Stars Turbo SNGs - Bankroll Requirements, ROI, etc. (long)

[UMTerp]

Hey all,

Bunch of random (most stats-related) questions about the Stars’ Turbo SNGs. This is going to be long, but hopefully at least a few of you can make it through this post and help me out a bit. And before I start, I know when people ask stuff like this on here, about twenty of you usually jump down their throats – “Use the search button, damnit!!” – well, I looked and couldn’t find the answers I was looking for, so if this has already been covered, hopefully one of you will at least be kind enough to give me a link to a post with some answers.

Anyway, to start off, I’m a winning player. I’ve played pretty seriously for 10+ years, and do well for the most part. However, I am TERRIBLE at managing my bankroll (particularly online – I keep a separate bankroll for that), and decided to finally do something about it. So I decided to get disciplined and keep stats for the first time in my life, but have a few questions about the significance of them.

First of all, I’ve read more than once on here that 20-30 buy-ins or so is adequate for SNGs. Is this true? What is the formula for risk of ruin?

Also, I’ve decided to focus, at least for the time being, on the Turbo (5-minute blind levels) instead of regular SNGs. I’ve done this for a few reasons: The rake is lower, they take less time, the players are very bad, particularly at the lower limits.

Now I’m sure that the variance is higher in the Turbos, and I’d also imagine that your attainable ROI is lower. Though I think the fact that they generally take about half to complete as long makes up for the ROI differences.

Here is my gameplan – I plan on moving up fairly quickly, as I’m positive I can beat the $50’s, I just don’t have the bankroll for it yet. Does this sound reasonable??

I started with $200 in my account on Saturday. I played 91 $15+$1 Turbo SNGs since then, with a 0.261 ROI. 37 cashes, 15 wins. Now my SNG account is up to $580. I plan on playing at this level til my account reaches $1000, with a minimum of 200 games, then I’m moving up to the $25+$2’s. Same deal there – make $1500 (minimum of 200 games, then I’ll have $2,500 in the account, and I can start playing the $50’s, which is what I wanted to play initially anyway – I just didn’t have the stake.

Again, that’s just the plan – by far the most difficult part for me is not taking a shot at a bigger game with this money, but I think actually keeping stats will help me quite a bit with the discipline part.

OK, finally some questions – what are the biggest differences (stats-wise) between the regular sit and go’s and the Turbo ones?

Does anybody have any stats they’d be willing to share for the $50 SNGs? Is a $2,500 bankroll adequate for these? Is it adequate for the $55+$5 Turbo ones? Does anybody try to 4-Table with some Turbo games, some regular? Will that mess up my game if I try to do that? What is an attainable ROI at the $50 level? I can’t imagine it’s very possible to be much higher than 0.20 at $55+$5 Turbos if you’re 4-tabling, correct?

Basically, I’m just looking for some feedback about my gameplan, would like to know if any of the assumptions I made are way off base regarding bankroll, etc. Thanks for any help in regard to all this.

[Paul2432]

I can't answer a lot of your specific questions because I don't play the Turbo S&Gs at Pokerstars. I do think you are too conservative moving up. Note that failing to move up when you can beat a higher level just costs you money.

Here is what I would do: stick with the 15's until you have $1000. Then play the 50's until your bankroll drops below $750. This may never happen. If it does, drop back to the 15's and repeat. It should take no more than 2-3 attempts at the 50's to never look back. (if it takes more than 5 you probably want to reconsider whether you can beat the 50s)

If you intend the 50's to be your bread and butter game, I would then build up to 40 buy-ins. After that I would make monthly withdraws of anything over 40 buy-ins. If you ever drop below $750 which should have almost zero chance of happening if you can beat the game (30+% ROI), simply repeat the above process.

As far as calculating risk of ruin, the standard formula is

RoR = e ^ (-2 x BR x WR / SD ^ 2)

Where:
BR = your bankroll in buy-ins
WR = your win-rate or ROI
SD = your standard deviation. 2 buy-ins is a conservative figure.

Hope this helps.

Paul

[UMTerp]

[ QUOTE ]
I do think you are too conservative moving up. Note that failing to move up when you can beat a higher level just costs you money.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, we're only talking a few weeks, so I don't mind. I can knock out 20-30 of these in a four or five hour night, and I play at least 3 nights a week. If it was more time-consuming, I'd probably be a little more aggressive with moving up.

And I've seriously been so reckless with my bankroll that I think it'll be benficial for me to discipline myself like that.

Thanks for the reply though - especially for the formula.

What's the formula for calculating your SD for these things?

[Paul2432]

What's the formula for calculating your SD for these things?

I made a post discussing this a couple of weeks ago. Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=singletable&Number=1252916 &Forum=f22&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=12529 16&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=3399&daterange=1 &newerval=3&newertype=w&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyp rev=#Post1252916) is a link. That was for the Party structure, but you should be able to tweak the calculation relatively easily.

Alternatively, you could track your results and figure your SD empiracly. (MS Excel has a function that will do this).

Paul

[Irieguy]

A few comments:

First, it is incorrect to assume that the turbos have a higher variance. Misunderstanding variance as it relates to SNGs is a common theme on this forum.

Variance is the square of the difference between your typical result and your win rate. It's the payout structure of a SNG that determines variance, not the "speed" of the tournament. Even if they started running 1-hand SNGs, your variance would be small because all possible outcomes are within 5 buy-ins of each other... and most of them are within 1 buy-in.

So, if you understand that, you will see that your bankroll requirements do not need to be adjusted for Turbos as long as the payouts are the same and your win rate is similar. The buy-in recommendations that are most helpful are those based on emperical results by players who have played thousands of these things and have the statistical sophistication to understand what their results mean. Search posts by Eastbay and AleoMagus for plentiful nice examples. Bottom line is that if your goal is to never go broke, you should have 50 buy-ins. If your goal is to play comfortably and only go broke occassionally, then 20-30 buy-ins is adequate. This depens on your personal preference... if win rate is most important, you should move up as soon as you have a 20 buy-in "pad" on your regular bankroll. But if you absolutely hate bankroll ruin, then you may want to wait longer.

As far as your other questions, I agree that your max ROI at that level when 4-tabling won't be higher than 20%. I don't think it's a good idea to play some turbos and some regulars at the same time. Mid-game strategy differences are too great to allow stress-free assimilation. $2500 is definitely an adequate BR for the $55's. I have only played a few turbos on PS, but their structure is more similar to Party than to regular PS SNGs... so I think ROI stats from Party are somewhat applicable to PS turbos. 4-8 tabling it seems like the max attainable is around 20%. 2-4 tabling you can probably get to 25%, and 1 or 2 tabling you can probably acheive over 25% ROI. This is the consensus of what all the regular $55 players have posted, I would say. Finally, the biggest difference between the turbos and the regular SNGs on PS is that for a given ITM%, your ROI will be lower at the turbos. This is a reflection of the fact that the average chip count/blind ratio is going to be smaller in the money. This means the only horrible mistake you can make is to fold too much... a problem that few opponents have.

Irieguy

[housenuts]

i don't understand how variance doesn't increase.

say with your example on a 1-hand SNG you'll finish in the money 3 out of 9 times or 1 in 3. When you play a full SNG your superior skills allow you to alter that to something more like 2 out of 5.

the shorter it is, the more luck is involved. the more luck is involved, the less your skill affects the outcome thus increasing the variance.

[Irieguy]

[ QUOTE ]

the shorter it is, the more luck is involved. the more luck is involved, the less your skill affects the outcome thus increasing the variance.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not true. Flipping a coin involves no skill whatsoever. But if you bet a dollar on every flip, your variance would be pretty small... as far as games of chance go.

In the 1-hand SNG example, your ROI would be -(vig), or -10%. 78% of your results would be plus or minus 1 buy-in. This means that your typical result is going to be very close to your earn rate... whether you lose 10% or win 20%. Variance is small in SNGs, regardless of how fast they are or how good or bad you are.

The two concepts that people tend to confuse are those of "variance" and "probability of a losing streak." The lower your ITM%, the more likely a long losing streak becomes. But the variance that a 30% ITM player and a 40% ITM player experience will be very similar. The poorer player will be more likely to go broke, but it's not because his variance is higher. It's because his earn rate is lower (or negative).

SNGs have ridiculously little variance compared to live games. And it doesn't matter whether it's $10 or $200, turbo or regular. Ask anybody who keeps good stats at SNGs what their variance is, and they will tell you it's around 2 buy-ins... give or take a buy-in. If you call your earn rate a "unit," then your variance is going to be on the order of 5 or 6 units. Compare that to live game players, who aim to win 1 to 2 BB per 100 hands. Their variance is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 BBs/100 hands. That's a variance more than 3 times what SNG players see.

Irieguy

[UMTerp]

Thank you, IrieGuy. Very Informative.