Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

I think I've played around 200 MTT's now, but I have no idea what my ROI is or whether it'smeaningful at this time.

I don't even want to suggest that what I am reporting is part of a concious effort to make the money with a lot of chips or go home, it's not. As you have mentioned I play probably too cautiously in those pre-bubble stages. I think post bubble my cautious play pays dividends in 2 ways. A lot of guys loosen way up and just folding 2 orbits is likely to move you up several places, but I seem to get a lot of steals at this point, probably because I have played so tight up until that stage.

But in that 90 minutes before the bubble, where I usually either have chips or get low, I suspect I am a little too loose in my raising (all-in) standards, which leads to doubling up or going home I guess.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

Do you know of anyone who has done much work in this area?

i.e. how many MTTs you would need to play to get an accurate read on your ROI, or even for that matter your ITM.

does anyone have any figures on what a good player could expect in terms of ROI or ITM?

Any posts or other work would be interesting.

I have just done a bit of work on a simulator for SnGs to project and examine ROI, RoR and ITM. I was thinking of extending it to try and do some work on MTTs. But if a lot of work has already been done then I wont bother.

Thanks for any info anyone has.

Tim

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

ya got me thinking David, so I checked my spreadsheet.

I have played 243 MTT tourneys so far this year for a total investment of 7437 dollars. These range from $0 dollars (freerolls) to the $500 tourneys on Pokerstars as well as the satellites for those events. This is not counting SnG's, however.

I have cashed in 37 of them - for about 15% - but my total return for the yr. is only $1519 - a very small profit overall.

furthermore, I've only cashed over $500 three times this year. I can probably blame the following factors.

1. moving up too quickly - as soon as I made a big win, I counted two tourneys I played afterwards I wasn't ready to play - (

2. - I sorta sucked in my aggressive play once I got into the money - three times I placed 40th in party events with over 1000 players, and almost always got forced to make a move at the same point in the tourney, which was a drag....

3. - too much booze. - that's been on the outs now for almost a month...so we'll see

suffice it to say, without the big wins, I'd have no profit....

that's the key - final tables - best of luck to both of us trying to make it this yr.

RB

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

Simple answer, no.

I'd also be interested in anyone who has put some really good research into it. I guess its not like SNGs either in the way you can really dedicate yourself to a level. I think most of us just jump in whatever is available, and thats a problem because to really study it you need to look at the same buyin results. Your ROI could change so much after just 1 event, just for example MLG on Sunday; I would not even like to guess how much his ROI jumped up after his great win. The other thing is that a losing player could have a great deal of luck and hit a huge score in a big tournament and look like a big winner for years.

As your long term MTT performance will be focused around the big wins, whether you get your buyin back in a tournament is not of great importance long term. The fact that these big wins are increasingly rare the more people in the tournament, makes the sample necessary larger and larger.

I think you'd need to win a specific tournament 50 times to iron out a lot of the variance. I'm thinking 10000+ tournaments is often necessary, depending on the size and your edge of course. I just don't realistically see long run data existing for MTTs.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

[ QUOTE ]
As to your style, I should probably do more of that. I tend more toward a lot of small money finishes (and bubbles), just trying to survive and eeking it out and hoping to get lucky in the late stages, vs the build or bust style of getting a monster stack early and driving it towards a big money finish or busting out on an early race.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think your current plan of a more conservative approach is the way to go. I've been experimenting (read: playing bad) lately with the build my stack early approach. It really hasn't done me a damn bit of good. I don't think I've ever busted out of a tournament and thought to myself "you know, I really should have played more hands."

Also, my personal experience is that while there may be a correlation between your stack size upon making the money and where you actually finish, there is definitely a huge variance. This would imply that gambling early in a touranament is not justified.

I feel I have had much more success with the "sneak into the money and then hope to get on a rush" strategy, than with the "play like a maniac early and build a big stack" approach.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

There are only two ways that I can think of to get at what ROI a tournament player might expect.

One way I can think to apporach it would be to find some top class 1-table, 2-table and 3-table SnGers and see what sort of ROI they are each getting. Perhaps from that one could extrapolate what the sort of ROI one could expect from an n-table tournament. But this really isn't many data points to work with....


A poker room might be able to look at an individual player's ROI for SnGs and then compare to their ROI for tournaments. Applied over an entire customer base it might be able to extrapolate a relationship between SnG ROI and Tournament ROI.
A player would then only need to know their SnG ROI to know their Tournament ROI.

There are of course a huge stack (no pun intended) of other factors which would be unaccounted for in both of these techniques. So no need to post and say how crap they are. But if you can come up with anything better....

One other thing:

[ QUOTE ]

As your long term MTT performance will be focused around the big wins, whether you get your buyin back in a tournament is not of great importance long term.


[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely right, but it may well make a considerable difference to RoR for a given BR. Considering the massive variance of MTTs RoR is a pretty major problem for all MTT players.

Just some thoughts

Tim

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

Tosh and Mark are right. Your sample size is small, and the fact that you are cashing in only 5% is just a statistical oddity. You are definately good enough and solid enough that you should expect to cash around 15% of the time.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm thinking 10000+ tournaments is often necessary

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think 10,000 1,000 player tournaments would be enough to accurately analyze ROI at all. I guess it would be sufficient enough for ITM.