online limits for tournaments

[bacats32]

now I play online to just get experience with hands. the only problem I am having is some idiot calling off all his chips with A8 or 10-6 off but in bb and "already had money in the pot (yeah 120 chips compared to 2000 chips to call)against my KK and nailing it every time. now live I play 3 times a week in a $40 buy in that averages say 35 people (some nights more some nights less) I do very well there. Now online I play and get frustrated by the donkness. Now yes I am only playing at $5 or less so this may be it. If I raise my stakes online for tourney's will my ROI% change. I play $.25/$.50 NL and do good enough online but ring games are different. Should I stay away from the micro stakes tourneys.

[jay_shark]

Your swings will be more severe at the lower limits but your ROI should be higher in the long run . Your ROI should decrease , the higher you go but your $/h does not necessarily follow suit .

ie a 20% ROI playings 10.5 heads up matches is worse off than someone with a ROI of 10% playing 50+2.5 heads up matches .

[pzhon]

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Your swings will be more severe at the lower limits but your ROI should be higher in the long run .

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Actually, I don't think the swings are more severe at lower limits. They are just particularly frustrating because the other players' play is often obviously horrible, and the swings are happening to players who are new to poker, who don't have the experience to see that this is a normal part of poker. I fondly remember the microstakes games where I fumed due to attrocious luck, and still came out ahead for the evening, and when my opponents were so poor that I rarely put a bad beat on anyone.

[PantsOnFire]

I am fairly good but I do love the low limit MTTs. What I have found is that I am usually ahead when all the chips go in. This means I get bad beats quite often but I rarely lay a bad beat since I'm not in that situation very often.

I love players calling my KK with A8. After I realized I am going to lose that confrontation 32% of the time, I relaxed about the bad beats and concentrated on always having the best hand when laying out all my chips.

[jay_shark]

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Your swings will be more severe at the lower limits but your ROI should be higher in the long run .

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Actually, I don't think the swings are more severe at lower limits. They are just particularly frustrating because the other players' play is often obviously horrible, and the swings are happening to players who are new to poker, who don't have the experience to see that this is a normal part of poker. I fondly remember the microstakes games where I fumed due to attrocious luck, and still came out ahead for the evening, and when my opponents were so poor that I rarely put a bad beat on anyone.

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Lets say you get all your money in as a 66% favorite, given you know your opponents hand range and that he has pot odds of 1.5:1, then a great player at the higher limits would smartly fold. At the microlimits , a newbie may incorrectly think he has a call based on pot odds .

Now if you were playing on your last buy in , you now face a 34% chance of going bust .

Also , I think even Phil Ivey would be frustrated at some of the calls some of the players make . I don't think only the new players get frustrated .

[pzhon]

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Your swings will be more severe at the lower limits but your ROI should be higher in the long run .

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Actually, I don't think the swings are more severe at lower limits. They are just particularly frustrating because the other players' play is often obviously horrible, and the swings are happening to players who are new to poker, who don't have the experience to see that this is a normal part of poker. I fondly remember the microstakes games where I fumed due to attrocious luck, and still came out ahead for the evening, and when my opponents were so poor that I rarely put a bad beat on anyone.

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Lets say you get all your money in as a 66% favorite, given you know your opponents hand range and that he has pot odds of 1.5:1, then a great player at the higher limits would smartly fold. At the microlimits , a newbie may incorrectly think he has a call based on pot odds .

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The variance of that hand may be higher, but the overall variance is not higher.

In a tournament, which is what was being discussed, the variance on a single play is not closely correlated with the variance of the tournament overall. Avoiding a confrontation just delays the inevitable gambles. This shows the errors of some arguments people make when trying to rationalize folding a hand which is a clear favorite to avoid putting the tournament on the line; you don't avoid variance by folding. If you are playing a freezeout and have p chips while your opponent has q, the variance is about pq regardless if you are playing NL or limit.

The increased mathematical variance from bad calls in a cash game is countered by the decreased mathematical variance from passive play. Low stakes games have far fewer raises, semi-bluffs, and thin value bets which are found at higher stakes. I believe the net result is that the mathematical variance is slightly lower at lower stakes. This is true for limit, according to past PokerTracker statistics polls in the limit strategy forums, though I haven't yet found analogous statistics in the NL strategy forums.

People also may refer to the size of downswings when they say variance rather than the mathematical variance. This is affected by your win rate. A marginal winner has much longer and larger downswings than a solid winner does, since when the solid winner has clawed back to even, the marginal winner is still behind. Win rates are much higher in low stakes games, which means that downswings are smaller and shorter in low stakes games. If you can't handle the swings in low stakes games, quit, because it's not going to get any better in tougher games.

[jay_shark]

There are two forces working in opposite directions . One may be offset by the other so it's hard to know which is the more dominant force .

1) Players at the microlimits are new to the game and don't understand that raising and re-raising is often times the best play . Consequently , the games may appear to be tighter which would support your theory for limit hold em which is validated through PokerTracker .

2) For many new players, they are paying pennies of their real income which means that they can afford to make bad calls especially during the bubble . These bad calls make the game appear more loose during the bubble which in my opinion is the most profitable period during a tournament .

Let me summarize the above:

1) Players at microlimits usually limp into pots . This causes less swings than a typical aggressive game at the higher limits
2) Players at microlimits don't understand the gap rule . They will call raises in ep with weak hands which would go uncontested more often at the higher limits . In other words , if you open a pot with a raise , you will probably get called .

I can see how this may be true for limit hold em but I would be more surprised if it's true for nl .

Also , some of this depends on the size of the tournament as well . You will face more swings at a microstakes 9 player sng than you would at a multitable sng .

[SmartBugger]

When I play tournaments..... I usually think of the first half-hour of it as avoiding the donkament-land-minds.



For some reason, it seems like people are willing to play the lotto real early on. I am not going to miss-an-opportunity.... but I am also not going to play the game of "chicken" that all these super-aggresive players love to play.


And once they can smell the money, they tighten up a bunch and stealing actually works.