[beriac]

I actually find that I have the same issue. The SitnGos, while lots of fun and great for building your tournament skills, are tough to build a bankroll on. I guess the math would go like this:

- 10 players, paying 5x/3x/2x, with a 10% entry fee
- So over 10 games, you will pay 10 buy-ins and 10 entry fees, or equivalently 11 buy-ins
- Thus, over 10 games you'd need any of the following combinations or better to break even: 1st/3rd/3rd/3rd, 1st/2nd/2nd, 2nd/2nd/2nd/3rd, 2nd/3rd/3rd/3rd/3rd... basically anything even slightly better than 1st/2nd/3rd

So you don't have to drastically outperform to break even or beat the rake, but you do need to outperform (since on average, with players of equal skill, we'd expect performances of 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th/7th/8th/9th/10th over 10 games from each player).

The way I tend to think about it, you just consistently need 1 really bad player in the game. If you think about it, his share pays the rake, and then you just have to win your fair share against the others to break even. Maybe 2-3 "fairly bad" players will do.

One other thing I'd mention is that the variance in playing SnG's is quite high due to their inherent structure, so you have to play quite a lot to know if you're really winning or not.

It does seem harder to win consistently in ring games, though. I wonder if anyone can shed some light on why?