Last month I started grinding MTTs full time and there's this thing that regularly happens that is so insanely disappointing!

Just now I played a $2.20 bounty on Stars, 7805 players.
I ran insanely deep, finished 17th for $20 + $30 in bounties.
Which is a great result.

But at the same time the most disappointing feeling I've ever felt when playing poker.
Not just in this case, but in every similar case as well, experienced it like 5-6 times so far.

You run insanely deep in an MTT, you're so close to that 1st place or even top 3 for that huge cash ... and then you bust, right before you get there.

Beating 7804 players is almost exactly the same as beating 7789 players, yet the difference in $ is huge.
I literally cannot express in words how frustrating this is for me.

In this case 1st place was $700, so was 2nd place and that is without the bounties added.

Even top 5 would've been a great result paying around $100, don't remember exactly. But now I got $20 ...


Maybe I'm so disappointed because I've been chasing that top 3 place for a whole month and haven't gotten there yet.


Do other MTT grinders experience the same feeling?
How do you deal with this?
Does it go away after getting into those top 3 spots multiple times?

Obviously I'm happy and grateful with the cash, that doesn't help much though.

Volume. I can only speak for myself, but yes, it went away after a few big cashes.

It's the nature of MTTs. When you've run deep and it's down to 2-3 tables, the probability of finishing in the top 3 is still pretty low. MTT variance is huge, and at some point you just gotta make peace with it.

Yeah that's pretty crushing feeling, but honestly I never feel good after a deep run. Even if I come in second there are a ton of "if only's" that run thru my head. I think a lot of it comes down to managing your expectations. I don't know of a lot of good ways to do this but one thing I (try to) do is not check the payout structure until I'm at the FT. The first place finishes are top heavy and meant to attract people to the tournament but out of an 8000 player tournament... you might win a couple in your entire poker career but it's not a realistic result

It might seem that way, but the fact is that you busted 17th. How often do you win a 17 player sit & go? Yeah not that often. You still have to essentially win multiple coinflips to win.

But yeah, it is frustrating. You just have to accept that playing fields this big will result in your life being like this. You have to embrace it. Otherwise you will fail. If you are playing better than the field, the big results will come. But the bigger the field, the more variance in your results. One way to combat this is to play big volume and/or play lower fields. And have a big bankroll.

I have won a handful of big field tournaments and it is very cool, but very rare.

I’ve recently returned to poker after a few years away and I find myself mostly playing small stakes MTTs. Obviously the fields are large, variance is high and donkeys get there having put their money in bad quite often to eliminate you regardless. I try not to be results oriented and I usually ask myself three quick questions, particularly after a deep run that doesn’t yield much profit.
1) Are you happy with how you played the tourney overall?
2) Were you ahead when the money went in, or did you at least have valid reasons to believe you were ahead?
3) Do you feel too tilted or deflated to continue playing after that experience? (Obviously doesn’t apply to a situation where you’re multitabling a lot of games and have to continue regardless.)

As long as I answer Yes to two out of the three questions, I quickly move on, even if it’s no to 1) and yes to 2) and 3) at least I’m being honest with myself and thinking about what I’m doing. All you can do is play well, there’s no guarantee of financial rewards for doing so in MTTs where you’ll need to win many 80/20 flips every single game.

Op, play 5000 mtts and you will see how it goes. It’s hard to win a tournament, let alone a tournament with 7800 players. If everything was neutral and all players equal, you would win the tournament 1 out of 7800 entries. Variance can be brutal in tournament poker.

Honestly, I would recommend either lower player field size or atleast throw in some mtts with lower # of players (think 100-300) bc a downswing could be really brutal playing 1k+ average field sizes. When I was in a stable
And a backed player, my coach at the time always made me play some mtts that had small field sizes. If you average field size of say 5k+ Players, you could probably go a very long time between a win especially if you aren’t putting in a ton of volume.

With enough tourneys played, a winning player gets confidence. Or/and one can have weaknesses when some number of players are left, that one can try to improve separately, some bit (a different field).

One plays for the averages and a score on some volume tourney means nothing but maybe one should improve somewhere.

You are not going to do any better in the long run no matter how you do in some single volume tourney, so it is a useless stressor. Instead, focus on facing the spots where you have difficulties.

I have started going with the approach as mentioned above playing smaller field tournaments during the week and saving my bigger field entries for Sundays. Might do you some good to do something similar.

Focus on making correct decisions not on how much profit your making.

I just went deep in three mtts making 1 final table and losing on the final table. I think I made the correct decision and that is all that matters in that situation.

It's not disappointing (from where you finish) when your focus is on the result of your decisions not on the result of your tournament place or dollars won. There was one decision I made which I am disappointed with that pretty much knocked me out of a tournament in 13th place. If I didn't make that decision and elected to fold I would of had more decisions to make perhaps. Instead of 1 more decision with a all in with not much chips left I may have had another 100+ decisions to make which may have led to a 1st place.

So keep the focus on the primary thing and let the other things come with it and don't be too focused on them whether you win or lose dollars or finish last or first.

Good luck.

Go tell a broke homeless dude that he should focus on the decisions and not the result, see if that helps him.

In the end the results are all that matter.
You focus on the process because you want to improve the result.

While I agree that focusing on the process helps, it doesn't make the disappointment go away at all.


On an unrelated topic, it completely triggers me when people quote entire posts for no reason.

Um...no

Anyone that is experiencing bad results in life should be told to focus on the decisions and not the results. The results are evidence of someone making the right decisions. Typically a person does not end up homeless if they choose to have a job, do that job at a level that won't get you fired, choose to spend their money first on food and shelter, and live within their means. Right decisions always lead to results... not the other way around. Just because you don't want to hear it doesn't make it less true.

I don't know how this thread ended up about homelessness, but here's how I think about MTTs. My teenage son has gotten into the game too and is starting to experience this frustration, so I've been coaching him along these lines.

MTTs are all about volume. If you go into every MTT expecting or hoping to win, you will be disappointed. The goal is to stay in the game long enough until you eventually hit big. That means make sure you're properly bankrolled, work on your game, and focus on playing the best you can each tourney. Play enough and eventually you'll have a big score. That's really what it's all about.

FYI, I've heard Fedor Holz say that he was a break-even player for several years before he went on his sick run.