Nameless14 said:
I like sites with soft fields, good guarantees, and plenty of daily MTTs.
"Good guaranties" mean large fields, which is nice, if you are playing for fun and chasing the dream of a big score for a small investment. But if you are trying to grind up a bankroll, large field MTTs are far from ideal, because they have massive variance. Most MTTs pay out around 40% to the top 3 finishers, and unless you get your share of that money, you are almost guarantied to lose, even if you have a skill edge of the field.
For obvious reasons its tough to reach top 3 in an MTT with a large field, so if you mainly play large field MTTs with more than 300 players, you are always going to have very long losing streaks interrupted by a few big cashes. This can be tough to deal with mentally, especially for a new player, and it also require a larger bankroll to play the same stakes without risking to "go broke". And you also dont get much final table experience.
And for that reason I strongly recommend, that new players trying to build up a bankroll, focus on lower variance formats like cash games, STT SnGs, MTT SnGs (often On Demand type these days) or small field time scheduled MTTs with up to around 300 entries. Of course its not a big deal, if you occationally play a few MTTs with larger fields than 300, but these games should not be your main focus.
As for "soft fields", its a bit of a myth, that there are huge differences between sites, and that this is very important. All sites have "soft fields", if you play in the micros, and all sites have tough fields, if you want to compete in high stakes games. If there is money to be made in certain games, then good players will find out about this and go to these games. So there is no "free lunch" in online poker by choosing to play on a particular site.
There can however be differences between different games on the same site and/or playing at different times. And this is one of the reasons, why I recommend new players to stick to a single site, so that they learn to navigate the environment of that particular site. You simply need to try the different games of a site numerous times to find out, which are a bit reg infected, and which attract more fish.
As for "plenty of daily MTTs", you do want to pick a site, where you can get enough action, so this does matter. It should be said though, that new players should not be mass multitabling, and then it tends to matter less to have a ton of different games to choose from. So there could also be advantages to choosing a smaller site with smaller field MTTs and perhaps a bigger chance of finding games with an overlay.
Nameless14 said:
Start with small buy-ins, build your bankroll slowly, and don't feel pressured to move up too quickly. Freerolls and low-stakes tournaments are a great way to gain experience without risking much.
This is solid advice. $10 tournaments is probably a bit to much for a new player, unless OP is ok depositing and likely losing $1.000 or more, before he potentially becomes good enough to beat such games. If thats not the case, he is better off starting with $3 tournaments and a $300 deposit. Or even lower than that.
