I just read a comment on my previous post. It was thoughtful enough, and important enough, that I thought it should be addressed. I'm going to address the reader's comments in the order that they were written. This will get a bit long, there is a lot to address there, and for those of you who are not poker players, you might get lost in the weeds a little bit. But I'm sure you'll get the idea of what's being talked about, even if you don't understand all of the details.
jsren81 said...
I came across this while searching for something else poker-related.I think bankroll wise you are putting yourself in some dangerous territory. The bare minimum for playing large MTTs is 100 buyins. This would limit you to the $1 level. A lot of people (including myself) will not play with fewer than 200.
I agree with you, and I completely understand bankroll management. I have a plan in place to require extra buy-ins every time that I move up, so that I will eventually be playing with 100 buy-ins. I'll reevaluate then. The reason that I am not playing $1 MTTs has more to do with tournament structure than with dollar amounts.
The cheapest PokerStars tournament with a really good structure (3,000 chips and 15-minute blinds) is a $3.30 MTT on PokerStars. And honestly, it makes a huge difference when I play in that structure. I feel much more comfortable, I can comfortably play more hands in more situations--it just works better for me.
I played that tournament today, and when I have more chips and more time to work with, I am not that player you referred to who is playing too tight so that I can at least mincash. Just having a little more room to operate makes a huge difference.
Today I mincashed in the tournament and was about in the middle of the pack with just under 400 players left. I was prefop with QQ and an M of 9. Villian raised preflop, I reraised, he raised, I shoved my queens and was thinking about landing in the top 50 and going from there--and he showed aces.
That's going to happen from time to time (sometimes a lot of the time, my nut flush lost to a rivered straight flush in the same tournament yesterday, and I just missed the money). But I'm not results-oriented. I know it's about making the right plays and winning over time, and in a deep structure, I am MUCH more confident than I am playing anything else, even STTs--even though I had a 14% SNG ROI in 2008. Running into aces or rivered straight flushes isn't going to happen every day. The results, and the money, will come.
I've had to change my entire schedule so that I can play when the deep MTTs are running, and when it will be quiet enough, long enough that I can play. The computer is in the living room, and I have ADD--which means that having a quiet work environment matters a lot. I should be in my home office any day now, which will help an awful lot as well. So the MTT concentration really hasn't had a lot of time to show results yet.
The bottom line is that I would normally never play outside of a good bankroll structure, but the difference in my playing a deep structure is so great that I believe it justifies the risk. I will add that I've taken a hard look at my numbers a few days ago, and my choices when I'm not playing MTTs haven't been good. I've done well with $2.20 satellites and OK with SNG, but I've been spewing money with other tournaments that I thought would work well for me, so I'm making those adjustments as well.
Also, I have only played live a couple times this year. Even though I was up a few hundred last year in live tournaments, I know that I'm not really bankrolled for it, so that's on hold. I plan to eventually build a separate bankroll to play live. I am taking bankroll management very seriously.
Beyond the actual safety it gives you, it also puts you in a frame of mind where you are not afraid to bust out before the money, so you can gamble optimally. A comment you made in your tournament report post seems to betray the fact that you might be playing too tight in order to make it to the minimum cash. ("all cashes are welcome, even the small ones.") This is bad thinking for an MTT player. Plot a graph of the money in a 1000+ player MTT, it all goes to the final table.It cannot be emphasized enough how sick large field MTT variance is. As one person put it, "a single coin flip or 70/30 can mean end up meaning a 10 or 20% difference in your ROI". That's the difference between winning and losing to most players. Most people do not play solely large MTTs, they play things like 180s and 1000 caps and complement that with larger field tourneys.
I do plan to play more MTTs, but that's a work in progress. I started out as an STT specialist. But I'll never be one of those guys that can play a bunch of tables, so STT isn't the solution. I eventually realized that even a 14% ROI in $10 + $1 SNG is only an average of $1.54 per tournament. That means I would have to move up a lot, or add a lot of tables, to ever make serious money at it. MTTs clearly need to be the emphasis for me, but I'll still grind satellites and mix other things in, which will help with the bankroll issue.
Only those who can put in an absolutely insane amount of volume play only large tournaments (and win). I also think you need to evaluate whether you are really beating the game. Any guy who tells me he beat the $10 level at one point and had to start over after cashing out should be able to grind out a few hundred bucks a month playing at the <$5 level. The games are just that much easier. Either you aren't putting in enough volume, or more likely you are a breakeven/losing player.My recs: * Play $1 or $2 STTs or smaller MTT SNGs (18-45). You are not rolled yet for $2/180 or $4/180, or $2 or $3 large fields. Get a >5% ROI over at least 500 games (preferably 1000). Get confident that you are truly beating the game and earn at least $100 in a month.When you hit $400 BR you can branch out a bit more and you'll have more options.PS Did not mean to sound harsh at all.
Again, thanks for the advice. Not putting in enough volume is an issue, one that I hadn't really considered--I have no idea why. The changes that I continue to make to my work situation should help a lot with that.
I'm not easily offended, and I'm always willing to take advice. I spend a lot of time on the 2+2 forums.
Thanks again,
Clif
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