ZeeJustin: A Case Study

What I have been doing lately is diversifying. I play a certain number of SNGs a day with a very safe bankroll. I play a few MTTs a day with a very safe bankroll. I play 3-5 MTTs a week that is beyond my bankroll if you use the 100xbuyin formula.

This is my formula for at least "breaking even" over the short to medium term while holding out hope of cashing some big events every once and awhile. I am a part-time self-employed lawyer, though, so I am in a very different situation then someone who is depending on monthly income from playing poker.

I would love it if someone tells me this is not a good approach I am taking.

[pfkaok]

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Yes, as I said in another post to N 82:

"I should add that my point requires that you be playing multis at the same buyin level as the satellite (i.e. you are replacing some $250 regular tourneys with $250 satellites.) If all you do is play satellites way under your bankroll to get into events at your bankroll, you're wasting time. This only makes sense for people who are rolled for events big enough that they don't have a lot of them to play (and thus often play lower buyins because it is the best available option). Of course, these are the people least concerned about variance, which makes my point less relevant."

In other words, if a very good player is +EV in $2500 multis and has the bankroll to play them, and has roughly equivalent EV's in $250 multis and a $250 satellite to the $2500, he can minimize his overall variance by playing satellites to $2500's in addition to regular $250 multis, provided that there are times when these buyin levels are the highest available options. This ignores other games - of course his time might be better spent in cash games or STT or PLO or something else.

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Yes. i understand what you're saying. and i think its very false.

if say you have a 100 buyin BR for $250 MTTs, you should NOT be playing $250 sats for $2500 buyin events. unless you're just playing them to sell the $2500. Variance will INCREASE.

to play sats for $2500 events, you should at least have the BR to play in $1500-$2000 events.

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Did you even read the second paragraph?

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Yes. but my point is that for somebody with a BR for $2500 buyin, the variance in $250 MTTs is quite small.

Playing in $250 sats will have lower variance than straight buying into the $2500 events always, yes.

But it seemed like you were saying that $250 sats have lower variance than $250 MTTs. this isn't true.

[LearnedfromTV]

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But it seemed like you were saying that $250 sats have lower variance than $250 MTTs. this isn't true.

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??????????

A 500 man tourney that gives 50 prizes of equal value has more variance than a 500 man tourney where half of the money goes to the top three? Wow.

A satellite can pay a significantly lower % of the field and still have lower variance.

[Exitonly]

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But it seemed like you were saying that $250 sats have lower variance than $250 MTTs. this isn't true.

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Er... i think it is true. But it depends which sat you're talking about, and which MTT. But a flatter payout format will have lower variance.

[pfkaok]

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But it seemed like you were saying that $250 sats have lower variance than $250 MTTs. this isn't true.

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??????????

A 500 man tourney that gives 50 prizes of equal value has more variance than a 500 man tourney where half of the money goes to the top three? Wow.

A satellite can pay a significantly lower % of the field and still have lower variance.

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UGH...

IF you're playing the $250 sat. with the plan of selling the $2500 seat, then yes, you're correct. the $250 sat has less variance. That is obvious.

However, normally you're playing the sat in order to win a seat and play the larger event. this will be WAY more variance than a normal $250 buyin MTT.

[LearnedfromTV]

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But it seemed like you were saying that $250 sats have lower variance than $250 MTTs. this isn't true.

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??????????

A 500 man tourney that gives 50 prizes of equal value has more variance than a 500 man tourney where half of the money goes to the top three? Wow.

A satellite can pay a significantly lower % of the field and still have lower variance.

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UGH...

IF you're playing the $250 sat. with the plan of selling the $2500 seat, then yes, you're correct. the $250 sat has less variance. That is obvious.

However, normally you're playing the sat in order to win a seat and play the larger event. this will be WAY more variance than a normal $250 buyin MTT.

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Not if you are rolled to play the 2500 and will buyin if you don't win in, an assumption which was stated throughout. If you're going to join a discussion late at least read and understand what's been said already.

[trevor]

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There's been a lot of talk lately about ZeeJustin, MTT ROI, variance, etc. I want to present some data that I have on Justin, strictly on PokerStars. Justin agreed to let me do this.

Okay, first, a quick word about the data I have. It's PokerStars MTTs from February 9th 2004 until virtually current (early on Monday morning, 12/12). I also have what I believe to be almost all of the $215 events (I know of a few I'm missing that I'm planning to database soon). It's not complete. I know it would be better if I had Party too, but I don't. Anyway, on to the analysis.

Clearly, he's not among the most frequent MTTs on Stars, but he's still playing enough to get an idea of where he stands. I know, from a statistical perspective, he has to play a ton of MTTs for it to be "significant" that he's a winning/losing player. However, I think as someone plays more and more, you can say with more confidence whether they are or aren't beating the game. With MTTs, nothing, it seems, is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt -- so this doesn't proven Justin is a winning or losing player, it just improves our ability to guess.

One major problem with our sample is that it has a lot of big field tournaments in it. One would expect to miss the final table pretty much all of the time in these 3000+ person tournaments, but that isn't the case in the smaller 109r. Even the Stupers (the Stars Super) have a pretty decent size field. Nonetheless, I proceed.

Here is a general breakdown of Justin's stats, sorted by # played:



Here is a breakdown of his biggest cashes:



Now, that's kind of a shocking image. Am I really telling you one of the supposed best NLHE players on the internet only has two cashes over $2500 this year on Stars? Yes, it's true. This is where the trolls usually come out and say: "but, if you take out those two cashes, he's a losing player" or "he just got lucky, the rest of the time shows his true skill - ie, he sucks." Well, in a sense, those trolls are correct. Here are his overall results, to my best knowledge:



His ITM is about right... usually 10% of the field gets paid, but he doesn't play to get into the money. The FT rate and top 3 rate are hard to analyze because he plays so many big field tourneys. His avg finish is better than avg, although not by much. Across all the players I've looked at, very few are in the 30s. Most winning players hang around the 40-45 mark. However, his ROI is pretty telling. He's more than tripled his investment on Stars on avg in a tourney. A good player can probably expect to have a 2-4x the buyin expectation, so this seems just about right to me.

If you take out the two wins, he's DOWN over $20K on Stars in that time period in MTTs. That's true as far as I can tell. However, Justin clearly isn't looking for consistency with his game selection... he's looking for big scores. I don't think he'd want to slowly build up his profit $200 at a time in 5 dollar rebuy tournaments. The whole point of playing 3500 person $200 tourneys is to bust out 50 times, win once and be ahead $100K at the end of the day. Justin knows that and he expects, over the long term, to lose most of the time (although he obviously hopes any given week is an exception). The point is you can't say "but if you take away that one win" without saying "but if you take away all those losses" as well.

Another point trolls might make is that he just got lucky yesterday. True, he did. But, like I've mentioned, the big field tourneys are about just hitting it over and over until you break through. Sunday was Justin's day. He's put himself in position to win the Sunday tournament a number of times. I recall one Big Sunday tourney on Stars where Justin had a very healthy stack deep (less than 100 people left), poised to roll over the final table. He got in pre flop with AA v AQ against another healthy stack -- and the board comes with two queens. A great opportunity lost. But that's poker... keep putting yourself in a good spot, things will eventually work out. Just because he won some key races and didn't get unlucky doesn't just make him a bad player.

Anyway, congrats to Justin on his performance on Sunday. It was clearly deserved and was the culmination of years of effort looking for a huge cash on Stars.

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WTF is the point of this post? This was lame. Can you give me the last 5 min of my life back?

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i dont like how you're looking at this. the variance a tournament has is the same if you win a 250 satelite or if you buy in directly.

[ansky451]

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WTF is the point of this post? This was lame. Can you give me the last 5 min of my life back?

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Worst response to any post, ever.

[N 82 50 24]

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What I have been doing lately is diversifying. I play a certain number of SNGs a day with a very safe bankroll. I play a few MTTs a day with a very safe bankroll. I play 3-5 MTTs a week that is beyond my bankroll if you use the 100xbuyin formula.

This is my formula for at least "breaking even" over the short to medium term while holding out hope of cashing some big events every once and awhile. I am a part-time self-employed lawyer, though, so I am in a very different situation then someone who is depending on monthly income from playing poker.

I would love it if someone tells me this is not a good approach I am taking.

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If you're playing for fun or in hopes of just making a big score or two, then just about any approach is probably fine as long as you can continue to fund your poker with your regular job.

If you're approaching it mathematically with the goal of making as much money as possible within the time you're willing to commit while not going broke, then I think it's a poor approach to do what you're doing. What you need to do is figure out where you're most profitable. For me, I've found it to be STTs on Party. I can 8 table them and maintain almost the same ROI as I achieve when I used to 2 table them. On the other hand, I'm a net loser in MTTs (doesn't necessarily say much, I haven't played that many) and I'm a streaky cash games player at any reasonable limit. Therefore, I play STTs when I want to make money playing poker because it's where I can make the most per hour and be fairly confident I'll never go broke. I play well below my bankroll.

The idea of trying to break even is a little foreign to me and I don't know exactly why people like to try to do this. I think your goal should be to apply your edge, that's it. Let's say you have a 30% ROI on Party STTs over 8000 -- it's a number you can be fairly confident in. So you decide to play $50 STTs expecting to make $15/per. Just play as many as possible... and if you play 20 of them, look at it as if you just earned yourself $300 because, over the long term, that's what you're going to make in that situation. The same idea applies in cash games, MTTs (although the realization of that wage can take years to occur), etc.