Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 18 November 2008 / Leave a comment

A world class sit and go player can probably hold down a long term roi, or 'return on investment', of between five and ten percent. This obviously adds up to a huge amount of money over many games, but it shows just how small the edge is in these sort of games. Compare this to the long term roi of the best multi table tournament players, which usually ranges from between 50 to 100% (Realistically it is very rare to see consistent results over an 80% roi, but a few do achieve it).

So why is it that players playing what are in effect very similar games (after all, both are tournaments, only with slightly different structures), can have such a big split in the return they get on the buy in. The answer lies in two key features of the structure of MTTs. The first is that the prize pool of MTTs is much more top heavy - only ten percent of the field get paid, and of this, usually around half of the total money goes to just the top three places. Compare this to a regular six person STT, where a third of the field gets paid - clearly it is more important to win in an MTT, where as in a STT it is critical just to be cashing consistently. This means that a much more aggressive and dangerous style of play is critical in MTTs - basic survival is just not that important.

The second key difference is the introduction of antes in MTTs. Antes radically change the game, and particularly accentuate a bad player's mistakes. As antes make the need to steal the blinds much more important, players have to start playing more hands and making more choices than they do without them. As in all poker, the more decisions players have to make, the more their true skill will show through. As a result, bad players seem to get a double attack on them late in MTTs, with not only a prize pool structure that they don't adequately understand approaching (these players nearly always just want to cash - a huge mistake in MTTs), coupled with the introduction of a blind system that puts increasing pressure on them.

These factors are probably why the roi of good MTT players is so much higher than that of STT players. If you are starting to make the transition from playing a few single table tournaments to the much larger field multi table ones remember that these two features make a radical difference to the game and have to be adjusted to.

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