Sorry for dumb question, I'm new!

Why do pros seem inconsistent in their winnings? For example, one player could place #1 at a tournament and then #300 at their next tournament. Why is this? Why can someone place #1 or #2 yet also place #50/300 or #200/1000 at other tournaments? If they're good enough to win #1 at high stakes shouldn't they be consistently placing high up?

Because in a single poker tournament, luck is far more important than skill.

Think of this statistic: A winning tournament player fails to make the money in over 70% of the tournaments he/she enters.

Probably more than that, assuming that there's a somewhat standard payout structure, anything more than 20% ITM probably indicates a huge leak

Additionally, if we're talking about a "pro" level, then there's not going to be a huge level of skill difference which will increase the variance

Re: the bolded - I think that with the proliferation of re-entry tournaments (at least online at the levels I play) the ability to re-enter closer to the money pushes the % up a bit.

I had my highest ITM last year - 29.1% which I attributed to being able to re-enter. I also had my highest ROI +91.6%, but that was entirely due to 2 wins in 1400+ player tournaments. Note: I don't play a lot of tournaments. In 2020 I only played 213.

Short answer is, I agree that too high an ITM should often equal a negative ROI and my 2020 results were an outlier.

i dont think anybody here has truly answered his question.

the reason why there is such a difference in tournament placings for pros is because tournaments have high variance levels. in other words, they are wild, and you must run hot whether or not youre an amateur or pro in order to get placed high in a tournament.

luck plays a huge factor in tournaments, and skill really makes the difference when you play a very high number of tournaments. the more you play, the more your skill becomes evident. a mediocre player will typically place low or medium and sometimes even high in a tournament simply due to a good run of the cards.

it is not like in golf or tennis where an average player stands a 0% chance of beating tiger woods or roger federer, tournament after tournament after tournament.

you will commonly see people who are elite players like Phil Ivey bust out in a tournament just an hour or two after the tournament starts because they go all-in with their AA vs. J10 and the flop comes AKQ

even i lasted longer than greg raymer in this 100 player tournament long ago.

Also, the fact that the blinds increase in tournaments forces everyone to play hands and pots they might not play in a cash game, which adds to variance.

id like to see a structure where blinds remain same throughout whole tournament, and the lowest chip count players are removed every 5 min or so

This is fair, although I did qualify that with assuming a standard payout structure (meaning, generally, pays 10% and is a freezeout). If you're paying more and you've got stupidly long rebuy periods which leave you extremely close to ITM afterwards, then it may be higher. The general point is that playing for ITM will leave money on the table given the prize structure of donkaments will almost always favour actually winning rather than mincashing

As someone that works as a table games (but not poker) dealer people constantly underestimate their variance.

Blackjack card counters have 0.5% to 2% advantage when they're betting big, and it's MUCH more clear that they have a mathematical edge every time they do so.

Their swings can last for months. And blackjack doesn't even have "all-ins" and the average table does 250+ hands an hour, almost four times faster than even the online micros I'm playing.

I guess the rule of thumb for winning players is how they're doing after 10,000 hands. I mean it'd take a lot of tournaments to play 10,000 hands.

Follow up to the ITM/ROI discussion.

I went back to my 2020 spreadsheet and carved out the tournaments in which I re-entered.

Of 213 tournaments, I re-entered in 15, 9 of which were double re-entries. One of my big wins was from a double re-entry.

My ITM in non-re-entered events went down to 27.2% and my ROI dropped to 40%.

In my two best years prior to 2020, my ITM was 18.7% and my ROI was 56.8%.

Thus, my data seems to support that above a certain level, as ITM increases, ROI decreases. Something I always assumed.

A 900 entrant field will have an avg chipstack around 100x initial stack. Going from 1x to 100x in a day or whatever is generally unlikely.

In 2018 Phil Mickelson, out of 20 tournaments entered, won 1 PGA tournament, finished 35th or worse 7 times, and missed the cut an additional 8 times.