A change in emphasis

I have to change it up for a while.  What I'm doing now isn't working.

The symptom is that I'm not doing very well in mulit-table tournaments.  I like them better, and I think that MTT strategy fits the way that I think strategically better than any other kind of poker.  But the underlying, undeniable issue is that I don't have the bankroll to have that as my specialty.  Instead of grinding away at what is supposed to be my specialty, I'm constantly looking for bargains--look, that's a cheap tournament!  And look, that one has a great structure, I'll do that one next!  Now what should I do?--nothing good for the next 4 hours!

I'm not settled into any kind of rhythm or structure, and it's not working.  That, and the fact that my bankroll is so small that I'm worried about losing more than I'm concentrating on winning.  This is an untenable situation, so I'm going to have to switch back to my original specialty, STTs (single-table tournaments), at least for a while.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Official Poker Rankings had me at 96 in 2008, the year I played $5 and $10 STTs almost exclusively. The 96 is a percentile number, meaning that against all of the players playing the same tournaments at the same stakes, I was better than 96% of that player pool.  So, you ask, why am I not still doing that?  That has to do with the different ways in which poker players make a living.

When I play mostly MTTs (multitable tournaments) I can be in tournaments as large as many thousands of players.  MTT players make their money from a few, very large cashes.  A player might make a lot of small cashes, winning between 2 and 10 times his tournament buy-in.  (In a $5 tournament, between $10 and $50).  But 2 or 3 very large cashes during the year will usually make more money than 100 very small cashes.  Making it to the final table can yield a cash equal to several hundred tournament buy-ins.  A first place in a large MTT might pay 500 buy-ins, $2,500 in a $5 tournament.

STTs are almost the exact opposite.  They are 1 table, 9 or 10 players, the top 3 players cash, and a good player will be in the money at least 50% of the time.  So the small cashes are easier to get, and you can get a lot of them.  Of course, in such a small tournament, the prize pool is much smaller. Third place in a $5.50 PokerStars STT is $9.00 (just 1.6 times the buy-in).

So, how do STT specialists make a living player poker?  Well, they usually play at higher-buy-ins than $5, but that's not the real secret--people make a living playing $10 STT, and there is a German player that made $4,000 in 2010 playing $1 STTs!  The main way that STT players make money is by multitabling, that is, they train themselves to play 4 tables, then 8, 16, 24, or in the case of that German player, over 100 simultaneous tables.

Let's use sales as an analogy.  An MTT player is like a realtor.   She can make a living with a few big prizes, that is, by getting a sales commission on one or two houses a month.  An STT player is like a convenience store owner.  He makes a small profit hundreds of times a day by selling inexpensive items such as fountain pops, candy bars, and packs of cigarettes.

What it comes down to is that I made the switch from STTs to MTTs, because the income that I can make playing STTs has a pretty low ceiling.  There is a very low limit to how many tables I can play at one time, for several reasons:

1. Hardware limitations.  Without a bigger monitor and/or a second monitor, I don't have to add very many tables before I can't see the numbers on the table (pot size, player statistics, etc.).

2. ADD limitations.  I am unable to handle input from several sources at the same time. And when playing STTs, every table is a final table, which means that almost every decision might be an important decision.  Playing an STT and losing concentration during one hand out of 90 is a much bigger deal than playing an MTT and losing track of one hand out of 300 or more.

3. ADD distractibility. I often play late at night, when it's quiet and distractions are minimized. But distractions don't completely go away.  The neighbors still get drunk and fight, and cats still want attention.  The cat distractions usually aren't that big a deal--Vanessa Rousso brings me a fetch toy once or twice a minute, I throw it, and she's happy and excited.  No problem.  But if I was trying to conentrate on more than a few tables, it just wouldn't work. 

I can't imagine being the typical 24-tabler with several tables down to 4 players are less, trying to deal with even the slightest distraction.  If I was locked in a soundproof both, or playing in an office somewhere (yes, some poker pros do that), maybe I could handle up to 12 tables, but I think my natural limit would probably be around 8.

Tournament players multitable, but it's a much different situation.  The don't play nearly as many tables as STT players, and most of the situations are much less critical.  When starting a micro- or low-stakes MTT, at the beginning most of the players aren't very good, and there are not a lot of tough decisions.  Final table decisions, if a player gets that far, might not happen until playing for 5 hours of more. 

I can at some point see myself playing up to 8 MTT tables without much trouble given the right technology.  With STTs, where the tough decisions come faster and more often, I think that my natural limit would probably be 4 tables, possibly up to 8 if I had that situation with absolutely no distractions--no drunk and loud neighbors, no phone call, no cat vists.  But in the real world, most of us don't have a situation like that.  So for a while, until I have a bankroll and a little breathing room, the MTTs are going to have to wait.