I\'m not sure what this means
 

As I read other people giving their results in tournaments I have compared them with mine. I don't keep exact stats, so this is just an approximation, but I make the money far less often than most of the people here say they do. I'm guessing I cash around 5% of the time, and since they pay around 10%, I would think my number should be higher.

However, when I make the money, I seem to do very well. I rarely squeak into the money then go out, I think I make the final table at least 1/3 of the time I make the money, and since I usually play events with hundreds of entries, there are usually 8 or 9 tables making the money.

Obviously since I rarely squeak into the money, I usually have a playable amount of chips when I get there, this is probably why I have a better chance of going deep in the tournament.

What concerns me is that maybe I'm missing opportunities by not cashing as often as I could. Since I seem to do well after cashing, should I be adjusting my play to try and cash more often? Or is the reason I'm doing well after cashing simply because I won't let my stack get down to the critical level before the bubble?

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

I'd say that, if your ROI is high, a low ITM percentage shouldn't bother you unduly. If the psychological effect of not making the money more often bothers you, you could tighten up more around bubble time and have more low payout finishes. Basically, if you're showing a profit, what's the problem? Personally, I have the opposite problem in that I play too tightly and often make the money but rarely make the big money. I think I'd much rather be in your position as, any time you're investing a lot of time in a tournament, you're getting a reasonable payout while I'm grinding away a lot of time just to get my entry refunded.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

I agree with Ghazban. This issue comes up a lot on the One Table Tournaments forum; people getting caught up in ITM% when ROI% means so much more. If you are playing very profitably, it doesn't matter how often you cash.

This is what people are saying when they say "don't worry about squeaking into the money if you want to make the final table"... you seem to understand that very well already, don't change [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

That being said, you could try playing slightly tighter on the bubble, but only slightly.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

I agree with the ROI statement/thought process. I would much rather go into the money with a good size stack and have the opportunity to go deep. Playing for four sometimes five hours to make maybe $100.00 seems like a waste to me.
With your talent in ring games, it would just make more sense to go into the tournament thinking deep as opposed to "just making the money". In the time it takes to squeek in, you can probably make 10 times that amount in ring games.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

David,

I'm glad you posted this because I was wondering about it myself. Like you I don't cash too often. Unfortunately for me I haven't made a final table yet in my brief life as a MTTer. It's good to see that a respected tourney player has a ITM rate similar to mine. Now I just need to use my chips better when I reach the money.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

I think I'm kinda the same way. I don't make the money as often as I would like but when I do it's usally with a real playable stack getting me into final table contention. I often play boldly (maybe too boldly?) in the pre-bubble and bubble stages looking to pick on the squeakers. It usually makes me miss the money or come into it healthy.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

The thing to remember is that noone here has a relevant sample of tournaments to judge a win rate, ROI or ITM.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

Probably means nothing at this point...

I'm also on the "concentrate on ROI" bandwaggon. But then, you probably haven't played enough to know what that number truly is. You had that one big 15K cash that's gonna skew the results. Your ROI is not going to be reliable for quite some time.

My ROI still vacillates quite a bit and I have over 450 MTTs under my belt. If I were to get a top 3 in one of those monster Party "Super" tourneys, my ROI would make a huge jump. It's still not really all that reliable and I know you probably have a heck of a lot fewer than 450 tourneys (though you're catching up [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]). ROI is more straight forward concept for SNGs, but it gets tricky with MTTs, since the variance is so large it really takes a long time to get to the long run.

That being the case, I've tried to just concentrate on the EV of individual plays throughout a tourney. I try to go over the hand histories of the tourneys I play to see where I went wrong and what I did right. When playing Party tourneys, I like using that Party hand replayer. I look at and keep stats, but I try not to get too hung up on them. At least as long as ROI is positive [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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. It would cut down on hours played, too, if I did that more. But again, it's probably still too soon to say with you if that's how you'll really play them in the long haul. How many MTTs have you played?

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

Just a notion...

I also think ROI is a good measure, but there may be a better one: Hourly Rate. If you don't sneak into the money often, you are probably increasing your hourly rate considerably, since your results will tend towards the two extremes: Much bigger payday for slightly longer hours or no payday for fewer hours.

I have been trying on some style changes lately, and I am not sure where I will end up, but I definitely think it is better to gamble more in the middle stages with a shorter stack than to try to eke into the money. It just isn't worth it to play for a tiny return.

The main stats I consider are (surprise) an ROI equivalent, number of final tables, and how often I finish in the top three when I make the final table. I think the last is incredibly important, since final table play has such a huge impact on how much you make.

As for missing opportunities by not cashing, try this: calculate your cash % and average cash amount (in terms of entry cost). Make some assumptions about how changing your playing style will impact these two values and see what the numbers say. If they say change your style, try it a while and see if reality mirrors your model. My very strong suspicion is that you are probably way ahead with the way you are playing.

Another posible area to look at:
Just how much is a "playable" amount of chips. (I think 3XBB is playable, but that is because I have rallied several times from very short stacks. Last night for instance I was 26th out of 26 with 3 or 4BB and wound up finishing 2nd due to getting greedy and slow playing when I was ahead in chips HU, but I digress...)

If you find you are selling yourself short on what you can successfully play with, you may be gambling a little too much too soon. Overall though, it sounds like your style is working well for you.

Re: I\'m not sure what this means
 

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Just how much is a "playable" amount of chips. (I think 3XBB is playable

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I was just thinking about how stupid this sounded, so let me clarify:

If I have 3 or 4 BB, I certainly have only have 3 plays, all in, fold, check the BB if the pot is unraised. However, late in a tourney, I may go a round and through my blinds without playing a hand because I know when the blinds are that high if I double or tripple up I am not in bad shape. Though I hate paying off half my stack in blinds, I would probably fold the BB with a hand like 25 to an early position raise if it left me with 2+ BB late in a tourney.

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.


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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

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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.