Roughly half in the turbos, up to 3/4 of regular speed ROIs.
It depends on how your skills translate from a faster to slower structure, so you could be a 2% winner in turbos and a 12% winner in regular speeds. It is possible, but not that likely, but I've noticed 50-75% sized ROIs compared to regular speeds on average.
i play mainly regulars for those reasons:
the level is lower (in general)
the variance is lower (so it affects less your mental) so u r able to play a good poker longer
the thoughts process time is longer (which helps a lot while u multi table)
even with the rake back difference...i'm sure guys like skilled sox, livb112 would make a 3rd more of what they made if they would play regulars only.
look at dibasio and croix... they play lower limits than skilled and livb and they are very close on the amount of money they make compared to the stakes they play... i really think regulars is the key... turbo is fun thou...
"the level is lower (in general)" -lovelydonkWhat do you mean by this? Have you found the average players weaker in the regular games? I've only played a few dozen turbos and I've faced more competent opponents but I thought it was just the way the day turned out. In fact, I think this might be the main problem with turbos. You can beat fish almost as easily but beating good players is much tougher because it quickly gets into a NASH push-fold situation without any player having a big chip lead. I'm curious about how people manage to avoid this at the higher stakes. Given that players are better at higher stakes (even the fish are probably decent), why don't high stakes players prefer regular games where they can potentially have a larger edge?I'd really like to specialize in one or the other but I'm having a hard time choosing. I do very well in the regular speeds but if I can attain even 51% of my winrate in the turbos, I suppose they would be more profitable. On the other hand, I do lose a lot of my edge and the variance can be nerve-wracking. Still, it seems like turbo games are more popular at higher stakes and my plan is to eventually get there. Can one really get enough games at the $100+ level playing only regular games? There are so many factors and I'm just so lost. I'm trying turbos for the moment because I figure even if I ditch them, they'll help my endgame.EDIT: Just realized this thread is a year old...
Here's their turbo and regular speed stats, filtered for 2 mans (so no 4 mans included, should mainly make a difference for Croixdawg).
Turbos (order Croix, Bas, Skilled)
That post got ridiculously screwed up, something to do with copying from sharkscope to here.
Anyways, those #s should give you a better idea of things for those 3 players that you mentioned.
Also keep in mind that due to the stakes he is playing, all it takes is a few good days against a fish and skilled could easily have over a 100k upswing.
Of course the opposite is true, but he's proven to have many more upswings than downswings in the past.
Croix and Bas are also two of the best at what they do and very few even approach the time and the skill put into this game as they do.
Croix plays some games on FTP too, here are those stats (filtered for 2 man games) for 2009.
I'm currently playing the $50-$100's on Absolute, and I tried all the formats they offer - regulars (10 minute blinds @ 150 bb stacks), turbos (5 minute blinds @ 150 bb stacks), ultra-turbos (2 minute blinds @ 150 bb stack) and 500 chips ultra-turbos (2 minute blinds @ 50 bb stacks) - but I mostly play only regulars and turbos.
I only played the ultra-turbos because I wanted to put in a lot of volume to quickly to reach Platinum VIP, but quickly realized that they're not the right game for me, so I went back to playing regulars and turbos.
From my experience, playing the $50 regular speeds on Absolute doesn't take too much longer compared to the turbos - most opponents are so bad that you finish them off early anyways, so you don't get into 25/50 very often.
However, the problem with Absolute is that you often don't have much traffic there, so if I see that some other regular is sitting at one or two open regular speed tables, then I'll simply open a turbo - it should reduce the time we have to wait for a fish for both of us a bit. Most of the time, you don't have to wait very long, but I've already waited half an hour at at $100 regular speed table.
Can't say that much about variance yet - it feels a lot lower compared to full tilt, but it could be because I also completely changed my entire game when going to Absolute. But my short ultra-turbo experiment quickly showed me that variance must be a lot lower - I simply have so much more time to make decisions and can also easily wait for better spots when playing regulars, where on the UT's I simply have to get it in quickly to avoid getting blinded out.
If you have trouble finding games then I'd suggest sitting in both turbos and regulars while you wait. If you don't want to multitable then you can just quit one when the other fills.
You also need to remember the differences between sites. (See my previous posts.) A Full Tilt Regular is about the same as a PokerStars Turbo and a Full Tilt Turbo is much faster.Also a quick survey shows that twice as many turbos are running as regulars.
Straight up, with all things being equal, I 've found that the increased speed doesn't make up for the decreased ROI, and the bigger your advantage the more you give up to more speed in fact. That's just my experience though, I expect that there's some variation here among players. As I've said in another post though, the choice isn't necessarily between slow and fast, it's between slow vs, fast vs. more tables. I suck at multitabling by the way, I'm not even crazy about more than one table full ring, and I really hate playing 2 HU matches at the same time. That's just me though, plenty of players can play 2-4 tables at the same time without giving up too much, this is something to think about when you're looking at playing more tourneys per hour, you can see if you can do even better without having to deal with a structure that is less skill based and more luck based. There's other considerations here of course as have been pointed out, namely the quality of competition and the number of games at each speed. I just don't do turbos though and if there aren't enough games at one room I'm going to look to play at another one, which is why having accounts at several rooms is a good idea. It's usually not hard to get a game in at pretty much any room at pretty much any time of day at most popular rooms though so unless you're looking to play several at a time this shouldn't be much of a concern. You may find weaker players though at regular speed so this indeed may be a consideration :)
At Full Tilt I am running 12.9 minutes for their regulars. From previous posts I have read that this is the average speed for a Pokerstars turbo. Would you then say that the expected roi would be the same?
You can't compare average time and ROI, it depends more on the blind structures, in a turbo of the same length we'd expect to see more flips for instance which would bring down your ROI. I'd expect the turbos to be faster though and twostate is stepping up to validate that at least for his games. Depending on what you play and your skill level and the level of competition at your stakes it's possible to have a higher ROI at turbos though, although I wouldn't expect that this is the case very often.
I think all that counts, in the end, is the hourly rate. So pros will play what makes them the most profit per hour, be it turbos, reg or single or multitable.
__________________________________________________________ It is like a horse but with shorter legs and bigger ears...(and we all love it!)
I think all that counts, in the end, is the hourly rate. So pros will play what makes them the most profit per hour, be it turbos, reg or single or multitable.
__________________________________________________________ It is like a horse but with shorter legs and bigger ears...(and we all love it!)
Sorry I didn't make myself clear in last post. I was asking about how ps compares with ftp. The average length of time for a Pokerstars Turbo is about the average length of time it takes to play a regular speed on FTP. The blinds go up at about the same time even with the different structure and you start with same number of bbs (FTP's turbos start with 50bbs). So what I am asking is...should the expected roi be the same in them? Do you still get the same size roi drop going from a PS reg to a PS turbo that you would expect going from a FTP reg to a FTP turbo?
Well once again, IMO anyway, it's not the length of time that makes expected ROI from a good player lower, it's the structure, and given that turbos have faster escalating blinds then the exectation would be that ROI should be lower all other things being equal.
Well if the structures were the same then the only impact on ROI would be the difference in the level of competition at a given buyin. However the structures are different between these two, it's not even that close actually, 18 min to get to 25/50 at FT reg, 10 min to get there at PS with a turbo.
Despite playing a few hundred turbo games and finally getting the hang of them with a healthy ROI, I prefer regular speed games. Here's my reasoning:1. Lower variance -> increased happiness -> less tilt and confidently playing my A game longer -> more money. Some might reverse a few of these but happiness is critical for me playing well.2. There's more scope to outplay opponents by picking up solid reads and getting a feel for how they play. In turbos, there is less time to get reads and also less opportunity to use them because people play so differently with rapidly changing blind levels. This forces me to take a more generic approach and reduces my edge. 3. Stacks are deeper for longer and this makes it a complicated format. It allows me to fully utilize the postflop skills I've developed from NL100 6-max cash. Moreover, most SNG players at the low-mid stakes are terrible postflop and I want to attack this weakness. 4. It will teach me more about poker and help me become good faster whether I am to play turbos, regular speed games or even an entirely different type of NLHE. Playing a more complex format will naturally do more to improve my hand-reading and understanding of poker. This is why I first started to play HUSNGs anyway. There's also less training material on regular speed games and more room for creativity (again due to deeper stacks and more time).5. I'm looking for the most complex poker format available because it's a better long-term investment of my time in learning it. At reasonable stakes, the edge decreases with each year so it's more useful for me to pick a format that has enough potential to always offer a respectable edge at any stake level. These decisions won't matter now but they'll be important in the future. As a case in point, consider how tough it is for an SNG player to move to an equivalent cash game. I know when I first tried to move to cash games, I got crushed and had to learn a ton about ranges, equity, implied odds, board texture etc. On the other hand, I think if I started with cash games, I'd have found SNGs a fairly easy transition. Of course, this applies less to HUSNGs, which are probably the most difficult SNG format and thus the most profitable.6. They're just more fun and intellectually stimulating. Turbos feel comparatively robotic and there are fewer interesting spots. In regular speed games I can really get inside my opponent's head and push him around or confuse him at just the right time. It feels really good to just consistently outplay someone... even better than getting it all-in with AA. Should fun be a factor? Absolutely! Playing a structure that's more fun will keep you motivated to improve and playing better longer. I'd kill myself before playing DONs again. Plus, why do we really want money if not to make ourselves happier? Money doesn't equal happiness but having more financial freedom and peace of mind sure helps! I consider the long-term "happiness equity" of all my activities by asking myself if I'd be happier if I worked hard to do X. This is the most important equity but it's not in most poker books. :)7. Regular speed games are immediately most profitable for me. This is actually the last consideration because my thinking is more long-term than my hourly at mid-stakes. However, my ROI is excellent in the regular speed games and as kingcobra said, the better you are, the more you give-up playing turbos. This is because if your edge isn't very big in regulars it usually means you're autopiloting instead of fully utilizing the extra time you get to accumulate reads and adjust to your opponents when stacks are still reasonably deep. If you play generically, the extra possibilities offered by a regular speed game are ignored and you might as well play a format which doesn't offer these extra avenues for an edge. After all, if you play regular speed games and don't take the extra opportunities, it just means that a better player will have more ways to press an edge against you.There's another bonus that many people fail to consider when comparing turbos to regular speed games. Most will take the lazy approach of comparing hourly for an equivalent stake but this isn't accurate. Your bankroll management is a function of your ROI and thus, you can play higher stakes regular games than turbos. In my case, I can play regular games almost 3x as high with the same risk of ruin.And let's not forget the icing on the cake, ego-fish from cash games. These guys will go mad after getting outplayed and challenge you to heads-up. I'd rather offer them a regular speed HUSNG than have to play a turbo because they'll certainly hit and run. Playing HU cash would also be an alternative but the problem is that the fish will win one moderate-big pot and run away while insulting you in the chat. ;)...This isn't to say I'll never play turbos again, but my main HUSNG game will be regular speed. I certainly won't be interested in 50bb FTP turbos or super turbos (lol) any time soon.BTW: In my experience, the level of "fishiness" in turbos and regular speed games is the same.
Outstanding post man. Another big thing is that, as a rule, there tends to be more fish at the regular speed games, and that's because a lot of the regulars think that their earn rate is going to be higher at turbos and tend to hang there more. That's part of the reason why we tend to get higher ROIs at regular speed, the structure does matter but it's not the whole story. I don't think cash games are more difficult, in fact the opposite is true, while you do play deep stacks the whole time in cash games, that's pretty basic stuff and the changing dynamics of SNGs do require a broader skillset. I think you may have run into better competition than you're used to at cash and that might have made a difference, the other thing might be that a lot of your SNG skills which make you stand out against opponents aren't going to apply in these games. All those things you mentioned though are part of SNGs as well, obviously some of them may have more prominence, standard speed is going to be a lot more relevant though as you say.
Roughly half in the turbos, up to 3/4 of regular speed ROIs.
It depends on how your skills translate from a faster to slower structure, so you could be a 2% winner in turbos and a 12% winner in regular speeds. It is possible, but not that likely, but I've noticed 50-75% sized ROIs compared to regular speeds on average.
Thats crazy....why would anyone play them then?
Because it takes less time, so you can make same money, if you count your profit in $/hour. Also it gives more FPPs/rakeback.
Well sure if you can run at 50% of your winrate of normal..but is that what people are running at?
i play mainly regulars for those reasons:
the level is lower (in general)
the variance is lower (so it affects less your mental) so u r able to play a good poker longer
the thoughts process time is longer (which helps a lot while u multi table)
even with the rake back difference...i'm sure guys like skilled sox, livb112 would make a 3rd more of what they made if they would play regulars only.
look at dibasio and croix... they play lower limits than skilled and livb and they are very close on the amount of money they make compared to the stakes they play... i really think regulars is the key... turbo is fun thou...
"the level is lower (in general)" -lovelydonkWhat do you mean by this? Have you found the average players weaker in the regular games? I've only played a few dozen turbos and I've faced more competent opponents but I thought it was just the way the day turned out. In fact, I think this might be the main problem with turbos. You can beat fish almost as easily but beating good players is much tougher because it quickly gets into a NASH push-fold situation without any player having a big chip lead. I'm curious about how people manage to avoid this at the higher stakes. Given that players are better at higher stakes (even the fish are probably decent), why don't high stakes players prefer regular games where they can potentially have a larger edge?I'd really like to specialize in one or the other but I'm having a hard time choosing. I do very well in the regular speeds but if I can attain even 51% of my winrate in the turbos, I suppose they would be more profitable. On the other hand, I do lose a lot of my edge and the variance can be nerve-wracking. Still, it seems like turbo games are more popular at higher stakes and my plan is to eventually get there. Can one really get enough games at the $100+ level playing only regular games? There are so many factors and I'm just so lost. I'm trying turbos for the moment because I figure even if I ditch them, they'll help my endgame.EDIT: Just realized this thread is a year old...
Coaching page + Blog
Here's their turbo and regular speed stats, filtered for 2 mans (so no 4 mans included, should mainly make a difference for Croixdawg).
Turbos (order Croix, Bas, Skilled)
1,742
$51
$585
8%
$88,822
5,922
$21
$272
8%
$122,394
4,546
$31
$3,251
3%
$138,960
Regular (order Croix, Bas, Skilled)
795
$67
$670
10%
$53,013
1,061
$50
$395
13%
$52,726
91
$473
$4,157
9%
$43,016
That post got ridiculously screwed up, something to do with copying from sharkscope to here.
Anyways, those #s should give you a better idea of things for those 3 players that you mentioned.
Also keep in mind that due to the stakes he is playing, all it takes is a few good days against a fish and skilled could easily have over a 100k upswing.
Of course the opposite is true, but he's proven to have many more upswings than downswings in the past.
Croix and Bas are also two of the best at what they do and very few even approach the time and the skill put into this game as they do.
Croix plays some games on FTP too, here are those stats (filtered for 2 man games) for 2009.
837
$85
$744
12%
$71,360
I'm currently playing the $50-$100's on Absolute, and I tried all the formats they offer - regulars (10 minute blinds @ 150 bb stacks), turbos (5 minute blinds @ 150 bb stacks), ultra-turbos (2 minute blinds @ 150 bb stack) and 500 chips ultra-turbos (2 minute blinds @ 50 bb stacks) - but I mostly play only regulars and turbos.
I only played the ultra-turbos because I wanted to put in a lot of volume to quickly to reach Platinum VIP, but quickly realized that they're not the right game for me, so I went back to playing regulars and turbos.
From my experience, playing the $50 regular speeds on Absolute doesn't take too much longer compared to the turbos - most opponents are so bad that you finish them off early anyways, so you don't get into 25/50 very often.
However, the problem with Absolute is that you often don't have much traffic there, so if I see that some other regular is sitting at one or two open regular speed tables, then I'll simply open a turbo - it should reduce the time we have to wait for a fish for both of us a bit. Most of the time, you don't have to wait very long, but I've already waited half an hour at at $100 regular speed table.
Can't say that much about variance yet - it feels a lot lower compared to full tilt, but it could be because I also completely changed my entire game when going to Absolute. But my short ultra-turbo experiment quickly showed me that variance must be a lot lower - I simply have so much more time to make decisions and can also easily wait for better spots when playing regulars, where on the UT's I simply have to get it in quickly to avoid getting blinded out.
If you have trouble finding games then I'd suggest sitting in both turbos and regulars while you wait. If you don't want to multitable then you can just quit one when the other fills.
You also need to remember the differences between sites. (See my previous posts.) A Full Tilt Regular is about the same as a PokerStars Turbo and a Full Tilt Turbo is much faster.Also a quick survey shows that twice as many turbos are running as regulars.
Straight up, with all things being equal, I 've found that the increased speed doesn't make up for the decreased ROI, and the bigger your advantage the more you give up to more speed in fact. That's just my experience though, I expect that there's some variation here among players. As I've said in another post though, the choice isn't necessarily between slow and fast, it's between slow vs, fast vs. more tables. I suck at multitabling by the way, I'm not even crazy about more than one table full ring, and I really hate playing 2 HU matches at the same time. That's just me though, plenty of players can play 2-4 tables at the same time without giving up too much, this is something to think about when you're looking at playing more tourneys per hour, you can see if you can do even better without having to deal with a structure that is less skill based and more luck based. There's other considerations here of course as have been pointed out, namely the quality of competition and the number of games at each speed. I just don't do turbos though and if there aren't enough games at one room I'm going to look to play at another one, which is why having accounts at several rooms is a good idea. It's usually not hard to get a game in at pretty much any room at pretty much any time of day at most popular rooms though so unless you're looking to play several at a time this shouldn't be much of a concern. You may find weaker players though at regular speed so this indeed may be a consideration :)
At Full Tilt I am running 12.9 minutes for their regulars. From previous posts I have read that this is the average speed for a Pokerstars turbo. Would you then say that the expected roi would be the same?
my last 500 turbos on fulltilt have averaged 7 mins.
You can't compare average time and ROI, it depends more on the blind structures, in a turbo of the same length we'd expect to see more flips for instance which would bring down your ROI. I'd expect the turbos to be faster though and twostate is stepping up to validate that at least for his games. Depending on what you play and your skill level and the level of competition at your stakes it's possible to have a higher ROI at turbos though, although I wouldn't expect that this is the case very often.
I think all that counts, in the end, is the hourly rate. So pros will play what makes them the most profit per hour, be it turbos, reg or single or multitable.
__________________________________________________________
It is like a horse but with shorter legs and bigger ears...(and we all love it!)
I think all that counts, in the end, is the hourly rate. So pros will play what makes them the most profit per hour, be it turbos, reg or single or multitable.
__________________________________________________________
It is like a horse but with shorter legs and bigger ears...(and we all love it!)
Sorry I didn't make myself clear in last post. I was asking about how ps compares with ftp. The average length of time for a Pokerstars Turbo is about the average length of time it takes to play a regular speed on FTP. The blinds go up at about the same time even with the different structure and you start with same number of bbs (FTP's turbos start with 50bbs). So what I am asking is...should the expected roi be the same in them? Do you still get the same size roi drop going from a PS reg to a PS turbo that you would expect going from a FTP reg to a FTP turbo?
Well once again, IMO anyway, it's not the length of time that makes expected ROI from a good player lower, it's the structure, and given that turbos have faster escalating blinds then the exectation would be that ROI should be lower all other things being equal.
Well once again. :)I am asking since the structure of a PS turbo is the same as a FTP regular should they not have the same roi expectation?
yes they should.
__________________________________________________________
It is like a horse but with shorter legs and bigger ears...(and we all love it!)
Well if the structures were the same then the only impact on ROI would be the difference in the level of competition at a given buyin. However the structures are different between these two, it's not even that close actually, 18 min to get to 25/50 at FT reg, 10 min to get there at PS with a turbo.
Despite playing a few hundred turbo games and finally getting the hang of them with a healthy ROI, I prefer regular speed games. Here's my reasoning:1. Lower variance -> increased happiness -> less tilt and confidently playing my A game longer -> more money. Some might reverse a few of these but happiness is critical for me playing well.2. There's more scope to outplay opponents by picking up solid reads and getting a feel for how they play. In turbos, there is less time to get reads and also less opportunity to use them because people play so differently with rapidly changing blind levels. This forces me to take a more generic approach and reduces my edge. 3. Stacks are deeper for longer and this makes it a complicated format. It allows me to fully utilize the postflop skills I've developed from NL100 6-max cash. Moreover, most SNG players at the low-mid stakes are terrible postflop and I want to attack this weakness. 4. It will teach me more about poker and help me become good faster whether I am to play turbos, regular speed games or even an entirely different type of NLHE. Playing a more complex format will naturally do more to improve my hand-reading and understanding of poker. This is why I first started to play HUSNGs anyway. There's also less training material on regular speed games and more room for creativity (again due to deeper stacks and more time).5. I'm looking for the most complex poker format available because it's a better long-term investment of my time in learning it. At reasonable stakes, the edge decreases with each year so it's more useful for me to pick a format that has enough potential to always offer a respectable edge at any stake level. These decisions won't matter now but they'll be important in the future. As a case in point, consider how tough it is for an SNG player to move to an equivalent cash game. I know when I first tried to move to cash games, I got crushed and had to learn a ton about ranges, equity, implied odds, board texture etc. On the other hand, I think if I started with cash games, I'd have found SNGs a fairly easy transition. Of course, this applies less to HUSNGs, which are probably the most difficult SNG format and thus the most profitable.6. They're just more fun and intellectually stimulating. Turbos feel comparatively robotic and there are fewer interesting spots. In regular speed games I can really get inside my opponent's head and push him around or confuse him at just the right time. It feels really good to just consistently outplay someone... even better than getting it all-in with AA. Should fun be a factor? Absolutely! Playing a structure that's more fun will keep you motivated to improve and playing better longer. I'd kill myself before playing DONs again. Plus, why do we really want money if not to make ourselves happier? Money doesn't equal happiness but having more financial freedom and peace of mind sure helps! I consider the long-term "happiness equity" of all my activities by asking myself if I'd be happier if I worked hard to do X. This is the most important equity but it's not in most poker books. :)7. Regular speed games are immediately most profitable for me. This is actually the last consideration because my thinking is more long-term than my hourly at mid-stakes. However, my ROI is excellent in the regular speed games and as kingcobra said, the better you are, the more you give-up playing turbos. This is because if your edge isn't very big in regulars it usually means you're autopiloting instead of fully utilizing the extra time you get to accumulate reads and adjust to your opponents when stacks are still reasonably deep. If you play generically, the extra possibilities offered by a regular speed game are ignored and you might as well play a format which doesn't offer these extra avenues for an edge. After all, if you play regular speed games and don't take the extra opportunities, it just means that a better player will have more ways to press an edge against you.There's another bonus that many people fail to consider when comparing turbos to regular speed games. Most will take the lazy approach of comparing hourly for an equivalent stake but this isn't accurate. Your bankroll management is a function of your ROI and thus, you can play higher stakes regular games than turbos. In my case, I can play regular games almost 3x as high with the same risk of ruin.And let's not forget the icing on the cake, ego-fish from cash games. These guys will go mad after getting outplayed and challenge you to heads-up. I'd rather offer them a regular speed HUSNG than have to play a turbo because they'll certainly hit and run. Playing HU cash would also be an alternative but the problem is that the fish will win one moderate-big pot and run away while insulting you in the chat. ;)...This isn't to say I'll never play turbos again, but my main HUSNG game will be regular speed. I certainly won't be interested in 50bb FTP turbos or super turbos (lol) any time soon.BTW: In my experience, the level of "fishiness" in turbos and regular speed games is the same.
Coaching page + Blog
Outstanding post man. Another big thing is that, as a rule, there tends to be more fish at the regular speed games, and that's because a lot of the regulars think that their earn rate is going to be higher at turbos and tend to hang there more. That's part of the reason why we tend to get higher ROIs at regular speed, the structure does matter but it's not the whole story. I don't think cash games are more difficult, in fact the opposite is true, while you do play deep stacks the whole time in cash games, that's pretty basic stuff and the changing dynamics of SNGs do require a broader skillset. I think you may have run into better competition than you're used to at cash and that might have made a difference, the other thing might be that a lot of your SNG skills which make you stand out against opponents aren't going to apply in these games. All those things you mentioned though are part of SNGs as well, obviously some of them may have more prominence, standard speed is going to be a lot more relevant though as you say.
The problem is considering how many fewer reg run on Pokerstars vs turbos, you might as well be playing limit sngs or PLO sngs.