sng variance busting question etc.

How many sngs do you need to have played before you have an accurate idea of your winrate? I'm looking for a general answer, as in is it dozens of sngs or hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands?

And in terms of winrate, how do you guys calculate it? The sngs I play are 10-seaters where top 3 win percentages of the prize pool. If I play 100 of them and finish 1st five times, 2nd nineteen times and 3rd twelve times, what's my winrate? (Note that those figures are hypothetical rather than actual.)

Further question, and I know someone posted an answer to this already but I forget: If you're playing only tournaments should your buyin+fee be no more than 2% of your bankroll for sngs and no more than 5% for MTTs or is it 5% for sngs and 2% for MTTs?

And in terms of percentage of bankroll, what's the variance a quality sng player can expect? If he starts out with $100 and plays the $2 sngs can he expect his bankroll to jump up and down by as much as $40 per swing, or some lesser or greater number?

Finally, in terms of using PokerTracker to analyze sng play, can you give me the link to a good online resource? I know the basics of using PokerTracker 2 (and don't like 3) but have only ever used it to analyze my ring game play.

1. The general opinion I've seen floating around is 500 or so for a minimum.

2. Winrate is generally considered your ROI, or return on investment. This is the percentage of profit you average per SNG. It has almost nothing to do with your "Percent of times finishing in the money" or ITM%. for example:
Lets take 2 people that both played ten 10+1 SNGs, where the payouts are 45 for first, 27 for second and 18 for third.

Person one has 3 firsts and 7 losses. The ITM is only 30%, but they have a profit of $25

Person two has 6 thirds. Their ITM is 60% !!! . but they LOST $2

Just sharkscope yourself to see your ROI.

3. The larger the field that starts, the larger the variance so you'll want a smaller % of your BR being used the larger the fields get. 2% is for the big MTT's

4. The swings. I seriously doubt that a quality SNG player would have swings of $40 up and down at the $2 games. I mean a swing of $40 is like losing 19 SNGs straight. Highly unlikely.

Thanks very much for your reply.

2. I know sharkscope is online, so can I download something? And if I want to keep a manual Excel database is there a format you'd recommend?

3. So what's the recommended BR % for 10-seater single-table SNGs?

4. What range of swings can good SNG players expect? I figure there'd be a range based on various factors and that it would be expressed as a multiple of buyin+fee.

Although I use PokerTracker, I also keep my own database. Here's the columns I use in the SNG table of my database. If you create an Excel spreadsheet, you'd want to track at least some of this data.

Start Date/time
End Date/time
Cash (True/false field to differentiate between play money and real money games)
Buyin
Fee (Poker site fee)
Participants (# of players)
Position (my finishing position)
Winnings (total payout)
Blind Speed (5 min, 10 min, etc)
Game Type (Hold'em, Omaha, etc)
Limit (NL, Fixed, Pot)
Rebuy (True/false field if tourney was rebuy or not)

Once you have that, there's a lot you can figure out. Profit for a game is (Winnings - Buyin - Fee) and you can divide the total of that number by the total number of games to find Profit Per Game, for example.

Assume $10+$1 10-seater SNG with 1st=$50, 2nd=$30, 3rd=$20.

Total cost = 100 x $11 = $1100

Total won = (5 x $50) + (19 x 30) + (12 x 20) = $1060

ROI% = Profit/Cost = (Total won - Total cost)/(Total cost) = -40/1100
= -0.036%

This ROI formula works for any stakes, just plug in the applicable total cost (don't forget the fee) and amount won per 1st/2nd/3rd.