What to play

Hi everybody. I Didn't feel like playing cash games today, so played in a few tourneys instead. I hardly ever play tourneys and often find them frustrating. It's hard when you spend 3 hours getting close to the money to lose to a 2 outer. I didn't cash in any of the tourneys except to win a satellite to pokerstars Sunday millions. It was fun for a change of pace though. Also did a bit of online casino whoring. 7 sultans is offering a $50 no deposit bonus at the moment. Ended up turning it into $90 after a few hours play. Gotta love FREE money.

Today's Topic: Cash games, Sit n Go, or Multi Table Tournaments.

A few friends just starting out playing poker have asked me what format of poker they should play, and what they can earn more money playing. Personally I prefer cash games, but the first thing to consider is what you enjoy playing. Some people make better tourney players while some are better at the cash games, just play some of each and see what you prefer.

• Sit and gos (SNG): SNG's are basically a single table tournament. Each player buys in for so many chips and usually the top 3 places divide the prize pool. 2 years ago there was a lot of bad play and making money from SNG's was fairly easy. Today there are a lot of people multi-tabling the SNG's who play very well and getting an edge has become harder. SNG's are a fun format and certainly at the lower levels (up to $20 buyins) the level of play is still low. I recommend SNG's for beginners to play before moving on to cash games or tourneys. The risks are low and it is a cheap way to learn poker.
  
• Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) In a MTT each player buys in for a set amount to get a set amount of chips. Normally the prize pool is distributed to the last 10% of player remaining. The great thing about MTTs is that the prize pool can be quite large with first place prizes even for $30 MTTs exceeding $10,000. This is the only form of poker you have a chance to win this sort of money for a small investment. The downside is that it normally takes at least 2-3 hours before you reach the money, and getting knocked out after 3 hours for no money can get frustrating.
  
• Cash games: In cash games you buy in for real money and each bet you place is for real money, rather than chips. The upside to cash games is that your rewards are instant and for skilled players it is possible to have a large edge over worse players. The downside is if you play above your level, or have a bad run, cash games can become very expense. If you are a new poker player I would recommend starting off playing micro stakes and only moving up a level when you are a proven winner at that level.
  

Which one can you earn more money at?

I'll try and answer this by looking at it from a mathematics point of view. Say for example you had $600 to play with each day for 4 hours then the equation would be as follows. I'll look at the return on investment (ROI) for each form of poker.

• Sit and goes (SNG) A good player can play 6 SNG's at once and on average a SNG averages out to about 45 mins each. This mean that for a $600 investment you could play 26 $20 SNGs in a 4 hour period. The ROI for a good $20 SNG player is about 17% or $3.4 per SNG on average. So a good player would expect to earn $3.4 x 26 = $88.40.
  
• 
  Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) A good MTT player expects about a 75% ROI and on average. I would say that a normal MTT session would be about 3 hours. If you multi-table 4 $20 then you could average about 5 MTTs in 4 hours. So $20 x 70%=$14 ROI per MTT. $14 x 5 = $70.
  
• Cash games: With $600 daily investment you could 9 table the NL50 games. An average ROI on investment is about 3 PTBB per 100, which is $3 per table per 100 hands. Normal speed of online poker tables is about 75 hand per hour, so playing 9 table then you could expect to play 2700 hands in 4 hours. $3 x 27 = $81
  

In conclusion all games offer a fairly similar ROI. The main advantage I find in cash games is that there are always plenty of games running, and lots of levels to move up. Also the cash games clear the bonuses at a good rate. But find out which one you enjoy most and stick with it.

Today's Link

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