"In the money" statistics re: SnGs

I'm playing both 10-handed and 6-handed SnGs, and will be playing 100-500 of them (depending on how long it takes me, i haven't yet set a certain amount)

What kind of "In the money" percentages will I be looking at here?
I know that to get a profit, i'll need to be ITM %26 with 6-handed games, and %22 with 10-handed games (SnG win %)

But what is the standard ITM percent?
Also, what percent would warrant moving up to the next buy-in?

Thanks for any input

Hi ChuckTs,

I think you would have to hit the money in a minimum 60%, however that is just if you are hitting only 3rds (and we know you'll place higher.) If you want to base it on hitting 50% - 3rd place, 30% - 2nd place and 20% - 1st place then your ITM % goes down to 42% or so. Play to hit in 60% of them and you are fine - if you only hit the money in 50% and you place 1st or 2nd in a few of those wins, then you are still ahead.

Now I'm confused.

Well what your basically talking about is ROI. Return on Investment. It is more accurate to speak in those terms. Some say that they average a ROI of over 50 percent. So for every dollar they wager then get 1.50 back. While at the lower/micro limits that is certainly possible, at the higher levels of 25 and higher I doubt anyone can mantain that. There is just too much short term luck involved with those type of games. I'd think that a ROI around 25 to 30 percent is good and quite profitable.

While your assessment of the ROI factor seems correct, Chuck's question was more towards poker performance. I too have wondered about how often I have to be "in the money" to have a good ROI.

After a little figuring, I have to agree with Hurricane. It seems like 33% ITM is break even and about 40-42% is where you see decent profit. I also found that differing payout percentages on different sites make the required ITM% fluctuate a little.

Late last year, I was around 45% ITM and was doing well. This year, I am around 22% with a negative ROI and losing money so I have been playing more ring games. Not sure of the reason for the dip.

i have no idea what i'm looking for...I don't know poker stats at all, and assumed that in the money stats were what was important.
Basically i'm starting that SnG challenge, and obviously i can figure out what my profits will be in the end, but what kind of stat (and at what % or ratio) will i be looking at to measure my success? What is usually used with sngs?

I've been in the money in about 39% of SNGs (mix of 10-handed and 6-handed) since I started playing last year, and a bit less than half of those have been outright wins. My dollar total is about $85 ahead for SNGs, so I can consider that a "winning" rate unless I look at it as a function of how many hours I've put in, in which case it's pennies an hour.

What buy-in SnG do you play, roundcat?
Also how many SnGs do you estimate make up that sample size?

Chuck, will you be playing the same sng buy in amount for this experiment? If so, I think there's a way to do this. Lets take a 10 game sample. Figure out how much your buy in total would be for those 10 games. Then once you have the sum you're going to be paying out, multiply that by the realistic cash return you'd like to see. Once you have the net profit you want to see, just see how many finishes in the money you'd need to have to achieve that goal.

As far as your question about when to raise your sng level. I'm trying to figure that one out myself.....

My understanding is that even for players who are very strong at their level at SnGs, ITM placements tend to peak out over long periods of time at around 40-45%. Depending on #players, you'd probably want to shoot for 40%+. Then to make sure that you're profitable and that enough of your placements are 1st and 2nd compared to 3rd (for 9- or 10-person tables), use ROI as a guide. For SnGs, anything about 10% over 100+ games usually means you're sustainably beating the rake, but slight ITM% improvement can lead to much higher ROIs.

As others have said, there are several ways to "beat the rake" at SnGs -- lots of 3rd place finishes, fewer ITMs but more 1st, etc. Pick your strategy and shoot for a combo of metrics that will leave you ahead of the rake and go with that.

Those percentages are from a total of 222 SNGs, mostly $2 and $5 buy-ins.

That would make my ROI somewhat low, just over 11%.