I finished reading HOH II. That was a very enlightening book. I basically had it all wrong with tournaments. I didn't apply pot odds properly, I was too weak/tight. I didn't calculate M properly and waited way too long to get busy and start trying to make plays.
I was too focused on finishing position. In a multi table tournament you need to focus all of your actions towards finishing in the top three. The payouts for any other finishing position are not worth playing for and will not make enough profit for the many times you don't make the money at all.
In a 5 table tournament on Stars whether you finish 8th or 45th the payout is the same: $0. So get busy and try to build a stack. Doubling up early is great, however that won't carry you anywhere, you need to put that new money to work and be prepared to lose it. So "lasting", finishing in the top half, reaching the final table, etc. for its own sake is not profitable so don't bother with it. You have to play to finish in the final three.
Finishing in the money isn't worth playing for on its own. These are the payouts in the $1.20 5 table Stars micro SNG.
1: $14
2: $10
3: $7
4: $5
5: $4
6: $3
7: $2
8-45: $0
More than half goes to the top two, and 69% to the top three. So you need to play to finish in the top three to make any real profit in tournaments. If you go bust in 38th, 8th, 6th, 4th playing to win with a good stack that you could have just folded your way to a higher finish then that's OK.
I calculated how often you need to be in the top three to break even in the $1.20, 5 table tournaments. I'll average $10.20 prize over the top three. That's $9 profit after buy in.
Let X be how often you finish in the top 3. So your expected winnings are
E = $9.00(x) + -$1.20(1-x)
Setting E to 0 yields the break even point x =~ .12. So you need to be in the top 3 around 1 in 8 times to break even. If you can do that then you'll get enough incidental profit from finishing 4-7 to make it profitable. Still that means this tournament is tough and lumpy to make profit. If I finish in the top 3 12% of the time, I would expect to finish 4-7 around 12% of the time. I'd then expect to wash out like 75% of the time, all that losing is tough psychologically. So I'll just play them occasionally for fun because they are fun to play.
In HOH II, the theme is to play to win. There are statements like loosely quoting "not afraid to lose", "you have to make this play to be successful in tournaments", "play to win", "steep dropoff in payout after third place".
Since I read HOH II, I had to take a shot at a couple of $1.20 5 table SNGs. I finished 33rd and 29th. Yet I feel a lot better about them then I did when I was finishing higher (but still outta the money) earlier in SNGs. I played more hands and had more fun.
The first one I went bust when my flush was beaten by a full house where villian limped with 23s in EP. Nice play, fish. No matter, I'll win off players like that over time. The next one my M was around 7, blinds t75/150. I was in the BB with A2o. 3 limpers before. I decided to push, hoping to steal it. Unfortunately 2 callers. I was hoping to see Kx, but not so. SB slow played AQs by limping, the fish. I should have waited a little bit longer to push, that wasn't a great spot and I wasn't under extreme M pressure yet. Oh well, pick a better spot to push next time, no worries.
Tournaments are fun but likely not to be profitable for me. So in the future I'll have to read HOH I, reread HOH II, bankroll it with 50 buyins and give it another try.
No comments:
Post a Comment