ROI question to Daliman, others, post away

[raptor517]

well, thankyou to all that posted. i plan to continue playing sngs for the rest of this month, and hopefully that will leave me with more accurate results. I hope to achieve a 10% roi in the 200s, and a 15% in the 100s. updates on status to come. thanks a lot guys

[ThorGoT]

Are these statements about max ROI assuming the player is playing a single game? If so, how does multi-tabling affect the numbers?

[citanul]

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I'm wondering: from discussions I've seen, this is the general sentiment aboutthe 200s, that a 25% ROI is damn good. However, it seems that the high 30%'s is accepted as very doable for the 100s, as far as I can tell.

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No post I've ever seen about the 100's has said anything about high 30's or even low 30's. If it was possible there wouldn't be anyone playing the 200's.

Based on previous posts, I'm pretty sure the *30's* max ROI is in the high 30's and from there every realistic level peak is -6-8%.

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Wow. I hadn't seen stuff that said that the 6-8% was a good ROI. That's pretty scary.

The post I was just recently reminded of was bozeman's link where he has a pretty confirmed ROI that looks to be in the 30%s.

I'm just thinking that well, 8% at the 200s is like, 17 bucks a tournament or 18? I can't believe that that could be near the peak attainable at the 50s. Rather, I think that 17 or 18 is around the peak that a player should be able to make at the 50s, and that %age wise, 6-8% is nowhere near what should be attainable at the 50s by a good player.

Thanks for replying though. If you have links to these discussions, that would be great.

citanul

[Cael_Sanderson]

I recently moved up to the $100's on Party Poker after playing the $50's. My numbers so far:

296 @ $100 on PP:
1st: 12.84%
2nd: 11.82%
3rd: 12.84%
ROI: 14.44%

616 @ $50 on PP:
1st: 14.61%
2nd: 12.18%
3rd: 10.88%
ROI: 21.26%

I found that when I first moved up I was playing too loose in the early rounds and too passive on the bubble. Also when I first moved up I didn't have a sufficient bankroll, played a little scared and had to move back down for awhile. Also, setup some type of rakeback ASAP. I wish I had done it weeks ago. BTW, I have been playing Hold 'em for about 18 months mostly online and read as many poker books as possible but do not consider myself an expert player by any means.

I know the sample size is limited but I thought this might help.

[adanthar]

Not 6-8%, -6-8%. I basically meant that if you have a 35% ROI at the 30's your max ROI at the 100's is probably around 19-23% and the 200's is 11-17%. It's gonna be a fair bit lower when you have just moved up.

Multitabling is going to bring this down a little bit, depending on how good at it you are, but I suspect a few people don't have any handicap and most others can subtract a couple of percentage points per table.

[Daliman]

Well, if we HAVE played together, I haven't taken any notes on you, which is usually a good thing. Means I haven't seen you make any mistakes. Takes me awhile of playing with someone to mark them down as even an OK player.

My ROI is about 11% overall in $200's right now over ~2600 SNG's, including rakeback(if you don't have this, get it. It means $3 back per $200 tourney. I do have my own affiliate if you wish to set up under me and I give 20% back, but I really don't wish to appear to be trolling for customers, which is now what the appearance is...). I consider this very low for me, as I was at 17% overall about 4 months ago, but, as you may have seen/read/heard, I've been on a bad run [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].

Your ROI in $200's overall is not bad, but not great. Remember #1 that some of the best SNG players in the world are on party. Now, this doesn't mean that someone like johnnny Chan couldn't come in and do great in them, but what it does mean is that there are people who have optimized their game for the blind structure, types of opponents, and long-term profitability of their game. The "I play to win." mantra for SNG's is mostly a fallacy. I personally play to profit, and this is a tenet often espoused by Sklansky and Malmuth. Just as a single small pot in a poker game has little to do with your long-term results, so does a single SNG.

With practice, I would say at the $100's, 23% or so is possible, but I don't have lots of experience down there. The 150 or so I have played at that level showed an exponential drop in talent compared to $200's. Also, take copious notes, and try to identify the good players and avoid them. I personally won't sit at a table if there are 2 decent players at it, which, surprisingly enough, isn't that tough to do since a new table starts about every 2 minutes in prime time(~6pm EST to 2pm EST). The theory behind that isn't that you can beat anybody, but that everyone is worth a certain % of the total pool, whether that is someone like me, who is worth about 12%, or some terrible players, who are STILL worth 8-9%. I look at it this way;

If I am worth 12% of total pool vs average players, then
12%x2000 = $240 minus $215 for entry =$25 profit per

If I take $240 on average out of the pool, then the other 9 players are playing for effectively $1760.

1760/9= $195.56.

Now, if everyone was exactly average, the average take of course would be $200, meaning everyone loses the rake. The difference in their EV is made by the additional $40 I take out of the prize poool over the average player, distributed equally among them.

Now, lets say I am in a game with 3 other players, one who is as good as I am, and 2 who are slightly worse(11%)

So one person take $240 per on average, while the other 2 good players take $220. That means I am effectively getting 12% of $1920(2000-40-20-20), which come to $230.40, an almost $10 drop in my EV!

Also, the fact that these other players take $$$ away from the rest of the players has an evening effect,(I'm sure there is a better term, but I'm no mathematician) in the fact that, let's say there are 9 11% players in the game, that leaves 1% left over for the "average" player. Obviously, anyone who only knows a flush beats a straight can do better than getting on $20 per $200 SNG back($195 loss per, yikes). So somewhere along the line, there is sort of a further regression to the mean,(more inaccurately used math terms, I'm sure.)

What does this all mean? Not sure, kinda rambling on, but mainly, avoid good players, play $100's during the day and $200's at night, and read posts by eastbay and Jason Strassa, and anyone THEY recommend. Also try not to let the swings affect your play/attitude. Not easy to do. I'm one of the most easygoing people that you could ever meet, and not much bothers me, but I am just short of a raving lunatic in chat on Party. First couple beats I take fine, but then as they pile up, I get nuts. Also, if you are multitabling, you may want to scale back a table or two. If you're not, and you find your results the same over 500 SNGs, you may want to drop back down to the $50's, where $15 per is not impossible by any stretch, with WAY less swings.

[J.A.Sucker]

Do you have notes on me?

[Daliman]

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Remember you need a 10% (or ~ 7.5% at $200s) ROI just to break even and cover the vig. An "average" player has a negative ROI corresponding to the fee.

Over a large sample the fee matters. Play 1000 S%Gs at $299 and you have spend 15,000 in fees. That's a lot of buy-ins.

Net, if your sample is acccurate then you are above average.

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Don't you just put the fee into the calculation? net/(buy-in+fee). That way 0% roi is break even. This is probably the way the poster calculated his and is doing better than break-even, not worse.

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Yes, sorry if I was misleading. You certainly put the fee into the calculation. My point was that people with 0% ROI net of fee are really achieving a 10% ROI (without the fee) and are thus a a fair bit above average. so a 6% ROI is like a 13.5% (at the $200s where the fee is a lower percent)) ROI without fees - and so is well above average.

Now whether an average player is any good ----- that's another discussion.

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I know what you're saying here, chill, but It's just wrong. ROI MUST include the fee, just as BB per Hour must include rake. No one says " I make 1.2 BB per hour before the rake, but .8 with it"

[J.A.Sucker]

I would play the 200's even if I could do high 30's at the 100's. The variance is so small in these things compared to high stakes poker games. You all are spoiled. The required bankroll for these things is miniscule. Earn is my only concern.

[Daliman]

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I'm wondering: from discussions I've seen, this is the general sentiment aboutthe 200s, that a 25% ROI is damn good.

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25% in the $200's on party is impossible long term. 20% is the likely upper boundary with rakeback.