How many buy ins should I have for these games? They are 6 and 10 man with 6 minute blind levels on the Revolution Network. I saw somewhere that 25 buy ins was a good amount to play with. Would you guys agree with this or should I have 50 or 100?

Also, that same source said that DoNs had little variance and smaller swings compared to regular STTs. However, over my first 260 games, I am down about 18 buy ins with an ITM of 50.19% and an ROI of -5%.

There's no doubt in my mind that I'm running bad and it's not just me being awful at the game. I can see the other players and how bad they play, the games are really soft, I just can't seem to win an all in preflop confrontation. I feel like I've read too many articles and hands and books to be unable to beat the $5 DoNs on Revolution.

I'm just curious if the swings I'm experiencing are standard from time to time, rare, or should be expected on a daily basis?

I've played for a few days and have had days where I'm down 12 buy ins, up 15 buyins, down 12 buy ins again, and then next day I'm down another 12 buy ins.

I didn't really expect to have these results with DoNs, I thought it'd be more like, up 5, down 5, up 3, down 3 or something like that.

I would recommend 100 Buy ins, you could probably do less but it depends on if you wanna reload if you go bust

hey, i used to play these games on stars (Bring them back!!!) with 20 buy ins and felt that i was fine. there was only one time i had to move down stakes.

it seems to me you are probably playing to loose. these games are more about patience and looking to get it in good. sure if you get to the late levels with 5bb game changes a bit, but im guessing these games on other sites are quite soft and you don't have to worry about that to often.

just play a bit tighter and don't look to get it in with coinflips. and study ICM for these games (they differ alot from regular sngs)

I've seen other people recommend 100 buy-ins. I think I've seen 30 more often, though. I can't personally make a recommendation.

There's a three-minute-ten-second introduction to ICM at Card Player.

I've never played a DON, but you're describing more variance than I'd expect. Is it possible that the six-minute blind levels are just too fast? (If they are, a good player will experience more variance).

I'd really appreciate it if you or someone else would please comment.

That's definitely possible and might be the reason there are so many swings. I think the articles that I've read are still from back in the day when everything was 10-minute blinds. It's probably a combination of that and that I may be playing too loose.

I don't have a problem with huge swings, but it just caught me off guard and I feel like I was given wrong information which could have led to terrible results for me if I was playing with too few buy ins. I'll see how it goes and if these kinds of swings continue for me.

I'd say about 50-60bi if you're unsure about your winrate and working on your game (read: not a crusher).