2010

I know what you're sayin' Pimpin. I'm tempted to never touch another MTT (and I rarely do). Though I only 6 table 9man SnG's, and don't get through near the volume you do. But I've done the breakdown as to if I were to do this full time and up my tables and the numbers are pretty sick. Crazy what you can earn in a year nickeling and diming it everywhere.

Good luck with your goals!

Finally Mark is back! Where have you been all this time?

Well, I think that what you wrote about the difficulty of winning a 1000 players mtt is true, but it's not all. The key, in my opinion, is that tight-aggressive-solid players win mtt very very less often than loose-aggressive ones. Tight aggressive approach is good for grinding because it's based on maths: it consists on investing more money when you have cards with higher winning percentages. This way, playing a huge number of sngs, you mathematically win because you delete the variance. In 1000+ players mtts, instead, you cannot delete variance because, as you said, you'd need to play too many tourns to do it. This means that a mathematical approach isn't useful anymore. You have to use other strategies: aggression, aggression and aggression, plus luck, luck and luck. And, infact, who wins big tourns are people who make questionable moves and get lucky on the river... people who use aggression since the very first levels, gathering mountains of chips raising and reraising and making solid opponents fold or busting them out with a lucky catch. If you have time, in your life, to play 100.000 tourns with 1000 players, you will win using a math-solid style... but if you can play just 500 mtts, you have to use a non-math style.

"every time the number of players in the field doubles the variance goes up also by about the same amount."

The variance ratio between a 45 and a 90 is actually about 1.6. Also you need to take into account that variance is calculated on a quadratic scale. Bankroll effects are felt on a linear scale so you have to square root the variance ratio to get the true difference in variability in your bankroll from switching between 45s and 90s. So the true ratio on a linear scale is about 1.27.

I did all the maths for this and posted it on my blog a few days. I produced a look up table to compare the square root of the variance for most of the common SNG tables on Stars.

http://www.sharkscopers.com/blog/landsbanki/bankroll-management

I also posted a blog entry on how calculate confidence intervals on an ROI.

http://www.sharkscopers.com/blog/landsbanki/how-calculate-confidence-int...

"So I think 2000 45mans is a safe number of games to play and be close to what your true ROI will be in those games. So if my above comments are true that means 4000 90mans. My average field size in mtts is around 1000. So it will take a huge number of mtts played to get a true ROI in mtts. If you guys have any thoughts on this topic I would be interested in the comments."

Here's some thoughts, well maths actually

I just calculated the confidence intervals on your ROI for your last 12 months on $24 45-seaters.

You played 4502 - here are your finishes

Your average profit per game is $5.45+-$2.60 with 95% confidence.

So the error on your ROI of 21% is +-10%. So with 95% confidence you can say your ROI is somewhere between 31% and 11%.

So 4500 games isn't anywhere near enough to get within a few% of your true ROI.

After 9000 games it would still be +-7%

After 18000 games it would be down to +-5%

So you need to play a vast number of 45 seater games to get within a % of your true ROI.

Last thing (Landsbanki please tell me if I am wrong): in a 9 players sng, just one double up is often enough to finish ITM, while in a large MTT you need to double up n times.
If you are dealt AA in a sng and someone goes allin preflop and you call, you win 80% times, so you finish ITM about 80% times.
But in a MTT, if you are dealt n times AA and everytime you call an allin, you survive 0.8^n times. If you do it 5 times, the probability to win all 5 times is just 33%. If you need to do it 10 times, it will happen only in the 11%. That's why it's so hard to win a large MTT simply playing good cards.
I know that a good and solid player isn't so stupid to play only aces, but I also know that he usually never reraise with J9 offsuite, nor with 7T suited. He never makes moves when pot odds aren't good enough. He never makes crazy moves, and this often prevents him to win big.

The big question is how you would cope playing when your livelihood depends upon it. Many pros start to hate poker once it becomes a job and not a hobby. Also the income stream isn't consistent. However, your current job is not particularly well paid and if it doesn't have other benefits e.g. a decent pension etc then as you're a profitable player the maths suggests you could make more from poker.

The other thing to consider is can you take the stress of playing 6-8 may be more hours a day. Online poker players can burn out.

I would suggest taking a week's holiday and then give it a go. Then see how stressed you are, how much you've made and whether or not it was actually enjoyable.

I'm confident I could go pro. However I also earn a decent salary with a nice pension scheme and poker is my main winter hobby. So I won't as I want poker to remain fun.

Giusnun

This is well worth a read if you're serious about going pro - it's from sparta45's blog. http://sparta45.livejournal.com/

A Discussion on Bankroll Management
I wanted to post about bankroll management because I think it's generally misunderstood and/or poorly practiced. Also, I think it's a topic I understand pretty well.

First of all, I'm going to focus this post on bankroll management for people who are or who wish to play poker professionally. The reason is because if you are just playing poker for fun, entertainment, etc, then using up your bankroll is not the end of the world. You can always put some more money online from your regular income.....or just sometime in the future when you have more money to play with. But you're not relying on poker income to support yourself. Therefore, these opinions and assumptions I'm going to express are specifically for people who play poker (or wish to play poker) as their main source of income.

Now let's say that John Doe decides he wants to be a professional poker player. So he asks a professional poker player "How big of a bankroll do I need to play poker professionally" (for the sake of argument, let's ignore the fact that if John is seriously considering making this move, that he should already know how much money he needs for a bankroll). So the pro tells him...."well, you should probably have at least 100 or 150 buy ins. So John says to himself...ok, well, I want to play $100 sngs and the pro told me that I need 100 or 150 buy-ins....so I'll be safe and aim for 150. So once John gets $15,000 ($100 X 150 buy-ins), he decides to quit his job and go pro.....it would not surprise me one bit if John eventually has to get a "regular" job. And it could very well have nothing at all to do with John not having sufficient poker skills. In fact, I would say that most people who eventually have to return to "regular" work, don't have to return because of a deficiency in their poker skills.....but rather because of a deficiency in their bankroll management. So what was wrong with the pro's advice that he gave to John? Is 150 buy-ins not enough to withstand the variance of sngs? The problem with the advice is that there are two sides to bankroll management. There is the variance itself (making sure you have enough money to withstand short term bad luck) which our pro covered just fine...but there is also the personal finance part of bankroll management (which our pro didn't cover at all).

So let me give you an example. Our friend John has $15K and quits his regular job and goes pro. His expenses for his house, car, insurance, etc are $2,500 a month. For the first 3 months, John makes $5K a month and after he pays his taxes, he has $3,750 left each month to pay bills. So he's actually making an EXTRA $1,250 a month and has already put $3,750 ($1,250 X 3 months) into his savings account. Being a professional poker player is pretty great he thinks to himself. I'm never going back to a 9 to 5 job again. In his 4th month, John experiences some bad luck. He drops 5K (only 50 buy-ins, so a fairly small run of bad luck) in just the first two weeks of the month. No problem he says to himself....that's why I have 15K in my bankroll, so I can handle variance like this. While this is happening, he starts hearing a drip sound. He realizes that his roof is leaking water. He calls a roofer and he learns his roof is in fairly bad shape. In fact, the roofer tells him that he needs to replace the entire roof. He can patch it up, but the patch won't hold long. He really needs to replace the whole thing. The roofer tells him it will cost $10,000 to replace his roof. Problem is John only has $3,750 in his savings account. So he takes the other $6,250 out of his poker account and replaces his roof. Now John is out of savings and his online account is down to $3,750 or 37.5 buy-ins (far less than the 100-150 buy-ins he needs). John runs bad for the next few days (and he probably didn't play his best since he was so nervous about losing the last of his bankroll) and before he knows it he loses the last of his money and he quits poker and goes back to his old job.

So what did John do wrong? His problem was that even though he practiced decent bankroll management for his actual online account, his personal finances were in no position to be playing poker for a living. "But Sparta, I live in an apartment....I don't even own a house. I don't need to worry about a new roof". That might be true, but there are hundreds and hundreds of unexpected expenses that may come up....and the better your personal finances are, the better chance you have of riding out that bad beat. You could get sick, you could break your hand, you could need to replace a roof, you could have money stolen from you, you might get married and have to pay for a huge wedding, there are literally almost an endless amount of expenses that could come up in your life (and possibly derail your poker aspirations).

So in my opinion, to practice good bankroll management not only does a person need probably at least 200 (or more) buy-ins if they want to play poker for a living, but they also need at least 12 months of expenses to cover emergencies that may come up. Furthermore, the lower your debt is, the less bills you will have, and the less money you will need to make every month to keep yourself afloat. The more debt you can remove from your life, the better chance you have of being able to cover your expenses when that time comes where not only are you running bad, but you're running bad in life also.

I haven't done any official studies on this, but just from looking around, it seems to me that more people don't succeed at poker not because of inferior poker skills, but because of inferior bankroll management. If you're considering going pro (or even if you are already playing professionally), I highly recommend not only having enough money to handle variance, but have enough money to handle unexpected emergencies as well. Only when you do BOTH of these things are you practicing good bankroll management.

Hey Pimpin, name is alex, aim is Acamerist, I just started playing sngs on fulltilt under name K4rdK0wb0y, playing the 26 45mans and 75s, anyway I would be very interested in your training camp, would love if you aimed me to give me some details on this as I just discovered bloggin on sharkscope so dont use this much. So far in 45s ive acquired 9 roi in 26s and 22 roi in 75s like 350 games total or somethin, about 50/50 for each game, they make sense but I would really like to improve as much as possible and love to be in an environment that breeded stamina and endurance as well as maybe some more optimal strategies pertaining to shoving and calling ranges and bubble ranges, etc. Videos are great, keep up the good work, hope to hear from you. -Alex

I have to say that Landsbanki's analysis are interesting, but they can't be regarded as relevant in reality. The reason is that poker tournaments are not independent random variables which is a necessity for his calculations to be viewed as significant.

For example, let's apply some logic to review his statement:

So the error on your ROI of 21% is +-10%. So with 95% confidence you can say your ROI is somewhere between 31% and 11%.

I'd say with greater than 95% certainty (in other words I'd lay 20 to 1 odds on a bet), that if pimpindonks were to play another 4500 of these tournaments, but play them 4 tabling instead of 12 tabling, that his ROI would be much higher than 11%. Also, on the flip side, if Poker Stars were to close their accounts to US players tomorrow, I'd also be highly certain that his ROI would be nowhere near 31% because the game he's playing will have changed monumentally over night.

The bottom line is, statistics like these related to poker results can be very interesting, but don't put any stock into anything they tell you. There is no such thing as a true ROI in poker.

Hey Pimpin, got a question for you. I started playing on FT about 6 months ago, depositing $30 at a time. I was just playing for fun, in the $5 9 man SNG's, with no aspirations of going pro. After about 10 deposits and losses, i started playing in some $10 mtt's and cashed in one for $380. The following week I made a few more cashes in various SNG's and got my BR up to $630. At that point I decided that playing the $3.30 90 mans was no longer worth my time, since the field is so loose. However, bankroll management says otherwise. Since then I have pissed away hundreds in $10 to $50 SNG's and mtts, but I feel that what I have learned in experience is almost worth the money. I now consistently go deep in 90 mans and mtts, but my BR is back down to $100. My bubble play is also getting sharper each game. Should I stick to the low stakes games and try to build my BR back up or take a shot at a few more $10 -$24 SNG's? If i busted my plan was to take a break and build up my poker BR to $600 (using regular income) and make that deposit. I know I still do not have what it takes to go pro but feel that I am learning very fast and would like to continue playing.