MTT Variance XSpearMint

I thought this was pretty interesting; shows that even the some of the best players with expected 80%+ ROI's are going get destroyed sometimes.

There’s obviously a lot of information there, but some things jump out. In particular, life totally sucks if you’re a 20% ROI player. Even if you play 5k tourneys (which would be a decent sample for an entire year), you still have a 20% chance of losing money and a 38% chance of making less than ~60k. That totally sucks. Anyone except a true tourney god is more likely to lose over 100 tourneys than to win, which also sucks, and even a great tourney player has a decent chance of losing over 1k+ tournaments or to make only half her expected earn over 5k tournaments. Of course, the upside is good too, but the risk of losing money should be pretty scary to professional MTT players. I should mention that this data lines up pretty well with my experience. I know a lot of professional MTT players. Losing months are incredibly common for them, and losing years happen fairly often. Years where they way underperform their expectations are typical. So, I hope people consider this before deciding to play (or continue playing) these for a living. People who are really good at MTTs, willing to put in tons of volume, and have huge bankrolls and strong stomachs might be better off playing large field MTTs professionally, but there aren’t many of those people. I think for the vast majority of people, it’s not a good idea (even for those who play very well).

Graphs and the full article here:

http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/01/mtt-pros/#more-134

How would anyone get a grasp of what their ROI is if variance is that uh...swingy?

i have made 150 bi on 1/2 6 max, ev i should have made 250b bi.
whatever you play, there will be variance.

On January 28 2011 02:21 gororokgororok wrote: i have made 150 bi on 1/2 6 max, ev i should have made 250b bi. whatever you play, there will be variance.

There's variance in everything but believe me no form of poker variance even comes close to matching mtt variance. I mean if you have a 20% ROI (which isn't a huge winner but a solid one)and play 3k tournaments in a year (which is pretty big volume) you should expect to have a losing year 1/4 times. I can't imagine any other form of poker where you can be a solid winner and know 1 out of every 4 years you are going to lose.

On January 28 2011 02:10 gawdawaful wrote: How would anyone get a grasp of what their ROI is if variance is that uh...swingy?

Realistically nobody in the world knows what their true ROI is. And lets say you win the sunday million or like ft the wcoop main event your results will be so skewed even after a lifetime of playing you probably wont know what your true ROI is.

But anyway in the mtt world almost no regs survive longer than 1-2 years. There are probably only 10-20 other regs at most still playing any sort of volume from when I first started playing full time 4-5 years ago. You see new ones rise up all the time but most either go broke from the swings or even if they are good they get burnt out. When you are consistently putting in big volume and you just lose for 6 months straight it crushes most people.

So to survive in the long run with mtts you either have to be a huge winner, super strong mentally or be a little sick in the head.

On January 28 2011 04:01 Mig wrote: So to survive in the long run with mtts you either have to be a huge winner, super strong mentally or be a little sick in the head.

Out of curiosity, which traits do you identify with personally? No need to be falsely modest if it's the first one. Clearly you're a MTT reg for a reason.

On January 28 2011 05:12 Sanai wrote: Out of curiosity, which traits do you identify with personally? No need to be falsely modest if it's the first one. Clearly you're a MTT reg for a reason.

I think I have always been a decent sized winner in the games but I was also very lucky to get started when I did.

When I first started playing full time pretty much all the top guys had 100%+ ROIs. It was much easier to grind out steady wins without a huge bankroll. I was able to build up enough money so that now when I go through really extended downswings it doesn't bother me too much since I am not pressured for money.

mtts are a joke, dont listen to mig.

MTT regs decide to move up in stakes after some success, suffer a downswing and then get backed where they stay happily ever after.

Btw I've been saying this for a year now O_O

i dunno it seems pretty hard to play and win consistently against 1000 ppl who are mostly playing mtts for a living and watch videos no matter how good an MTT player you care

check out tilthappens on sharkscope. this shit is pretty scary..

expiraments up in this thread

On January 31 2011 06:54 daysare wrote: check out tilthappens on sharkscope. this shit is pretty scary..

? i checked and it said he hasn't opted in

so this is it then

broken link

...the plot thickens

GOD damn it fix the title of this thread it is slowly making me retarded as I browse the forums

exhibit a as to why mtts are a joke

note: same person