ago when I first started online in 2005, I started at 888, then played mainly at Absolute, with some play at Party Poker. Then I moved to Full Tilt and Poker Stars. It was a different poker environment back then, with US players in the mix, and all of these sites heavily advertised.

I am just curious whether I should be playing at a different site, that has softer competition, or if Poker Stars is where I should stay? I have contemplated trying GG Poker out. I also try to get a feel for the traffic on different online sites, but when I check out Poker Scout, it doesn't seem very accurate when I look at the online players on Poker Stars, and compare that to what is being reported on Poker Scout. Thanks in advance for the input.

Yes. I can tell betonline is extremely soft compared to ACR.

The main difference is in what countries are allowed on the site. You want rich countries to have soft games. The easiest sites are the fenced ones like Pokerstars Ontario, Pokerstars Italy...

Winning an MTT is infrequent.

All competition is worthy and can and will put you to "tough" decisions.

Even 9-man STTs against a bunch of kindergartners playing with their milk money--if you really wanna maximize your EV you need to really exert yourself by pushing the boundaries of exploitation miles beyond what you probably think is necessary.

The core competencies of assumption-setting, strategy computation, and competitiveness are always salient--nay they are the ONLY salient things--regardless of whom you're playing against.

In fact I'd argue that the "worse" your competition, the more you need to exert yourself: for "bad" competition the average EV of their mistakes being higher is mollified by how exotic your assumptions need to be, and how egregious the resulting maximally exploitative strategies are. Don't underestimate how much guile and gumption you need to crush "bad" players. It's not as simple as the common, dismissive "wisdom", maxims including "never bluff fish" or "just wait for value" and mash the bet buttons". It's not that simple by a million miles.

All this to say: game selection should be way down on your list of priorities. It's a blessing and a privilege to have any games to play in at all, let alone being able to pick and choose which ones you play. Unless you think there's overt cheating going on, you are wasting your time thinking about this.

Really interesting thoughts Eggs. Agree exploiting mistakes to the best of ability is more taxing but I've never before come to your conclusion.

Suppose field strength remains constant, if you had ample options and bankroll is there a minimum field size tournament you would play? (my assumption that winning a 3x-runner tournament is less than 3 times harder than winning an x-runner would need to be correct for the question to be worthwhile)

I've been interested in the question "How much, compared to random chance, does a player with R% roi win an MTT of various field sizes". I'm trying to find the spreadsheet where I did the model but can't right now. It was really simple: I just grabbed the prize distribution off ACRs website and plopped them into Excel; then I added columns for the random-chance likelihood of each prize tier (basically # of prizes paid per tier divided by number of entrants), then I did some thought experiments. What if skill equally increases the likelihood across all tiers? What if the distribution is skewed: approximately random-chance likelihood to cash, but asymmetrically higher likelihood of winning?

For both 100-man and 500-man events, the results were identical:

Equal likelihood across tiers: likelihood for each tier is (1+R)*random-chance likelihood;
Skewed likelihoods: winning probability somewhere between 150% and 160% random chance (for a player with a massive 40% ROI)

In other words, I'm pretty sure that even a world-class sicko is not expected to win an MTT more than 140-160% more often than random chance would predict.

Compare Tiger Woods' career "multiplier" in golf tournaments: 24.2% winning percentage, assume an average field size of 125, that's a multiplier of (.242/(1/125)=3025%). Poker edges are indeed small; there's no physical athletic component.

Perhaps things get kooky when field sizes are really small (9-man STTs) or really large (10000-man events). I don't know.

But to me there isn't enough evidence to justify shopping around for events. I'd play literally anything that fits into my schedule. And even if my table were filled with people open limping at 100bb deep, I'd feel immensely challenged to truly exploit them to the fullest. Some of these maximally exploitative strategies are downright silly.

Thanks for the input and discussion guys. I think I may have mis-used the term "game selection" in my thread title, as I was specifically referring to the quality of players on the different poker sites, as opposed to game selecting specific tournaments to play, based on the quality of the players.

Still not sure if Pokerstars players are better or worse than what is out there on other sites. One one hand, there are alot of winning regulars I come across. On the other hand, it seems like they do seem to bring in a fair amount of new players, as I see alot of the Brazilian players, that I would describe as more "fun players" to put it nicely.

As far as game selecting based on players, this is something I used to do more when I was grinding sit and goes. That is because in a nine or ten man SNG, one player makes up 10% of the field, so I would scout and color code the winning regulars, and then avoid the the games that had a higher number of winning regs already registered. But for MTTs, fields are so big, and offerings are limited, so this isn't something I apply to MTTs.

At those stakes it doesn't really matter. The fields are so huge and there's so few good players in them. There's nothing really to select. If you're a good player you will print in any MTT at that buy in level.

When I played MTTs full time I avoided the main sites and focused on small fringe networks - kept variance low and my ROI was arguably one of the highest given my stake was around 105. I think today if I was playing I would do the same - focus on the American sites and maybe smaller euro sites, although Euro games are always tougher than US.

Some sites are definitely easier than others, although at certain stakes the difference isn't that pronounced-- and there usually aren't enough options for you to focus on one site anyway. They each have their ups and downs, I find. For me, for example, I think the player pool on Ignition is softer than on ACR, but ACR has better software and bigger tournaments, and I've definitely won more there.

One benefit of smaller sites besides the softer fields are just that the tournaments tend to be smaller, so you win more often. It's probably best to have an appropriate balance of small-field soft-site tourneys for steady money with the occasional big-field shot.