Joined: Feb '09
Location: Belgium
Age: 34 (M)
Posts: 686
Hi guys !
Maybe some of you remember me ^^ i was very active on this forum 1 or two years ago. Neverthless, it's a long time since i haven't checked it. But now i'm back in a bit of poker, so i might show myself sometime again ^^
I've decided to try to grind DoN on cake poker (where i can get rakeback for 33%). I just need a bit of tips from u guys (because i know u are all very good at poker ). So here are my main questions : What is the ROI i might expect from playing DoN ? What should be the minimum stack (number of buyins) to start playing at the 3.3$ or less limit ?
If i remember well, Doomdy you were really experimented at this kind of poker, so i hope u can give me some gold answers
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Germany
Age: 31 (M)
Posts: 1859
Yeah very low ROI,at the higher levels its basicly rakeback grinding,at the micro levels you might be able to get 5-7% depending on how good you are.
In terms of BR,you dont need 100 buy ins,the swings are a looooot smaller than in every other form of poker (except HU)... I'd say go with 50 buy ins,you can also take shots with less but you will have to be willing to move back down in time
Overall DoN's are really not a great thing to grind tho.. When you BR grows and you move up,your ROI will drop insanely fast because of the marginal edge among good players in that type of game. Why not try fifty-fifties on stars? Relativly similar game type but a lot more fun and beatable for a higher winrate (leader of $15 leaderboard has 12% ROI for example).
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
fifties on stars really suck imo, i liked the days of old classic dons even with the added "bonus" of chinese colluders, bots and all sort of other habitat... going back to the roi- really depends on your opponents a lot- haven't played dons at cake, but eventually you don't want a lot of regs at the table. the more regs the smaller roi you can expect- at stars the problem (not the only one- look above ) was that there were 7-9 regs all the time...so not a very welcome thing...not sure about cake- sometimes it's healthy to lower or higher the buy in if you find that more fish are playing at those levels...but the general belief roi for a good player at dons is about 5%...and yes you make most of rakeback...bank should be around 20-40 buy ins depending on how many table are you gonna go on...
I can never understand why people like to try grind in the DONs. They are actually the least lucrative of all games and the one area in which you are least likely to make money.
If you play DON SNGs then you need to cash twice out of every three games to turn a profit. Even if you win 50% you are losing money even with 33% rakeback.
It doesnt make any sense to me to bank on cashing 2/3 of the time when in fact you can return exactly the same amount of money if you play 6 man SNGs and cash twice out of 6 games
Example
6 x $15 D.O.N SNGs = $90 outlay 6 x $15 6 man SNGs = $90 outlay
3 cashes in DON returns you £90 3 cashes in 6 man SNGs returns you $108 ( and thats working on 3 second place finishes )
If you then add in tournament fees if you play 6 DONs and cash in three you actually end up $4.60 out of pocket because you win £90 but your actual outlay has been $94.50
First of all welcome back !! Was out for more than a year myself but just couldn't resist I just love the game to much !
To answer the question, I tried the Don's also for a while, you can easily start the Don's with 20 to 30 buy in's but it just takes waaaaay to long to build a good bankroll playing them. First of all you'll find yourself fighting the rake and second the varience is very high, because all of the players know the strategy (tight is good rock is better) and at the end it's just all about push/fold.
I would suggest to play the regular sng's (maybe lower buy in's) and build up your bankroll with them, in the long run you'll return will be much much better (especially on the higher buy in's.
Nevertheless good luck !! And I hope you can prove me wrong and showboat a little in the future with your winnings
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Germany
Age: 31 (M)
Posts: 1859
Posted by fcumred: I can never understand why people like to try grind in the DONs. They are actually the least lucrative of all games and the one area in which you are least likely to make money.
If you play DON SNGs then you need to cash twice out of every three games to turn a profit. Even if you win 50% you are losing money even with 33% rakeback.
It doesnt make any sense to me to bank on cashing 2/3 of the time when in fact you can return exactly the same amount of money if you play 6 man SNGs and cash twice out of 6 games
Example
6 x $15 D.O.N SNGs = $90 outlay 6 x $15 6 man SNGs = $90 outlay
3 cashes in DON returns you �90 3 cashes in 6 man SNGs returns you $108 ( and thats working on 3 second place finishes )
If you then add in tournament fees if you play 6 DONs and cash in three you actually end up $4.60 out of pocket because you win �90 but your actual outlay has been $94.50
lol nah that's just wrong
You have to cash 2/3 to make a profit? Why's that? Rake is ~10%,so $3.30 DoNs will be $9.90 in buy ins for $12 return (not even rakeback included). If you really talk about just 3 games,then that's super bad mindset and shortterm thinking,shortterm profit means nothing at all,not a single thing (except for MTT ships)
As for your example - you lack the consideration that you will (as an average player) only cash 1/3 times in a 6 max SNG,while in DoNs an average player will cash 1/2 of the time.
The reason why the ROIs are so low in this game isnt because you only double your buy in if you cash,it's because the edge in the game is smaller than in others.
To determine a games profibility in an example of 3..6 or whatever number of games that doesnt have at least 4 digits is just bad mindset and wont get you anywhere near something accurate
Not saying this to defend DoNs or whatever,I also consider the game as stupid,but to say that it's less good for BR building or a less profitable game than 6 max or something (up until midstakes at least) is just wrong (combined with the above reasoning at least)
Joined: Aug '08
Location: Canada
Age: 43 (M)
Posts: 658
To the OP, nice to meet you and i wish you success in life and poker! Personally ive always been of the mind that if you are good enough to grind DoN's then you may be better served playing micro stakes sng's and cash games. You sound like someone asking the right questions though and we all benefit here in the community for it.
Posted by BeMyATMplz:
Posted by fcumred: I can never understand why people like to try grind in the DONs. They are actually the least lucrative of all.........
lol nah that's just wrong...
To determine a games profibility in an example of 3..6 or whatever number of games that doesnt have at least 4 digits is just bad mindset and wont get you anywhere near something accurate
Not saying this to defend DoNs or whatever,I also consider the game as stupid,but to say that it's less good for BR building or a less profitable game than 6 max or something (up until midstakes at least) is just wrong (combined with the above reasoning at least)
Thanks for the detailed answer BeMyATMpls along with FCUMRED for the discussion above. It's threads like these and the above discussion that allows me to see things in a different perspective which always helps. I also appreciate the other posts by everyone i just didnt want to string quotes
Joined: Feb '09
Location: Belgium
Age: 34 (M)
Posts: 686
Yeah, i think BemyATMplz is right. I think You took a really big shortcut making your calculation FCUMRED (no offense ). Let's have an example : Considering i'm able to make 55% of the time a cash in DON (3,3 $ buy in - rakeback = 3.2$ buy in), i'd win on 100 games : 55*6 = 330$ while my buy in is 320$ (100*3.2$), i'm winning 330-320 = 10$ (okay that's pretty low ROI, but still is it profitable ). So indeed, i dont need 2/3 (66%) of winning DoN's to be a winning player. Winning 11 games on 20 is already enough.(or am i doing something wrong in the previous calculation ?)
@Micromachina : i like ur point : if u can make it in DoN, u can make it in sng's. I'm normally a winning player in low buy-in sng's (except if my poker goes bad after 1 year of not playing ), but the only thing is that i'm restarting with a very low bankroll so i'd like to start with something with not to much variance and i was thinking about DoN's (just wanted to be sure that the variance was idd low there). Once i reach like 100 or 150$ bankroll, i might consider standard sng's again
Joined: Nov '11
Location: Malta
Age: 42 (M)
Posts: 69
Good points all, im newish to poker and trying to be profitable but threads like these really help - thanks for sharing the experience and knowledge guys
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
Hi TchungPo, Let’s see if I can answer your questions, they all seem very simple in fact. 1st – If you win all the DoN’s you play at you should expect a ROI of 93%, which means you win all the games (100%) and the only thing you lose is the rake (10%), but once you have the rakeback program you still get 33% from this. Once 33% from the 10% total equals 3% from the total, you will get a return of 93% on what you invest. This would be the perfect scenario. However, as this almost never happens, let’s now be real. You have to know that you need to win always more than half the games you play when you sit to play on your PC. No matter what happens, the balance when you decide to finish playing must always be with more victories than losses, and the same number of wins and losses is no good. If you win only half the games you play at you will be losing money (50% profit less 10% rake plus 3% rakeback equals 43%).
Imagine winning 50% of the DoN’s you play: Starting Bank $20 DoN 3.30 lost - Bank now is $16.70 DoN 3.30 won - Bank now is $19.40 DoN 3.30 lost - Bank now is $16.10 DoN 3.30 won - Bank now is $19.10 And so on… You will be losing $0.30 each time you play, either you win or lose (I am not including the rakeback here, that would be in the end of a month or a week and, believe me, it wouldn’t do much difference). This is why you always have to win more than you lose, which is not easy. If you feel capable, go on with your objective, if not, play other game rather than DoN.
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Germany
Age: 31 (M)
Posts: 1859
Posted by Fakiry: Hi TchungPo, Let�s see if I can answer your questions, they all seem very simple in fact. 1st � If you win all the DoN�s you play at you should expect a ROI of 93%, which means you win all the games (100%) and the only thing you lose is the rake (10%), but once you have the rakeback program you still get 33% from this. Once 33% from the 10% total equals 3% from the total, you will get a return of 93% on what you invest. This would be the perfect scenario. However, as this almost never happens, let�s now be real. You have to know that you need to win always more than half the games you play when you sit to play on your PC. No matter what happens, the balance when you decide to finish playing must always be with more victories than losses, and the same number of wins and losses is no good. If you win only half the games you play at you will be losing money (50% profit less 10% rake plus 3% rakeback equals 43%).
Imagine winning 50% of the DoN�s you play: Starting Bank $20 DoN 3.30 lost - Bank now is $16.70 DoN 3.30 won - Bank now is $19.40 DoN 3.30 lost - Bank now is $16.10 DoN 3.30 won - Bank now is $19.10 And so on� You will be losing $0.30 each time you play, either you win or lose (I am not including the rakeback here, that would be in the end of a month or a week and, believe me, it wouldn�t do much difference). This is why you always have to win more than you lose, which is not easy. If you feel capable, go on with your objective, if not, play other game rather than DoN.
Well your post makes sense (good explaination) but saying "winning more than half of the time is hard" is wrong. Sure you have to be slightly better than average to breakeven,but that's the case in every game of poker. By being THE average player in 9 player regular SNGs (or whatever other game) you also lose the rake for all games you play longterm,and run breakeven by the true-buy-in. So being just average will lose you money either way. So the type of game you play doesnt really matter,you have to be better than average in every type of game (unless there is no rake,then obv. being an average player will let you run breakeven,but obv. you wanna be a winning player ).
Like I said before,DoNs are probably not the best game to play,especially this late with the game having existed for years now there is no real chance of earning good money at midstakes and above,volume is also key of course because of the low ROIs (idk how good traffic is on cake but tbh I'd imagine it's probably not good enough to put in 50+ games per day ). So yeah tbh I'd still suggest a different game than DoNs. It's really not worth it to start getting deeply into DoNs now,spending much time to get good at them (which will be required if you wanna beat anything but micros,even then it will be with a marginal winrate),while you could learn a game that can get you much higher ROIs by less studying. Fifty-fifties on stars are an option like I said,but in my opinion MTSNGs (18+ players) are the way to go - easy to play many tables in them,high ROIs achievable and still very well beatable at higher stakes,so longterm it would probably be more valuable in trying to get good at them instead of a semi-dead game like DoNs
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Canada
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1660
Greetings TchungPo, and welcome back. Glad to have you with us.
You can definitely get away with a pretty low number of buyins if you have good strategy for these types of games? (Do you?) I'd say don't go any lower than 20 buyin's, and if you do, you must adhere to this strictly ie. at $100 $5 buyins are fine, but when you drop to $60 go to $3.
Posted by Fakiry: Hi TchungPo, Let�s see if I can answer your questions, they all seem very simple in fact. 1st � If you win all the DoN�s you play at you should expect a ROI of 93%, which means you win all the games (100%) and the only thing you lose is the rake (10%), but once you have the rakeback program you still get 33% from this. Once 33% from the 10% total equals 3% from the total, you will get a return of 93% on what you invest. This would be the perfect scenario. However, as this almost never happens, let�s now be real. You have to know that you need to win always more than half the games you play when you sit to play on your PC. No matter what happens, the balance when you decide to finish playing must always be with more victories than losses, and the same number of wins and losses is no good. If you win only half the games you play at you will be losing money (50% profit less 10% rake plus 3% rakeback equals 43%).
Imagine winning 50% of the DoN�s you play: Starting Bank $20 DoN 3.30 lost - Bank now is $16.70 DoN 3.30 won - Bank now is $19.40 DoN 3.30 lost - Bank now is $16.10 DoN 3.30 won - Bank now is $19.10 And so on� You will be losing $0.30 each time you play, either you win or lose (I am not including the rakeback here, that would be in the end of a month or a week and, believe me, it wouldn�t do much difference). This is why you always have to win more than you lose, which is not easy. If you feel capable, go on with your objective, if not, play other game rather than DoN.
Exactly the point I was trying to make.. Unless you win more than 57% of the time you are going to lose money. Thats a plain and simple fact.
33% rakeback only earns you 10 cents for each of the games you play in Given that you can never win more than double your money ie $6 from a $3 buy in, then you are not winning double your money at all. You are only winning about 90% of what you have paid to enter.
If you play 1 DoN sng and cash you make a profit. If you play in 2 and cash in one you actually lose money...
And I completely agree with you that cashing in over 50% of SNGs you play in is not easy. In fact I'd suggest there are very few players who achieve this on a sustained basis and certainly not at micro stakes.
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Germany
Age: 31 (M)
Posts: 1859
Posted by fcumred:
If you play 1 DoN sng and cash you make a profit. If you play in 2 and cash in one you actually lose money...
And I completely agree with you that cashing in over 50% of SNGs you play in is not easy. In fact I'd suggest there are very few players who achieve this on a sustained basis and certainly not at micro stakes.
@ 1st part - who with a not completely retarded mindset would care about his results over a sample of 2 games?
@ 2nd parts - lol how wrong you are,there are LOADS of people who made profit from playing DoNs. Many people even built their roll from micros up to a BR that can support midstakes solely by playing DoNs. If you are an above average player you WILL cash more than 50%. You might think "meh,a micro player,has to be weaker than average". If thats your thinking then you're forgetting the point that you will also play against the weakest players possible. So if anywhere 50% is achievable easily it's microstakes,the phrase "certainly not as microstakes" is simply laughable,no offence
Joined: May '09
Location: India
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 4873
Posted by fcumred: Exactly the point I was trying to make.. Unless you win more than 57% of the time you are going to lose money. Thats a plain and simple fact.
no it isnt u need to win >53.35% games to be profitable
let's say u play 100 x 1.1$ DON
total money spent (S) = 110$
total rake spent = 10$ total rakeback (R) = 3.3$
total prize money (P) = no of games won (W) x prize money (2$) = 2W
to breakeven -> S = R + P
110 = 3.3 + 2W --> W = 53.35
Posted by fcumred: And I completely agree with you that cashing in over 50% of SNGs you play in is not easy. In fact I'd suggest there are very few players who achieve this on a sustained basis and certainly not at micro stakes.
you are very wrong here, just apply simple Pigeonhole Principle
and if we consider skill as a normal distribution ( which it is very close to), then (disregarding external factors as tilt etc) on a very large sample size (to negate variance) the win rate of players in DONs will be an inverted bell shaped curve (with few minor skews?) with mean = 50% all the players on right of mean(red colored area) will be having >50% winrate
note - if u disregard skill then the graph will be kinda similar too but with very small SD as all players will approach towards mean.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: Canada
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 1490
Wow so much said already, really hard to add anything. Dons are definately an easy grind, since they are so very abc. If you can play a winning sng game, you can definately beat DONS. Can get pretty boring after awhile, but definately easy to multi-table. What's the traffic like on cake? I ask, because since stars removed their dons in place of the new 50/50s (which suck huge rhino balls btw), I've been looking for a new place to play them.
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
this point has been mentioned here and there- but still i want to repeat it, dons are way the easiest game to multitable imo, and by multitabling i do not mean 2-4 tables...even a newbie can quite solidly play 16 tables after a few hours of play starting with 4 tables and gradually adding more...no one tells they are easy to master though, but if you aim to get serious at becoming a vip, or supernova (at stars) you usually look for games which are easy to multitable
).
I just love the game to much !
).
