About MTT ROI (Return on Invesment)
Poker players measure their success in MTTs by ROI (Return on Investment). This is calculated by averaging your net MTT profit divided by your entry fees x 100 to give a percentage. For example, if you’ve played 10x$10 buy-in MTTs and made a total profit of $50, then your total ROI is (50/100)*100 = 50%.
- In simple terms, calculating a return on your poker investment can help to determine whether or not poker is the game for you. A spread of 100 games is a good sample size and 13.6% is a modest.
- Just a few days ago, we discussed the importance of using ROI to measure how profitable you are in poker tournaments. Of course, return on investment numbers don’t exactly give you a handle on poker tournament bankroll management, so it’s worth discussing this concept more in-depth.
To quickly calulate your or somebody else’s ROI you can use free software such as sharkscope.
What is a Good MTT ROI?
Taking into account the ROI in poker implies the possibility of obtaining profits or losses among a series of objectives that have been previously established. It is the measure used to compare the profit in relation to the investment that has been made. As a general rule, the term ROI is mainly used in the world of marketing and advertising. If we have 100 cEV we have 600/1500 chips won and we win 40% of games. So we integrat this in the following formula. (amount won - buyin - rake) / (buyin) = ROI. (g.p.c/t - g.b - g.r)/ (g.b) = ROI.
This is debatable because some poker players will be happier with a lower ROI than others.
Poker forums and their communities seem to suggest a 20% ROI is very good, whilst anything above 0% is good for new players.
Your ROI is pretty subjective to how many games you play. Poker tournaments contain lots of variance and you’ll need a big sample of 100+ MTTs to give an accurate figure. If you’re playing small MTTs such as the $3 KO 90-man events at Full Tilt Poker than you’ll need less than this to get a good sample, but for the major guaranteed events like the UB $200k GTD or Full Tilt Poker’s $10k Daily Dollar than you might even need 200+ games for a decent sample size. In either case there are plenty of forum threads and MTT players at Pocket Fives who you can ask if you’re unsure.
MTT ROI Stats:
- <0% Very Bad. You’re losing money in the long run and probably doing everything wrong.
- 0% Bad. Breaking even but still not getting paid for the effort you put in.
- 10% OK. This is ok. You’re making more money than 95% of everyone else in MTTs.
- 20%-30% Great. This is a very good ROI for MTTs. You’re probably in the top 97% of the field.
- 30 – 80% Pro’s. Professionals will aim for 40%+ ROI in MTTs. For example, Chris Moorman is the UK’s best online tournament player according to PocketFives 2008 rankings and earns around 36% ROI in tournaments.
How to Improve Your MTT ROI Significantly: One of the simplest ways of improving your ROI is by playing in tournaments with softer competition. Most of the scheduled tournaments at Carbon Poker with buy-ins below $30 contain very weak competition and even the most limited players can produce a good amount of ITM finishes. You can sign up to carbon pokerwith a $600 bonus. Enter deposit code MosesBet1 to get a free coupon to the daily $3k Gtd.
ROI Isn’t an Exact Measure of Profitability:
ROI doesn’t paint a true picture of how much money you’re really making. For example, earning 30% ROI in a $40 MTT is much more profitable then earning 50% ROI in a $5 MTT. It’s important to find a balance between a good ROI and stake that suits your bankroll/ability.
In small SNGs, ITM is a very useful tool for judging how competent you are. For example, in a 9 person Sit n Go where the top 3 people get paid you’d naturally expect nothing less than 27% ITM. Anything less than this and you’d be losing money on average.
What is a Good ITM?
Most pros will have an 15 – 20% ITM. Personally I think anything above 10% is not bad going.
A lot of players will often play badly in the later stages of a tournament. Passive players in particular will might be able to make ITM finishes, but their conservative playing style will hinder their chances of reaching the final table.
Roi Poker Calculator Explained
In conclusion, getting a good ITM is good but there is much more work to do to establish a killer ROI and become a top player.

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Anyone that play poker tournaments (MTTs and SNGs) will have a specific return of investment, ROI. It's good to know you ROI as you when will know how much you can expect to win in a certain number of tournaments. You can also compare your ROI between different poker forms and find out there your profit is the best.

ROI in poker is used for tournaments, not cash games (in cash games it's about the win rate and how much you earn by the hour). Here are some examples concerning SNG heads up.
Let's say you are playing $50+$2.50 heads up and thinking about moving up to the next buy-in level, $100+5. Here we compare your profit with two different win expectations:
Buy-in $50+2.5 x 10 matches = $520.50
Result 7/10 won = $700 in money > net win: $170.50
ROI 170.50/520.50 = 33,3% ROI
Buy-in $100+5 x 10 matches = $1050
Result 6/10 won = $1200 in money > net win: $150
ROI 150/1200 = 12,5% ROI
In this example, we can see that you make more money playing $50+$5 supposing the different winning frequences (7 out of 10 vs. 6 out of 10). However, 7 out of 10 it's not very realistic and the difference to the next limit will probably be less.
Therefore, we add another example.
Roi Poker Calculator
Buy-in $50+2.5 x 10 matches = $520.50
Result 6,5/10 won = $650 in money > net win: $120.50
ROI 140.50/520.50 = ca 28% ROI
Buy-in $100+5 x 10 matches = $1050
Result 6,2/10 won = $1240 in money > net win: $190
ROI 190/1240 = ca 16% ROI
The second example shows that you are winning more money playing $100+$5 given the performances (6,6 out of 10 vs. 6,2 out of 10). As you can see, the ROI in poker doesn't need to be extremely good when you are playing at higher limits because you will win pretty much money even with a relative small return of investment in percentage.
These kinds of calculations can also be made for comparing SNGs with MTTs and other situations.
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