ROI vs Number of Players

[mornelth]

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i must say i'm getting quite fed up with the way people are using practical considerations to discuss a mathematical relationship

if you have an infinite tournament and you are above avg in the field, you have an infinite ROI - end of. However - you're probably better off playing in tournaments that don't last that long - $$/hr is what we should focus on.

[/ QUOTE ]

It still doesn;t fly - ROI is return on investment. If the tournament is infinite then you never win / never cash out / never get return - your ROI is 0. Also - this mathematical relationship is being discussed FOR THE SAKE of real-world application, so whatever examples or thought constructs are being used should either come to bear on practical considerations or they are utterly useless.

[DonT77]

Two thoughts on this-

1) I wonder if ROI has more to do with the blind levels and the amount of play than the number of tables/players. In a typical online 500+ player MTT, you don't even get into the money until the 3rd hour, but in a STT the bubble comes around in like 45 minutes. Perhaps the limited ROIs in the STTs are more a function of blind levels than #players?

2) One reason that high ROIs are not sustainable is that when a player goes on a 300%+ ROI tear over a few hundred MTTs he is likely to move up in buy-ins to a point where he no longer has a 300% ROI expectation. For example, I may be a 300% ROI player at the $20 level, but my hourly rate is less playing a $20 MTT than playing a $100-200 MTT with less ROI - so I choose to play in the lower ROI game because it has higher $EV/hour.