Tournament Variance Calculator

MTT variance is brutal

A 20% ROI MTT player playing $55 events with ~1,000-runner fields needs roughly 1,500 MTTs before their results stabilise within ±50% of their true ROI. That's why long-running downswings of 200+ buy-ins are normal at any volume below that.

This calculator approximates per-tournament standard deviation as buyin × √(field_size) × multiplier. The multiplier captures structural variance, bounty MTTs and satellites are higher, deep-stacked slow structures are lower.