In Poker tournament formula 2 by Arnold Snyder; his calculation of % advantage over other opponents must be wrong. I'm referring to the chapter about if single table satellites or super satellites are worth it or not.

He says that most pros might have 200% advantage. If you looked at a $15 buy-in sitngo at PokerStars; this would mean that the pro would finish in average between 2nd and 1st place EVERY tournament with a winning of $45! That's impossible.

Either I got it wrong, or his calculation can't be used in sitngo's.

His calculation:

% advantage = (WINNING - BUY-IN) / BUY-IN

For your information: Payout structure sitngo is 1st. $61.65, 2nd $36.99 and 3rd $24.66.

I would be really thankful if anyone could help me here.

Is a SnG a tournament [?]

I would guess his [made up formula] works better with bigger fields and bigger payouts when you hit the money [as in you can win many times your buy in]

But it sounds like an idea he came up with - so it's not some actual/real formula, so it won't actually work in real life anyway

But I would guess SnG does NOT count as a tourney

If winning is total return and if buy-in includes fee, then % advantage is the same as Return On Investment.(ROI)

A sit’n’go program I have indicates that for a 9 man $10+$1 SNG a 200% ROI for a pro is possible if the player is in-the-money 90% of the time with a relative placing for 1st, 2nd, 3rd of 6-3-1. That means, for example, he would be first about 54% of the time and second 27% of the time.

BUT, it is highly unlikely he is the only pro in the 9 man table. So two or three pros all can’t be first 54% of the time. Changing the numbers while still retaining a 200% ROI would still yield crazy results for typical SNGs..

So, I agree that the 200% figure is very, very unlikely, if not impossible.

Thnx for the answers!

In that chapter he had some charts indicating when it would be profitable to enter 10-man satellites if you had this and that % advantage, but if the calculation is not good for 10-man tables then it's too bad...

Arnold are you reading this?


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During the poker boom it was certainly possible to get some sick ROI on sit 'n gos. It became the "it" game, because of the televised poker, and accessibility to the average view that online sit 'n gos gave. Satellites too. I'm guessing the material was written from that era.

In the glory days, didn't Andrew Robl have a 90% ITM% in STTs or something crazy like that? I believe it was possible on some networks in the the early 2000s to literally sit out all the way to the bubble, because everyone was so spewy and couldn't even spell ICM, let alone understand it! Games were apparently super-soft.
These days, you're crushing if you have an ROI in double figures, and I think even that's probably only possible below $10 STT games.

Just remembered he stated that the satellite-pro might win every 1 out of 6 approximately of every 10-man satellite he/she entered. And he just mentioned that a pro might have 200% advantage over other players. And he probably meant the 200% advantage would apply to multitable tournaments. So then it makes sense.

Sorry for wasting your time. Should have done some thinking before I post.

i think the quotes and arnold's calcs are something we'd need to see exactly and he may very well be wrong...

i wouldn't have thought "advantage over opponents" = ROI but that seems to be his definition.

is he making some sort of assumption on what your time is worth? i would think that if you don't take time or other opportunities into account then your ROI/advantage cutoff is 0%...

i can;t imagine there are sit-n-go's or small satellites where your ROI would be close to 200%