[pzhon]

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Another question about the bodog beginner sngs. I've been a decent winner at the $5 sngs, but I had to withdrawal most of my bankroll for emergency purposes. I still have about $145 on there, which i feel comfortable enough playing the 5.50s with.

My question is, if I have to move down to the 4.40 beginner sngs, is it a bit safer to play those with a less buyins, since (in my mind anyway) the variance would be lower with half of the field paying out?

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The variance should be lower. The payouts are $12, $10, $8, $6, $4. Someone who finishes in each place with probability 1/10 will have a standard deviation of $4.47, 1.02 buy-ins, as opposed to 1.52 buy-ins for an even distribution in a normal 10-player SNG. That means if you can maintain the same ROI, you need about 1/(1.5)^2 ~ 1/2 as many buy-ins for the same risk of ruin. (Standard deviations for winning players tend to be slightly higher, about 1.7 buy-ins for regular SNGs.)

A priori, a structure like that would decrease the win rate of most winning players. However, calling it a beginners SNG probably lowers the quality of play so that your ROI may be about the same as in a normal $5.50 SNG. You should keep track of how your ROI compares between the games.