Are live tournaments long term profitable? If it costs $50-$60 to enter and the rake of a $50 mtt is $15 so essentially its a $35+$15 or $45+$15 MTT is this beatable long term?
Entrants vary from 40-60 players. I'm just asking because I've had quite a bit success in these tournaments. The players are pretty terrible really. Blinds go up in 15 mins and its all over within 4-5 hours.

When I used to play live turbos a lot(6 to 10 a week), we would chop pretty regularily when we got to 7 or 8 people (player pool was about 80 to 150 for those tournaments). If we assume, in you case, you chop around 5 people, and assume that over the course of adecent sample size, you are chopping roughly evenly, that means that when you cash, you would be making around $400.

On a high variance tournament style, can you reliably place in the top 10% over 14% of the time?

I found these turbo MTT's to be profitable, but not terribly so. When you get close to the bubble, the blinds are going up so fast, you are playing shove or fold, so variance was very high.

The rule of thumb for regs trying to make a living on these MTT's, or at least cover their costs(gas, lunch, etc) was that you had to cash in about a third of the MTT's you played. This was not easy.

If you have to ask, most likely not.
How many have you played? 50? 100? You just got lucky.

I doubt 25%+ rake is beatable, especially in these formats.
Probably self deal single day with 15-20 minute levels?
They go so fast, you have so little opportunity to use your skill advantage (assuming there is one).

On the other hand, the players in these are truly terrible, so if you run good-ish, why not?
Variance is going to be huge though, expect to go on 20-50 BI downswings.

Of course these are beatable. Just don't go trying to make it your sole source of income. It's more of a hobby.

Yes but your hourly is going to be very very low. Not worth your time if hourly $ is your goal.


Even if you have a 100% ROI , not unreasonable if you are a good player, then you are still only looking at $10-15/hr profit. Seems like a miserable grind to me. Id rather play cash

What is this based on?

it is almost as if some people play for entertainment but at the same time want to know if even the best player in the world can be long term profitable

I've played around 50 live MTTs.

I've outright won 10 of them. a couple of seconds and a couple of third place finishes. One 6th place finsh. I'm cashing a third of the time.
The players in these limp in with QK UTG and TT in middle position after QK limps in UTG 30BB and lower Deep. These players seem to cash quite often as well. A lot of limping in preflop which i rarely do.

I just think they are highly crushable. I'm usually the biggest stack once its short handed on the final table down to 5-6 players but I've only got a stack of 10-15BB and they just fold to my shoves regularly. I feel this is a huge edge I got because they just fold after they limp in or I open shove and I just collect the blinds or get called and I either hit or I have the goods and just hold. Usually final table is all over within the hour.

It does take 2-3 times where your racing and you just have to win those races. Maybe a time when your got AQ and your up against AK and you just hit a Q.

Playing 50 MTTs is like playing 1000 cash hands.
It doesn't mean anything.

Go play 1000 that might be statistically significant, probably still on the low side.

This is exactly why poker is so profitable for the people who put the time in it.
People who play 50 tournaments and win huge think they're crushing it and then continue to lose 3x more than they've won blaming variance.
Not saying this is you.
Just saying 50 MTTs means almost nothing statistically.

Here's a graph that simulates 50 tournaments 1000 times.
50 players, 10 paid, 25% rake, 50% ROI

I doubt it's possible to achieve a ROI above 50% especially with the rake this high. Maybe the very best players in the world could, but that's not going to be you at this moment.

Feel free to play around with it yourself:
https://www.primedope.com/tournament...ce-calculator/

You will see your variance goes way way way up (seriously I cannot understate this) as your ROI drops.
A realistic ROI for beginners who study in these extremely soft games is probably 10-20%

I might be wrong, but I don't think you'll find many daily $50 tournaments that pay out 10 places. Do it with 5 payouts and check the results.

Spew .. where did you find 6-10 of these a week 'live' with 70+ runners per? Certainly not doubting you but not where I've ever been (which isn't very many locations)

OP has to consider also, that even though Players are 'bad' they still adjust and creating good spots may be more difficult over time .. which just puts variance that much higher IMO.

IMO also, 'daily' tournament Players need to have a decent cash game as well. Not necessarily in the free-for-all late night games, but just enough to gain some comps and a few BI along the way.

It doesn't sound as if OP's room is into chopping (or he isn't), which I think you need a fairly tight 'no chopping' stance unless they're just handing you large ICM value. GL

Winstar. They ran dailies, monday through thursday, two a day. In the summer, when the college kids were out (and this was around 2010, so there was really no where else for North Texas players to go), the daileys could have anywhere from 60 to 120 players. The Wednesday daily could have as many as 150 players (no joke, Wednesday was when they ran the Senior Breakfast Buffet special).

Friday's, they would run a different format tournament (My recollection is hazy, I can't recall if they were rebuys or bounties on Friday), but still with a turbo format. Saturday and Sunday tyhey would run deeper stacks with slower levels and bigger buy-ins.

So, on a good week, i could play two tournaments every weekday, and then one or two deep stack tournaments on the weekend.

Right before pandemic, they were still getting good turnout, but not like it was before.