Is it still possible to make a living playing online MTT's?

A couple of days ago, Gobbo posted this thread in HSMTT. So far, it's gotten a couple of hundred very mixed replies; it's basically impossible to come up with a consensus opinion.

I haven't posted in it because I've been meaning to write a blog entry on the subject for a while now. I've written a few things about the variance in here already, but things have changed a little bit since then and there's a few variables that complicate the situation. I find the way my mind works best is to make a big list of all the things I think are true and go through them one at a time, so without further ado:

1)ROI's have dramatically dropped in the last three years. This isn't all because the games have gotten tougher, although they have - people also play a lot more tables. Hourly rates might've gone up for the top % of people willing to put in tons of volume, but it's hard to 16 table everything and keep your ROI intact, so chances are most of the HSMTT crew just logs more variance for approximately the same profits.

2)"High stakes" have become higher. There used to be only a handful of $100+ MTT's on any given night. Now, a dedicated MTT pro playing 25 tourneys a day can spend 2-3K in buyins on a Thursday-Saturday, 5K+ on a Monday-Wednesday (with the different 1K MTT's) and well over that on a Sunday. Some of the increase is from the different 1K entry fee tourneys, which are their own problem; because they are 5x a regular buyin, they are their own variance category and it's entirely possible to drop 50K a year just on them while being +EV in them.

3)Live tourneys eat money like crazy, and, because everyone is backed for them, they eat online money, too. A few dozen online grinders a year win a million dollars (-50% for the backers, who, incidentally, often lose money too); the rest break even or lose their online EV. If live tourneys were free to travel to, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but they aren't. It's hard to beat a 25%+ vig when you only have about 50 $1500+ tries a year (and that's if you're at the WSOP or travel the circuit full time).

4)Fields in the biggest MTT's have gotten larger. That's great for poker, but it does increase variance, too. I originally built my roll off MTT's that paid mid-four to mid-five figures for first with 100-500 entries. There are still plenty of those around, but they're not the cachet events they used to be; people want to play the big ones, which now have twice that amount. Even if your ROI goes way up as a result of extra dead money, it's harder to win a Sunday Mil with 8K entries than the one I won with 4600.

5)Structures have changed in a way that increases variance, as well. Party used to have no antes! Don't get me wrong - this was *not* a good thing - but more money in the pot to fight over rewards pushing light, which rewards calling light, etc. An (my guess) unintended side effect in the triumph of 'good' tourney structures, which create spots for some postflop play a few hours in, is that pushbotting is now more correct, driving the variance up. In addition, 2+2 now loves 'unexploitable' play like shoving 33 in MP for 30 BB's, creating far more huge, unavoidable coinflips late in the game.

All this has combined to make it harder to make a living [u]playing the major sites' major offerings[/u]. It is still entirely possible/easy to make a nice amount of cash playing on Cake, Bodog and (ugh, I guess) Cereus every night, mix in some minors on FTP to go with the $100, 200 entry 5K for first tourneys you play on the other sites, spend 6 hours a night doing this and collect money - those games are still incredibly soft and that won't change. (I don't bother with them because I've felt like my skills have stagnated and I'm enjoying playing cash right now, but w/e.) But MTT's are still gigantic luck fests; your yearly ROI is a function of how well you ran in a handful of late game situations, or, to put it another way, your entire profit for a year is probably your 1-5 top scores that you inevitably got to by sucking out at some point. When the field in those MTT's that have the largest first place prize is tougher, the pushbotting starts earlier and lasts longer, and you're playing 15 other tourneys, too, you're going to have much longer dry stretches and they're going to be much harder to overcome.

tldr: the name of the game is now game selection.

First, the very short term: I'll most likely have another article on P5's either this weekend or on Monday. It'll be about Obama and poker - I'll have to post an exact topic and maybe repost the article after I write it, but if you've been reading the blog or my posts on 2+2, you already know most of what I think on the subject. Suffice to say I am optimistic about the chances of a UIGEA repeal under Obama and feel that the game would be better off with him in office. (I also did make a CR video - it should be up sometime next week.)

Second, in a surprising development, the AP/UB story is *still* slated on 11/9 and might actually stay there :) (If not, it shouldn't be pushed back past 11/16.) For the last couple of weeks, I've been working with the Washington Post on the newspaper and online side of the story, and they'll be hosting an online, live Q&A segment for an hour or so the day after it is released. It'll be in an ESPN-type live blog format where people ask questions and my answers are released one at a time; I have to admit I'm looking forward to it a little bit because it'll be the day after 60M airs and seeing myself getting interviewed by Steve Kroft on national television, then answering questions about it is gonna be kinda cool. At any rate, I don't have the URL yet but will post it on the Sunday of the story.

About myself: Unlike Bond, who is a sicko to begin with and who's without a girlfriend for a month, I'm a lazy, lazy man and have my wife with me. Therefore, I'm continuing to focus on Intrade and only play on Sundays until the election. My schedule during this time period is only a handful of the bigger tournaments, so I was fairly sure that I was going to have zero decent results for a while. This last Sunday, however, I did wind up making an FT of a small major, the Cake 50K warmup event. Although I promptly finished ninth and didn't really make any money (and was annoyed with that enough not to post it immediately or on Monday), it's nice that I'm getting there. I also find myself posting on 2+2 again and thinking about hands, which is usually a sign that I'd like to, like, make money and stuff. After my 11/5 post-electoral hangover wears off, I will be spending a lot of time on my game, both on Cake and elsewhere.

I never really "quit" doing CR so much as I just quit playing tournaments (outside of Sundays, at any rate.) As you guys know, for the last two months I've been concentrating on politics (Obama '08? More like my wallet '08) and haven't been playing much. That, in turn, has led to zero decent hand histories worth submitting to CR and zero videos - I keep my standards kinda high and don't really want to do a vid about any old tourney with no interesting hands. But CR has recently asked me to do a leakfinder video, which doesn't involve my own HH's, and I'll likely get to that on Saturday. This'll be kinda interesting because the HH they gave me is one of my students', so he'll get a free session at the cost of having all his leaks pointed out to a few hundred people. I'll have to ask him how that turned out a few weeks afterwards.

The bad news is I had a Washington Post photographer over for their online version of the AP story and asked him about the timeframe. It looks like it's getting pushed back again, this time to after the election. The new date is 11/9 - hopefully that's the last one, but, y'know, as long as they air it this year I'll be happy.

These two hands happened within an orbit of each other:

http://cakepoker.com//HandHistory/?Hand=xcLAwMaywbDAw8TExMzGwYjFxcbMxcc%3d

http://cakepoker.com//HandHistory/?Hand=xcLAwMaywbDAw8TExM3HwIjFxcbMxcc%3d

My flight from Vegas was overnight, so I got back home at around 10 AM EST (7 PST) after not being able to sleep at all on the plane. My wife had just gotten back from Korea the day before, so both of our circadian rhythms were extremely screwed up and we spent most of Saturday napping.

On Sunday, I woke up more or less okay and decided to play the usual half dozen tournaments I couldn't bring myself to skip. Final tally: 4/6 cashes, four extremely deep runs, a final 2 table on Bodog, a final 50 on UB (yeah, I know; I have $2000 there I'm too lazy to cash out and play one donkament a week with) and Cake, and 80/14000-odd in the Stars (2) Million. I ran white hot in all four for the first 4-5 hours of each, then lost the usual several late flips and quickly bustoed in all four to net a combined 5K. While I can't really complain because there was certainly a lot of getting there involved in those results to begin with, I'm still tired of not winning those late flips and have not been regretting the switch after the fact.

On the other hand, hey, a free 5 thousand bucks doesn't hurt, either. I'll probably at least come back to MTT's for the FTOPS/WCOOP.

Other news: I'm probably going to be on the 2+2 pokercast tonight discussing the UB scandal and Freddy Deeb. Check it out when it airs; I think I'm coming on shortly after midnight EST, but can't be too sure right now.

WSOP ME recap still coming up later today when I have a bit more free time than this entry (still haven't seen my parents in > 6 weeks).