Hi everyone,

certainly i am like the millionth person to complain and whine about MTT variance, but at this point i feel really devastated and in need for some reassuring words.
I hope by sharing my story here i can make use of the proverb "a problem shared is a problem halved" and raise awareness once again for proper BRM and maybe prevent one or two people reading this, who recently hit a big score and who might now plan to increase their ABI significantly, from underestimating MTT variance and loosing all their winnings (and more).
I am still confident to make the right decisions and playing patiently and grinding it out without any noticable signs of tilt.

With this out of the way here is my chart for approx. the last 2,5 years.

Some of you might say, well that does not look too bad, at least you are still in the green zone. BUT this does not include my ventures on GG (down around 5k$) in 2021 and also around 300 tournaments of PS are missing, as i was too lazy to turn on PT4 sometimes, expecting just another loosing session obviously (about another 1-2k$ of losses). So overall i can confidently conclude that i am down between 1-2k$ for over 2 years of playing EVERY ****** SUNDAY. I still love the game and enjoy my sessions on the great majority of days, but these numbers do affect me when i reflect on them. I mean i invested thousands of hours of my lifetime without being able to show up with anything in exchange. I never saw poker as a mere hobby, where i do something that i enjoy and spend money on it. I was always ambitious about it, studied a lot (RYE, youtube vids, ICMizer etc.), trying to improve my game AND generate a nice little side income with it.

I mostly play on sundays on PS (probably 90% of days played are sundays). After a while i learned that this increases variance by a lot, but i would have never imagined that you can loose like 10k$ with ABI of around 50$. I really regret playing too many 100$ tournaments, which increased my ABI quite a bit. I tried to include sessions on other days of the week to have smaller fields and thereby decrease variance, but that is not really sustainable except on Saturdays maybe. Because i work fulltime and regularly have 8-10h of screentime already Mon-Fri i really do not enjoy playing online poker on these days. So basically i could only substitute my sunday session by a saturday session, but I am not sure if that is going to make a big difference, as is it also the weekend and fields are often quite large as well.

Alright, enough complaining. I appreciate any feedback, constructive criticism, general thoughts on the topic of variance and encouraging words. Feel free to share some of your variance journeys as well as they might give me hope for the future.


PS: I am aware of tools like this: https://www.primedope.com/tournament...ce-calculator/ and by playing around a little you realize basically every result is possible after a couple of thousand of MTTs regardless whether you are truly a winning or losing player.

You play only sundays, you played 3k torunaments in 2,5 years and you are complaining about variance?

you need to play like 50k tournaments before you have a good idea of what you should be winning

and even then it's not totally conclusive

1. Your average buyin is probably too high, play lower stakes mtts and your ROI will increase.

2. Play smaller field MTTs, Sunday are the worst for variance, huge fields.

You can't loose if you don't play, OP!

As others have said - smaller fields = less variance. For bankroll reasons play your highest buy ins with smaller fields, and if you want to take shots at big field paydays go with a lower abi.

not sure what you mean by that?

yeah i see that point, but it´s kind of ridicilous with a sunday only schedule isn´t it

thanks for the suggestion. i just found that i enjoy playing small field MTTs way less, but maybe i should make that sacrifice to at least achieve a decent win rate without so much volatility. Which tourneys on PS would you recommend specifically? I think playing mostly small field MTTs and mixing in some large fields as well would be a nice way to go about it

What would you define as smaller fields? Because i´m not really looking to play these 18man SNGs

Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker EVERY YEAR? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas?

You've come to the right place.

It depends what your goals are - if you to want to make some kind of living then do small fields, but if you want to dick around do large fields

as i said i want to generate some side income, but it´s not really a problem if i accumulate losses for a couple of months. so a mix should work for me. btw do you know what FT% can be expected in an avg field size of lets say 2000 players? would 1 / 500 be decent already?

Depends what your ROI is, but nevertheless those are big fields. When I played I had a very high ROI in comparison with most but my average field size was probably somewhere around 200 which gave me a lot of consistent winning months, but also never had huge scores. My ABI was 120 and my biggest win was 34k, but the worst downswing I had was about 200 buy ins over roughly 5 years of playing. Say your average buy in is 50 for example - if you want to play tournies with 1k+ entrants keep the buy ins to 25 or less, and if you want to take a shot at higher stakes try to find tournies with smaller fields on fringe sites.

No you are the first one. Please continue.

thanks for the specific numbers. do you know what kind of ROI is possible / realistic on 18 player SNGs with 25$ BI these days on PS? i played some of those in my last sessions and spotted some regs but also some fish. if i had to guess maybe 60% regs or sth in that ballpark. the rake is 7,4% (no idea if that is average or high or low)

Guy wants to play poker and everyone suggesting him to go work in some small field