Normal swings?

[betgo]

I mostly play tournaments online. I also play some live, mostly cash games, since I haven't had good results in live tournaments. I do well enough to play fulltime, but am not hugely successful.

I am pretty risk adverse, and I don't like big swings. I was a chess player and understand strategy, but I never bought a lottery ticket or played in a casino before I started playing poker.

I started multitabling small cash games and then SNGs. Usually, I made a small amount of money every day, but I would be pretty upset if I had a losing day.

I found I do better in tournaments, but the swings are bigger. I often multitable tournaments starting about the same time, which reduces variance and allows me to play weaker competition. Sometimes, I think I do better single tabling, particularly the fairly high buyin tournaments with big fields and a lot of satellite winners.

After I had an $8500 cash last May, I started single tabling and taking notes and so on. I did well with that at first, but I started losing, so I went back to what I felt I did best at: turbos, rebuys, and supersatellites, generally multitabling.

Anyway, I find the pattern is I have some huge wins, but a lot of my days are losing.

Last Saturday, I won a tournament for $1800, a supersatellite on Stars for $400 that I got W$s, an entry into a $1000 supersatellite on Stars, and $200 in small prizes. So I netted up $2K on the day in cash plus the $1K satellite entry.

Since then I have totalled about a $500 loss. Today, I broke even with cash on Paradise this afternoon, but won a $200 satellite entry. This evening, I multitabled a bunch of small tournaments on Stars, didn't cash and lost $300.

I guess this is pretty much par for the course. I don't want to seem to complain, but maybe financial swings are worth discussing as well as how to play hands.

I have a friend who play NLHE cash games and tournaments live and online, both at reasonably high stakes. Since all of this is high variance, he sometimes make $10K or more in a week, but also has some weeks with substantial losses. He makes a decent living, but I don't have the confidence or personality to take such swings.

I wonder what other people's experiences are with swings playing tournaments.

[CardSharpCook]

you get used to the bigger monetary swings slowly. You have to numb yourself to the money.

[LethalRose]

IMO the swings in MTT's are bad in general for bank roll building, I learned this the hard way. Learn to play Sng's or cash games, both will make you a better mtter anyway.

MTTs are by far the highest variance version of poker. By default, you lose money 90% of the time.

Do you keep records? That can cheer you up on bad days.

[betgo]

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IMO the swings in MTT's are bad in general for bank roll building, I learned this the hard way. Learn to play Sng's or cash games, both will make you a better mtter anyway.

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I don't do that well at online cash games or SNGs. I don't play well with the 100-60-40 payouts for SNGs. I like to push on a semibluff and so on and that doesn't work when you have to play so careful to cash. I can play careful, but that takes away my advantage.

I can beat live cash games, but those are high variance too. I think I play lower than I could, because I don't do well with variance, but play games I can generally beat.

I do the same with online tournaments. I multitable a bunch of small tournaments and win entries into bigger ones. I couldn't deal with putting up $640 for a tournament. I wouldn't play as well if I did.

[Melchiades]

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I don't play well with the 100-60-40 payouts for SNGs. I like to push on a semibluff and so on and that doesn't work when you have to play so careful to cash. I can play careful, but that takes away my advantage.

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Then learn how to get an advantage within the SnG format. The fact that your current style doesn't give you an advantage shouldn't be a reason to not learn how to master that format. Some of the skills needed to do that might help your MTT game later. And SnG's are probably one of the forms of poker with the least variance, which seems to be something you would like.

[betgo]

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I don't play well with the 100-60-40 payouts for SNGs. I like to push on a semibluff and so on and that doesn't work when you have to play so careful to cash. I can play careful, but that takes away my advantage.

[/ QUOTE ]
Then learn how to get an advantage within the SnG format. The fact that your current style doesn't give you an advantage shouldn't be a reason to not learn how to master that format. Some of the skills needed to do that might help your MTT game later. And SnG's are probably one of the forms of poker with the least variance, which seems to be something you would like.

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I used to play SNGs, but I found I did better in MTTs. In MTTs there are more different situations to adapt to and more strategy. I gain a big advantage in MTTs by playing aggressively to win later on. In a supersatellite, I gain a big advantage by following proper strategy, which means folding into the money or stealing with junk in the right situations.

In an SNG, the limping/miniraising style people play works better, as they avoid big swings. I play WTA single table satellites well, but not SNGs.

[JeanieJ]

I wasn't sure if you mentioned playing for a living or not...

Tournaments are probably the hardest thing to make a decent living at. You need to have patience and be able to handle the mental strains that come with not winning every single day. Most players can't do that, which is why they add in ring games/sng's to take away the stress of not winning.

I'm not too sure what I can tell you. You can move to another form of poker (ring games/sngs) but you don't seem to want to do that. So basically you're going to have to learn to deal with the varience that comes along with MTTs if that's all you want to play. Assuming you don't have bankroll issues, this is going to be a purely mental challenge for you.

There are more issues than skill level/game selection/bankroll. The mental aspect can be a killer.

Good luck
Jeanie

You keep implying that the variance in cash games is about as high as that in MTTs. It's definitely not.

[Melchiades]

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In an SNG, the limping/miniraising style people play works better, as they avoid big swings.

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I'm not familiar with this style at all.