Turbo SnG's more profitable than regulars?

Do you think tubro SnG's are more profitable than regular STT's? I just play the normal ones that take an hour+, and was thinking about trying out the turbo SnG's...Obviously you wouldnt be able to wait on as many hands because the blinds will eat you faster, but i feel that this style will be better for the people who like to play a wide range of hands and try to double up quickly. I do the whole strategy of playing tight in the beginning and widening my range later to steal the blinds but i feel that this way wouldn't be as applicable to the turbo's...is this true?

Turbo S&G's mean that your stack-to-blinds ratio gets smaller faster. That means you get to see fewer hands before you have to make big life & death decisions.

Fewer hands = fewer decisions.
Fewer decisions means any skill advantage you have has less opportunity to present itself.
This means luck is a bigger factor. The only advantage I can see in a turbo would be if people played too tight when the blinds got big.

savage nailed it right on the head. turbo is better for bad players because it takes the luck factor and puts it on steroids, because you dont have time to wait for good opertune moments to fleece the fish causing you to pick a hand and hope it works out for the best. if you are good at a push fold strategy then these will work well for you. but it sounds as if you wait for more premium hands then most so i think you would see your play deminish playing these. i recomend you stay with regular sng if you play a tight style.

I disagree with the turbo = more luck / less skill assessment. Turbos require some different skills, to be sure, but that doesn't make them all luck. But even if they were less skill, who cares? Making money is what we should be most concerned with.

As to which is more profitable, the answer really depends on which you're best at. Particularly at low stakes I've made most of my money off turbo SnGs.

I played them for a couple of reasons: one is that the standard of play overall seemed a bit worse in them, and the other is that you just fit more of them in.

If I stuck to the game I had the highest ROI in, I'd probably play nothing but Razz. Problem is, the average Razz SnG takes about an hour to finish, in which time I could've played up to three turbo NLHE games. Even if the ROI is slightly lower, the $/hr is higher, and that is the number you need to be looking at.

Boy, everyone is right. Can't disagree with any of it, but I can add that:

In turbos, if everyone is pushing at the beginning you're getting benefit from dead money when you do get good cards early. Otherwise you may have to wait until you do find the right opportunity to double up against some "luck box".

If you can find a couple of spots and get ahead of the blinds - so that you have 20 ~ 30 big blinds - things aren't THAT bad while you look for the next spot.

One thing I found playing turbos is that it doesn't pay to "test the waters" too many times with marginal hands. Either you have a solid hand in a good situation or you fold and wait.

After reading the comments posted here I will be re-thinking playing tubo games Thanks for the great info

There is a definately higher luck factor in turbo's.. but there is a different skill you need to have.

I play 45 plr turbo sitngo's on stars.. i cash 1/4 of them.. and when i cash its usually 1st or 2nd.. so im makin ok money. my strategy is to sit back and only play PREMIUM hands till about 25-30 left then a desperation period starts and this is where you make or break your tournament. sit and wait for your monster and double triple or quad up (luck factor).. from this pooint on its smooth sailin to cashin.. which is where you use serious skill. knowing when to pick up blinds is a huge strength and must be executed to perfection. gl on the felt !

yeah this all sounds pretty good, i figured there would be a bigger luck factor and it seems like it would give the advantage to the worse player.

I guess the only thing to do is try it out and see for myself...maybe try a couple tomorrow

another note (off-topic): dont play in a mutli table razz tourney if you dont feel like sitting at your computer for five hours...in one now thats been running 4:30 for a $1 buy in....

I have seen guys with serious skills play 25 to 30 turbo SNG's at once. They are utilizing the play of others to help them make a huge ROI. Mucking nothing but premium hands. I actually watched this guy muck his way to cashing in several. He plays them daily and cashes in 36% and wins 74% of them. I will take them numbers all day long.

Lefty

Taken to the extreme, this kind of play mimics "just getting lucky". With windows popping up every few seconds you can't analyze any specific hand or make informed decisions. There's no continuity to the game; you either fold or raise big and gamble. AA only comes around 1 in 220 hands.
I realize Havod Khan et. al. play an insane amount of sng tables, but to claim that their results don't suffer wild swings is - I believe whole heartedly - unrealistic.

I gotta agree with Oz, but then he and I found pretty much the same thing.

Turbos can be easier just because players aren't able to adjust fast enough to the increase in blind levels, particularly at the lowest levels. Once the blinds rise a lot of players become very tight/weak even though the table is getting short = marginal hands increase in value. Good aggression and the ability to fold at the right times can get you far.

I like smaller turbo s&g's. I try to sit back, play only good hands and let the donks get themselves out. Then, once you're in the money, it's easier to go against the others for whatever amount of $$ you'll be getting. Because you haven't really been playing much, the others aren't able to ascertain your style of play because they haven't seen you play but a few hands (If you all of a sudden get aggressive, they're going to assume you've got a run of good cards - and with the blinds being higher, you rake in more than taking your chances at the loser blinds). JMO.

sure turbo speed and the kind of fast tourneys ar always more luck like savage sayed
a higher chipstack are always better when you ar not a gambler

you all seem to be missing the fact that this was the original question in the OP.

the simple answer is yes they are generally more profitable.

the slightly more long-winded answer is that they are more profitable because although the faster blind structure means that although there is more of a luck factor, staying tight early on and playing correcy push/fold means that although your attainable ROI compared with regular donkngos will drop, the fact that turbos take little over half the time of regulars on average means your winrate will be higher.

let's say you can get a 10% ROI in regular donkngos and a 7% ROI in an equivalent level of turbos. If you 4-table continuously, you will probably get in an average of 3 normal SNGs or 6 turbos in an hour. if you're playing $10 games, the regulars will give you a winrate of $3, whereas the turbos will give you a winrate of $4.20.

yeah, my esimates of sngs/hr might be a little off, but bear in mind also that this isn't even accounting for the fact that most sites charge less rake for turbos.

Short and quick:
On an hourly basis, they have a better ROI.
On a per session basis, they have a worse ROI.

Whether or not one is more profitable overall depends on how you play games. If you play two games a night, make them count. If you play for a six hour stretch, get more games in and play the turbos.

i would advise against turbo if its single table...the best part of the single table sng is it resembles a final table, and you should play it like a final table...very conservative...in a turbo format you will be depending on monsters early and sometimes they never come till the blinds have taken up a 3rd of your stack...

gl on the felts

The only turbos i will play for money are the Double or nothings on PS or the freerolls or FPP ones. Dont like my money going out the door any faster than it has to.

^^ agree I think turbo sit n gos are just another way of saying all in fest because soon the blinds get so ridiculously high in regards to the stack that its unbelievable

Says the "professional" lol. Dude, seriously.


Anways, Turbo SnG's are indeed more profitable than regulars in most situations. Because the only thing that should matter to you is $/hour. Since Turbo's last roughly half as long as regular speed games, you'd have to have double the ROI in regular games to make them as profitable. Unless you adjust super horribly to the turbo structure, your ROI should never be affected that much.

In regards to the whole "zomg, turbos are just all-in luck fests" comments, anyone that knows anything regarding optimal SnG play, knows this is ridiculous. The majority of your money is made in SnG's during high blind play around the bubble when you make correct push/fold ICM decisions. IMO, the quicker I can get to that stage in the game, the faster I can start exploiting my edge.

less skill in turbos and far more luck is needed

i like the reg 1's better give me more time to think but thats justs my opnion . the turbos are good if you have a large field of ppl so it doesnt take so long

I play at low levels so take it for what its worth.

I look at SNG's as opportunities to play a while and not necessarily a way to make huge bucks (I try to do that -mostly unsuccessfully at low limit tourneys).

So lets say you've been playing for a couple of hours in tourneys and the bad beats (and the tilting that springs from them ) have done you in...
Its 10pm or so and now you feel frustrated and want to play some more poker....
Past- I would go to a NL game and try to win my $ back. (some of the time I would do it but there were those times when my roll would disappear just because i wanted to win back $10 or so I played in tourneys
Present- Regular SNG's- if you play tight in the first few levels you are (mostly) guaranteed to last 20-30 minutes
I get the frustration out of my system and the losses are more controlled (and there are those times that I actually cash in the SNG ).

If I played the turbos likely i would have to play 2-3 of them to get me that time plus there is just that much more luck factor involved.

Depending on how many of them that you play turbos are more profitable as long as your winning or cashing a lot

well I am going to have to disagree with most of the posts above...

Turbo SNGS ARE MORE PROFITABLE...all pros sng players play nothing BUT the TURBOS...regular sngs are always much more softer since there are lots of recreational players and new players..once you get up to the $5+ turbos sngs the competition gets much tougher compared to the regulars $5...

There are less fishy players at turbos sngs

There is only ONE SKILL in SNGS that you will need to know in order to beat SNGS in the long run and that skill is ICM (independent chip model) ..knowing when to push,call, and fold compared with what your stack sizes are and how much equity your risking when you push/call ..

Yea turbos are more profitable so long you have a good understanding of the basic SnG concepts like ICM and push/fold situations.

Games go faster, they are more "auto pilot" since most of the play happens when the blinds rise and then it is basically push or fold poker based on ICM/preflop ranges with no need to play postflop poker.

Edge is a little lower than with normal blinds coz basically no room postflop, but the faster games = more sngs/hr = more $$/hr. There is a reason sng pros play the turbos.

That said they are beyond gay imo (all sngs, not just turbos). Definitely require skill, but a much different skill that is (imo) much easier to master fairly quickly (at least to crush low/mid stakes), especially considering that most casual sng players don't know up from down.

Nice thread. Simply put Turbos are more profitable or the most pro players would not be playing these over reg sngs. Even though they have the same format as reg sngs, except for the speed, there is different skills and strategy needed.

my option would be turbo if we'r talking abou SnG's , Normal SnG's kills too much time , and for what ? :\

There is definately a larger luck factor involved with turbos. I see more donkfests in turbos than regular games (then again, there's always at least a few in any game). If you get dealt AKs first hand (or even AA), and you have 2+ all ins in front of you, would you call? These are the times I see the majority of premium hands lose--extremely early in a tourney online. As you can see, I'm biased, but one thing I will always say is, play with what you're comfortable with and with what you profit/win/do good with. Saying one thing is more profitable than something else is like saying Negreanu is better than Ivey...it's a matter of opinion. To some people, cash games are the only way to make any money. To other people, high stakes tourneys are the only way to make any money. And to some other people, playing 12 sngs at once is the only way to make any money. My advice (or opinion, or whatever you want to call it) experiment with different stakes, different game types (tourneys, turbo tourneys, sngs, turbo sngs, ring games) and see what you do best in. What you do best in is YOUR most profitable game.