SNGs for Fun and Profit, especially Profit

[SpaceLord]

Sooo, I've been considering playing a lot of SNGs.

Is my math wrong here?

Let's say I play 10 Turbo 9-handed SNGs on stars. Each costs 6.50. I cash in 4(40% cash rate, which I hear is high.) Let's say my average cash is 17 bucks.

Cost: 65.00
Money made: 4x17 =3 bucks profit.

Even if I played 5 per hour, this isn't much money.

[jmbreslin]

First, the full table turbos on Stars are 10-mans, not 9-mans. That might affect your calculations a bit. Second, an ITM of 40% isn't that high. I am by no means a strong turbo SnG player and I cashed in 40% of the $3.40 turbos I played (300+ SnGs). A good player should cash in closer to 45%.

In order to make any decent money at SnGs you have to be able to convert enough of your cashes into wins. You'll be able to profit with a lot of 3rds and 2nds but it will be a very marginal profit. You need the wins to increase your ROI.

Let's look at my turbo stats as an example. Over 300+ $3.40 STTs I have a very mediocre ROI of about 6% (which is why I went back to playing regular speed SnGs). That means I've earned an average profit of about 6% per SnG I played. At $3.40 that works out to a whopping 20 cents per SnG. Geez, now that I run the numbers it looks terrible! A big part of my problem is that only 20% of my cashes are wins.

That said, you don't really play small stakes SnGs to earn a living. You play them to build a bankroll so you can move up to a level where you can actually play them for a living. Though I'm not sure any "professional" poker players play SnGs for a living - they tend to play MTTs (bigger returns) or cash (better hourly rates).

[SpaceLord]

jmbreslin:

Thanks for the reply.

As a note, yes, the 6.50 turbo SNGs on Stars are currently 9-handed.

Let's just change the cash rate to 45%, which brings the profit to 11.50 bucks.

So, extrapolating these figures to a "big" SNG scenario, let's say 500$ SMGs, that means, on average, each 10 SNGs will return a profit of ~ 885$ on an investment of 5k.

[ImBetterDude]

GL cashing 45% of the time in $500 SNG's. I think a player would be considered top notch if he had an ROI of 6-8% and cashed 38% of the time at this level. Find 7% of $500, times that number by 10 (per hour) and you'll get your hourly profit on average. Again, these numbers would be for a premier player (99.8% OPR rating).

[jmbreslin]

Interesting that the $3.40 turbos are 10-handed but the $6.50's are 9-handed...

Anyway, I think the only way to make real money playing STTs is to multi-table them like crazy. If you're only playing 3 or 4 at a time, then it's just a hobby (which is what I do). To play them for income you'd probably have to be able to play at least 8 at a time.

If I had more time to play (I work full time and have 2 young kids at home) I would definitely play MTTs rather than STTs. Bigger potential return, more variety, and I find MTT strategy a bit more interesting. STTs can get pretty mind-numbing after a while because they are so formulaic.

[ciaran]

4-tabling turbos, I get roughly 6 an hour played on average.

8% at the $60s is $4.80 per SNG.

That's $28.80/hr, or about $58K a year, ignoring rakeback. Not earth-shattering, but certainly an option if you don't want to "work" for a living.

Obviously, the real money makers are the guys who routinely 12/18/24 table, but that applies to all forms of online poker.