I think the "disagreement" is a matter of a combination of semantics and the fact that I was the most active 10-20 years earlier than you.
Yes its certainly not like, what it was in the "good old days", when there were SnG pros like Collin Moshman playing from western countries. Today most SnG regs play from areas like Eastern Europe, South America og South East Asia, and apart from some heads-up specialists, the people topping the
sharkscope leaderboard mostly play 5-10$ games, since there is little action above this.
However that does not matter, if you are completely new to poker and asking, if you should begin with SnGs or MTTs. Even though SnGs are very capped, for me it still make a lot of sense to begin with them and then gradually transition more and more towards MTTs, as your bankroll grow. With a 100$ bankroll you certainly cant get volume in MTTs, because you are only bankrolled for 1,1$ games or lower, and they dont run that often.
When I wrote one table SnG the only one that qualifies - by my definition - of the ones you mention above is the 9-man turbo.
Fair enough but in todays environment I think, you need to be prepared to play pretty much all the formats, that are offered. This is, what most of the regs do anyway. Also its not like, a Fifty/50 is a totally different game from a 9-man. And the On Demand game, which ran this morning, likely did not reach more than 18 players, which mean only 3 places paid. Which makes the final table pretty much the same as a 4$ 9-man.
And by one table SnGs I mean single table SnGs not that you only can find one table.
To wait up to 25 min to play less than 10-12 tables of normal single NLH SnGs under 10 dollars buy-in used to be considered extremely slow and low traffic.
Sure. However I did the test at the absolute worst time of day. Also if I actually wanted to play and had a 100-200$ bankroll, I might also have jumped on some 1$ games rather than wait for 2$ games to start. And with volume this low me registering for a number of games would have helped them fill faster. So maybe it would then have taken 20 minutes rather than 25 minutes.
I also think, there is actually more activity in 5$ games, since more regs play them. And not considering a 5$ SnG "micros" is actually kind of silly, if you ask me. If 10NL and 16NL (when they excisted) cash tables are "micros", then for sure 5$ and maybe even 10$ SnGs should also be classified as "micros". But this is of course just semantics.
But I think we can agree on that PokerStars are probably the only place left for SnGs of almost any format if you want anything resembling multi-tabling.
Totally agree. And I will also add, that the end goal should not be to become a SnG grinder. They are for learning the game, for having fun, or for when you dont have time for MTTs. Attempting to play SnGs professionally makes no sense, when action basically caps out at the 10$ level with some 25-50$ games occationally running.