Poker Mtt Variance Calculator
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- At a first glance, it looks like MTT's aren't that luck dependant. The maximum that a player can lose is well determined (-100% ROI so in this particular example 52 x 215$ = 11180$). In reality, multi-table tournaments are one of the forms of poker that are impacted the most by variance.
- New customer offer. Place 5 x £10 or more bets to receive £20 in free bets. Repeat up to 5 times to receive maximum £100 bonus. Mtt Poker Bankroll Calculator Min odds 1/2 (1.5).
- Embrace the variance I had a really interesting hand on stream yesterday and my decision was somewhat polarising in the chat. PKOs/bounty tournaments are crazy beasts and it sometimes means getting it in with a really wide range and embracing the variance to win bounties.
(After you read this post, you might want to check out my follow-up to it here.)
I tell a lot of people not to play large-field online MTTs for a living. I’ve always thought that the variance is just way too high for most professionals to trust their livelihood (and sanity) to large-field MTTs instead of cash, smaller-field MTTs, or STTs. But, admittedly, I’ve given this advice without any direct evidence to back it up. I’ve been meaning for a while to see what the numbers say, and this post will be a tentative first step.
Ideally, what I’d like to do is do a nice controlled study where I pick a few representative players based on past results and use their results over the next few months as my data. (Alternatively, I could take the results of one of the large backing groups. If anyone who backs 20+ people would be down to share some information, let me know.) But, that requires more motivation than I’ve been able to muster, so I decided to do a much rougher study: I grabbed Shaun “SFD” Deeb’s tourney results from OPR (with Shaun’s permission) and played around for a few hours. Here’s what I found:
I used Shaun’s results from January 2009 to present on Stars and FTP. I filtered for buy-ins between $55 and $216 and included only NLHE tourneys with at least 181 entrants. OPR doesn’t record rebuys, so I removed rebuy tourneys. This left 3,049 tourneys with an average buy-in of $119.72 in which Deeb earned $294,027 with an awesome ROI of 81% and an ITM of 11.5%. Obviously, not many people can play or run as well as Shaun Deeb, but these results provide a starting point.
Say you are Shaun Deeb, you really do have an ROI of 81%, and you’re going to play 1,000 of these tourneys. What are the odds you make money? What are the odds you make at least $50k? Etc etc. Here are the results of one thousand Shaun Deebs each playing one thousand tourneys:
In particular, Shaun loses over a 1,000 tournaments sample about 13% of the time, and he makes less than $50k about 35% of the time (with an EV of about $100k). Of course, the upside is pretty good too–He makes over $200k about 14% of the time and over $300k almost 4% of the time.
Here’s the same data for a larger sample of 3,000 tournaments:
Over 3,000 tourneys, Shaun wins about 98.6% of the time, and he wins over $150k over 82% of the time. He made over $900k once in my 1,000 trials ($915,134) and over $600k about 6% of the time.
But, say you’re not Shaun Deeb. I can make a lower ROI player by simply taking Shaun’s distribution and lowering the payouts. (For an ROI of x, multiply the prizes by (1+x)*0.554 .) This isn’t very accurate, but it’s good enough for my purposes (especially since Shaun has a low ITM%). Here’s the 1,000 tourney histogram for a 20% ROI player:
As you can see, the situation is way worse. This player loses about 45% of the time and loses over $50,000 about 7% of the time. That’s pretty terrible, but maybe things get better with a larger sample? Here’s the data for 3000 Tourneys:
A 20% ROI player will be a loser over a 3,000 tourney sample almost 26% of the time. That’s much higher than I’d expected, and it’s the sort of number that should scare the shit out of prospective and current MTT professionals–If you want to play MTTs for a living, you better either put in a ton of volume, play really well, or be prepared to be a slave to variance (and nobody’s actually prepared for that).
Here’s lots of data for lots of situations (sorry for the ugly formatting):
| ROI | Tourneys Played | Expected Earn | Chance of Loss | Chance of Earning < .5x EV | Chance of Earning > 1.5x EV | Chance of Earning > 2x EV |
| 20% | 100 | $2,394.53 | 65% | 67% | 30% | 28% |
| 20% | 500 | $11,972.65 | 53% | 60% | 30% | 25% |
| 20% | 1000 | $23,945.30 | 42% | 50% | 36% | 31% |
| 20% | 2000 | $47,890.60 | 33% | 44% | 35% | 25% |
| 20% | 5000 | $119,726.50 | 20% | 38% | 30% | 17% |
| 40% | 100 | $4,789.06 | 61% | 65% | 27% | 23% |
| 40% | 500 | $23,945.30 | 37% | 51% | 31% | 26% |
| 40% | 1000 | $47,890.60 | 29% | 44% | 32% | 23% |
| 40% | 2000 | $95,781.20 | 14% | 33% | 28% | 17% |
| 40% | 5000 | $239,453.00 | 6% | 26% | 21% | 8% |
| 60% | 100 | $7,183.59 | 56% | 63% | 29% | 24% |
| 60% | 500 | $35,917.95 | 29% | 49% | 31% | 25% |
| 60% | 1000 | $71,835.90 | 20% | 41% | 27% | 18% |
| 60% | 2000 | $143,671.80 | 9% | 33% | 26% | 13% |
| 60% | 5000 | $359,179.50 | 1% | 16% | 17% | 4% |
| 80% | 100 | $9,578.12 | 51% | 62% | 25% | 21% |
| 80% | 500 | $47,890.60 | 24% | 46% | 28% | 22% |
| 80% | 1000 | $95,781.20 | 12% | 36% | 28% | 16% |
| 80% | 2000 | $191,562.40 | 5% | 27% | 23% | 9% |
| 80% | 5000 | $478,906.00 | 0% | 13% | 12% | 2% |
| 100% | 100 | $11,972.65 | 47% | 61% | 24% | 18% |
| 100% | 500 | $59,863.25 | 18% | 44% | 25% | 20% |
| 100% | 1000 | $119,726.50 | 9% | 35% | 25% | 11% |
| 100% | 2000 | $239,453.00 | 1% | 24% | 18% | 5% |
| 100% | 5000 | $598,632.50 | 0% | 8% | 10% | 1% |
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).
You can find more data and some discussion about the distribution here and here. In future posts (probably coming soon, but I’m not making any promises), I’ll compare this data to cash games (both NLHE and PLO), STTs, and small field MTTs (i.e. 45s and 180s). I’ll also look into how stuff like this affects backing. So, if that stuff interests you, stay tuned or whatever. You can follow me on twitter if you want to know when my posts go up, or just subscribe to my RSS feed.
Poker Bankroll Calculator – Shows What Tournament Buy-In Levels Are Right For Your Bankroll
Experienced poker players use bankroll management to smooth out the natural swings in the game. This cool widget will give you a head-start on the opposition by showing you what buy-in levels are safe for your starting bankroll.
Underneath the widget you will find an explanation of key poker bankroll management principals. And some great advice for making sure you give yourself the best possible chance of building a big balance and breaking through to the next level.
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Multi Table TournamentsHigh variance in poker tournaments means that 1/50th of your total bankroll is ideal for any one game. Pro tournament players need to stay strict, with average buy-ins of 1/100th of your total bankroll recommended.Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Estimate
Sit and GoFor Sit N Go tournaments, play 1/30th of your total bankroll in any one game. For pros the guideline is 1/50th. Multi-table Sit N Goes and turbo games have more variance, so stay stricter for these.Cash GameFor cash games, winning players should play with 5% of their bankroll on any one table (1/20th of the total). This can be adjusted based on your playing style and should be slightly stricter for fast-fold poker games.Finding games with the softest opponents will make you way more money. Check out Party Poker - the original poker site and still the best for incredibly easy games. You’ll get £40 / €30 tokens on your first deposit with bonus code SNGPLANET + cashback paid direct to your player account every Monday. Check out www.partypoker.com now!
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How To Use This Poker Bankroll Calculator:
This widget will show you which buy-in levels to aim for in Sit N Goes and Tournaments. Simply put your starting bankroll and choose your player type, and you’ll see the numbers appearing.
For multi-table tournaments, this is your average buy-in level, which can include shots at higher buy-ins as long as they are balanced with smaller buy-in games. Your ideal Sit N Go bankroll will depend on whether you are multi-tabling 5+ games.
You’ll find some background and some practical uses of poker bankroll management below – first of all, here is an awesome deal to make sure you get that bankroll off to a flying start!
Poker Bankroll Management – Overview And Practical Uses
The reason we need to manage our poker bankrolls is variance – the chance flip of the cards which can make a huge difference to whether you win or lose, no matter how well you play.
Variance has undoubtedly made entire poker careers. There must be 1000’s of pros who ‘ran well’ when they first started and then built their skills later. Conversely, there will be millions of players who gave up poker after starting with a little bad luck – many of them are probably more than capable of beating the game.
The longer you play the more you see how downswings and upswings feature in the game.
There is only one solution for players wanting to ride out the storms and keep their poker profits steady, and that is bankroll management.
Bankroll Management Guidelines Seem Very Strict
When you are new to poker, the bankroll management guidelines seem crazy – 1% of your bankroll for tournaments? Only 5% in any one cash game? How will you ever make money with those rules.
Well, the truth is that these numbers have come from the collective experience of millions of players over decades. It gets proven over and over again, that if you risk more of your bankroll than the general guidelines, your risk of going broke even when you are playing well shoots up.
Here are the general guidelines:
Cash Games: Play with 5% of your bankroll on any one table, this is 20 buy-ins for your current game.
Sit N Goes: Play with 50 buy-ins for your current level.
Tournaments: Play with 100 buy-ins for your average game.
Pot-Limit Omaha Cash Games: Play with 30 buy-ins for your current level.
Poker Bankroll Management – Using These Guidelines To Take Shots
I recommend that you take shots at the next buy-in levels up. This can seem contradictory on a page which is showing you strict bankroll management rules – however it is not.
The alternative is to keep building your bankroll until you have 20 / 50 or 100 buy-ins for the next level up. This can be slow, and there is no guarantee you will be able to beat the next level when you do get there.
I suggest that you build up 4 or 5 buy-ins for the next level instead.
You can then take a shot with that money. Maybe also cutting down on the number of tables you play so that you can watch the games more closely. If you win then great – you will have the bankroll to move up fast. If not then you can sit back in the games which you know you can beat, and rebuild.
The advantage of using bankroll management to take shots is that it only takes a good run at the next level to see you move up very quickly. You could be crushing the mid-stakes while your friends are still grinding it out at the micros!
Poker Bankroll Management – These Factors Influence Your Final Choice Of Bankroll Level
Several factors influence whether you stick strictly to bankroll management guidelines – or whether you can be a little more flexible on this.
Can You Easily Reload?
Poker Mtt Variance Calculator Formula
If you are a recreational player who can easily reload your account with more funs if it all goes wrong, then you should relax with these guidelines a little. I’d go for 50% of the recommended levels at least as insurance against mild downswings though.
Are You A Maniac At The Tables?
Your playing style will make a big difference. At the extremes, tight and conservative players will not have the big wins too often, though will not see such swings in their bankroll either. If you are loose and aggressive then your win-rates should be higher, though your swings will be bigger – meaning you need to be stricter with bankroll management.
Are You An Online Poker Pro?
If you aspire to make poker your sole source of income, then you’ll need to take bankroll management seriously. The added pressure of needing to make regular cash-outs will benefit from a little more protection from variance.
Bankroll Management And Active Table Selection
Finally, you really need to be focused on finding the softest games if you are really going to make poker pay. Active table selection can add 20% to your hourly profits very easily (something that is hard to do with play alone!), and seeking the fishiest sites – especially those linked to sports books – can make an even bigger difference. Check out the Fish-o-Meter widget up-to-date advice on the softest sites around.
In the meantime – do your bankroll a favor, take advantage of this great offer!
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