[Closed] Maths for winning at MTT's?

There are a variety of winning styles. Some make the money more than others, while achieving the same ROI.

One model is to assume that a winning player reaches all cashing places equally often. If the rake is 10%, then someone whose prizes are based on this model must cash 10% more often than par in order to break even. Any more than that and the player profits.

In practice, some players cash more often, but do so by limping into the money. They sacrifice most of their equity to increase their ITM%, and may become losing players this way. Is ITM% more important than money? Not to me.

Other players have a finishing distributions which is heavily weighted toward higher finishes. In a large tournament which pays 10% of the players, they might only cash 10% of the time while achieving an ROI of 100% or more since they will reach the final table much more often than par.

If you want to see some actual finishing distributions, look up the players on top of the Sharkscope leader boards for 180 player tournaments, total profit 2010. Some have played many tens of thousands of tournaments.

For example, here are some counts for one player from 180 player SNGs, in 21,936 tournaments with an ROI of 45% (avg profit $5.53/tournament):

1st: 255 = 1.16%
2nd: 215
3rd: 157
4th: 145
5th: 124
6th: 148
7th: 150
8th: 130
9th: 123
final tables: 1447 = 6.60%

10th: 138
11th: 153
12th: 121
13th: 139
14th: 121
15th: 131
16th: 140
17th: 131
18th: 133
10th-18th: 1207 = 5.50%

Cashes: 2654 = 12.10%

That is a little higher than the par of 10%. Keep in mind that this player is not typical, he is on top of one of the leader boards.

Incidentally, this player bubbles out quite often, with 171 18th place finishes, and many more finishes from 19th through 27th than from 10th through 18th.

Nice reply, thank you pzhon!

Tough way to make a living? Lets see.

The average worker works 40 hours per week (although I don't know many who only work 40!) x 48 = say 1,920 working hours per year, probably a few less depending on no. of public holidays.

How many tables can you multi table for a MTT? Lets say 12 or more for a full time grinder. And how long does the average MTT go for assuming a bell curve of knock outs and wins (although our guy is about 3 times better than the average punter) got to be at least 1 hour average, probably a fair bit more.

Lets assume he takes one hour to complete a MTT and he plays 12 at once. With 21,936 tourneys he's working 1,828 hours.

At $5.53 per tourney he is making $122k gross (plus rake back and bonuses) equals about $66 plus/plus per hour? Not bad.

Lets assume because he does this full time and can outperform he probably also picks up some entry's into live tourneys and maybe does a bit of coaching. He probably runs a few 24 hour sessions. Maybe he is also set up on a laptop and can still run while he is out of town. So maybe he gets 2 or 3 months down time a year if he wants.

Looks doable. What do people think?

CB

Somewhere along the way, you need to pick up the skill level that one of the top players has. A very large number of players have been playing for years without doing that.

There is another player who put in about 7 hours/day 16-tabling STTs. His result over one 4 month period: A loss of $12,000, with a -4.5% ROI, although rakeback would improve that to about -2.5%. So, don't assume that if you play a large volume, the profit will be automatic.

Also, the 22k tournaments were not all in one year.

Wise words my friend!

Originally posted by CoachB
Nice reply, thank you pzhon!

Tough way to make a living? Lets see.

The average worker works 40 hours per week (although I don't know many who only work 40!) x 48 = say 1,920 working hours per year, probably a few less depending on no. of public holidays.

How many tables can you multi table for a MTT? Lets say 12 or more for a full time grinder. And how long does the average MTT go for assuming a bell curve of knock outs and wins (although our guy is about 3 times better than the average punter) got to be at least 1 hour average, probably a fair bit more.

Lets assume he takes one hour to complete a MTT and he plays 12 at once. With 21,936 tourneys he's working 1,828 hours.

At $5.53 per tourney he is making $122k gross (plus rake back and bonuses) equals about $66 plus/plus per hour? Not bad.

Lets assume because he does this full time and can outperform he probably also picks up some entry's into live tourneys and maybe does a bit of coaching. He probably runs a few 24 hour sessions. Maybe he is also set up on a laptop and can still run while he is out of town. So maybe he gets 2 or 3 months down time a year if he wants.

Looks doable. What do people think?

CB

Originally posted by pzhon
Somewhere along the way, you need to pick up the skill level that one of the top players has. A very large number of players have been playing for years without doing that.

There is another player who put in about 7 hours/day 16-tabling STTs. His result over one 4 month period: A loss of $12,000, with a -4.5% ROI, although rakeback would improve that to about -2.5%. So, don't assume that if you play a large volume, the profit will be automatic.

Even though I liked his maths, there's some things to change...
Why you used 48 weeks/year insted of 52?
And one hour for an MTT is very rare...in one hour you are not even ITM...

I hope you guys don't mind I came here to write (I am from the portuguese/brasilien community) But I was doing some research and I came across this interesting post...

I believe CoachB used 48 weeks/year to give the players 4 weeks of vacation, similar to what you might expect from a salaried job. I think the typical amount of vacation plus holidays is actually much greater than that in western Europe.

One hour was not supposed to be the time to complete the tournament, but rather the average amount of time it takes to play. Some tournaments take much longer, but they can also be over in one hand.

Ultra-tight-early strategies are touted as being good for multitabling since you quickly fold almost all hands preflop. However, if you don't risk busting out before the first break, that means your tournaments may take longer even when you haven't doubled up, which means you have to play more tables at a time to get the same volume. If your average tournament takes 1 hour with a 20% ROI, and you make a play which on average shortens your tournament by 15 minutes, this gives you the time to earn another 5% of a buy-in.

In practice, if I play MTTs, most end early, but I end up with a few straggler tournaments in which I am going deep, and sometimes these take hours to finish. While I complete those tournaments, the number of tables I am playing is much lower than normal. So, to average playing 12 tables at once, you may have to play 16 tables at a time or more. One solution is to play cash games or STTs while you wait for the last MTTs to finish.

In the example given by Phzon the fields were exactly the same - 180 man SNGs.

I play $4 Rush SNGs and, with on-demand, field sizes are much bigger and this has significantly effected my ROI

In these games a top 10% finish is ITM and my distribution (below) is almost identical - based on 500, 135 Rush, $4 SNGs (and 600 On demand tournaments - average entries 300+)

Finish
Top 10% 13% (14%)
11-20% 13% (14%)
21-30% 12% (12%)
31-40% 14% (13%)
41-50% 14% (14%)
51-60% 14% (14%)
61-70% 12% (13%)
71-80% 5% (4%)
81-90% 1.5% (1%)
91-100% 1.5% (1%)

However, my ROI is completely different - 23% in the 135 field, 7% in the larger fields.

IMHO this is because in the 135 field, doubling up near the bubble or just ITM, almost guarantees a FT finish, whereas if you just creep ITM in the bigger field you need to double 3 or 4 times to get to FT.

Cheers

Jass ♦