M Comparison Chart

So you think poker is just luck? Why not reduce the luck in poker tournaments by playing slower structured tournaments. This table does some comparisons. Mainly we are looking at the M as the tourney progresses (ie M calculated from the starting stack). M is basically stack size divided by the combined cost of one rotation. The cost of this rotation is the cost of antes, and blinds.

Slower structures, combined with more post-flop play (as opposed to pre-flop) turn poker into a game of skill

Key to Ranks :-

A = Ultra Slow, High Skill
B = Fairly Slow, good skill element
C1 = Average Online Speed - on skill side
C2 = Average Online Speed - on luck side
D = Pretty Fast, Fairly low skill factor, high luck
E = Ultra Fast, Low Skill factor, high luck

M comparison Chart :-

Site Game or Format Starting Stack Level and Time elapsed Table Size Blinds Ante M Rank
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 1, 15mins 9 10/20 0 50 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 2, 30mins 9 15/30 0 33.3 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 3, 45 mins 9 25/50 0 20 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 4, 1 hour 9 50/100 0 10 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 5, 1hr 15mins 9 75/150 0 6.66 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 6, 1hr 30mins 9 100/200 0 5 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 7, 1hr 45mins 9 100/200 25 2.85 C1
Poker Stars Std NLHE 1500 8, 2hrs 9 200/400 25 1.8 C1
*
Poker Stars Sunday Million, NLHE 10,000 8, 2 hours 9 400/800 40 6.4 B
*
Poker Stars Turbo 1500 24, 2 hours 9 30,000/60,000 3000 0.013 E
*
Poker Stars Deepstacks 5000 4, 2 hours 9 50/100 0 33.3 A
*
Poker Stars NLHE, 10 min Levels 1500 12, 2 hours 9 800/1600 75 0.487 D
*
Full Tilt Std NLHE 1500 12, 2 hours 9 200/400 0 2.5 C1
*
Full Tilt Sunday 400K 3000 10, 2 hours 9 100/200 0 10 B
*
Absolute Std NLHE 1500 12, 2 hours 9 200/400 50 1.43 D
*
Absolute Sunday 150K 5000 10, 2 hours 9 100/200 50 4.76 C1
*
Party Poker Std NLHE 3000 8, 2 hours 9 400/800 25 2.4 C1
*
Party Poker Sunday 300K 5000 6, 2 hours 10 200/400 0 8.33 B


From this if we take the 2 hour point of a tourney as a benchmark (when you would have seen about 120 hands on all sites), we can compare the M's to see how much pressure the tourney/site is putting on you to play fast. From this we see that Full Tilt come out top for generally slower structure tournaments.

Std Tourney :-
2.5 Full Tilt
2.4 Party Poker
1.8 Poker Stars
1.43 Absolute Poker

Biggest Tourney of the week:-
10 Full Tilt
8.33 Party Poker
6.4 Poker Stars
4.76 Absolute Poker

Most of the sites do have some kind of deepstack type tourneys, but this table highlights the fact of trying to be a little more selective over the tourneys you play to increase the skill element. Given the choice of playing Stars biggest tournament of the week and Full Tilt's biggest tourney of the week I would recommened Full Tilt as there is a greater degree of skill involved 10M's at 2 hours as opposed to 6.4M's at 2 hours on Stars.