$5 Single Table Sit n Go challenge

If you read my last post you know about my idea to crush all micro stakes on Stars in a series of challenges. Variance can skew results in either direction over a small sample, but for the sake of these challenges i will ignore this and base my results on 20 tournaments.

Obviously crushing any stakes would mean playing thousands of sit n gos at that level. But that is just not plausible at this time and I feel i'm just as likely to run good as bad. Besides i'm not running a scientific experiment here... its all in good fun.

Challenge: $5 single table sngs
Rules: Play 20 tournaments between 9th - 16th March '08

Results:

Played: 5
ITM:60%
ROI: 112%

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UPDATE: 12th March 2008

Played 6 more tournaments lastnight. Did not do so well. Finished 6th, 5th, 4th, 1st, 9th, 4th. bubbled alot. I think i did not adjust properly in spots, seem to be alot of spite calling going on. I will have to do something i loathe to do... review these STT sit n gos.


Results:
Played: 11
ITM: 36.36%
ROI: 33.88%

thinking of a new scoring method for this challenge

Negative ROI = Failure
Positive ROI = Completed
+50% ROI = Successful
100% ROI = Crushed

I realize now that 100% ROI will be difficult to achieve in these since you basically have to win 1 out of every 4 tournaments just to break even. It will be much easier to achieve in multi table sngs.

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Challenge COMPLETED!

Stars $4 180 man sng report

I haven't play much of these this month but i'd say i'm having better results in them this month than last. I've made four final tables so far, 1st,2nd,5th, & 3rd tonight. All of these in the last few days.

This report is for the 3rd place finish tonight


HOUR ONE - -Strategy

My strategy during the 1st hour is to play basic abc poker... for the most part. Be aggressive in any pot i get involved with. Basically i'm looking to double with my big hands. My motto you will find is raise or fold. although i will limp behind if table conditions dictate. I like to end this hour with around 3500 chips

1st hand of the tourny some guy in MP opens to 25xbb... BTN shoves he calls its MP AK vs BTN's JTs... I loled. MP wins. I have a good feelin inside about this one :)

Hand 1
I get cold called after reraising (rr) a min raise, then a short stack shoved AI. The guy was not short at all compared to the blinds, but players tend to panic if they get behind early. I was not concerned about the cold caller, at best i put him on 22-99 or AT-AQ. TT vs. A8o vs. KJo...I hold. chip stack:$3590

Hand 2
KK On the button (OTBN) and Villian with above average stack makes rediculous open raise.hmm, I doubt AA, so my goal here is to stack him. I probably could've shoved right here, since he was not laying down AK, JJ+... but i decide to smooth call. flop comes Q high, villian bets half pot and i put him in for less than 1k more... My stack:$6140

So 18 hands in, having played only 3 hands i have a huge stack, I decide to tightened up since there was no real reason to get involved.

Hand 3
KK about 6 hands later in BB this time, utg limps, utg+1 min r, MP cold calls, Sb calls. I make it $240, I think this was too little now perhaps $300 would've done it. I get 3 callers and flop come A high, i chk call a weak bet, then fold to utg shove... Chip stack:$5525


HOUR TWO -- Strategy

Usually there are between 68 - 78 players left at the end of the first hour. I think there were 74 left in this tourny. I have a above average stack, I'm looking to accumulate, apply a little pressure, try to figure out my table but not get too involved.

Hand 4
1st hand out of the break, i'm at a new table. huge stack limps utg and i have Ad7d in the HJ position. I usually like to punish limpers but because of his stack size i decide to just limp behind, hopefully getting great implied odds if he has a good hand... flop comes Ace high and four to the flush... SB leads for 2/3 pot, utg calls and i call behind... no need to shove the nutflush drw here. Turn gives me my flush and i manage to extract nicely on river. chip stack: $9805

Hand 5
I have a nice stack and i'm beginning to get really active. I lose one hand and take down four small pots when we come to this blind vs. blind situation with QJs in the SB. Pulled a stone cold bluff... very dangerous... but the way the hand played out, especially with the min raise on the turn, I knew villian would be hard pressed to call me with anything other than a 7 or the boat. And the way it played i felt like he was just being stuborn with something like TP. stack:12780

After this hand i mix it up quite a bit, basically bullying the table and taking down blinds,there is about 22 players left it think. i lose a few pots but chip up nicely by the break. Stack:17K

HOUR 3 -- Strategy

By this time we're usually on the right before the bubble or it has burst already. During this time i try to get really active, playing position, taking down the blinds occasionally, targeting the medium stacks... generally just looking to take down pots and continue to accumulate.

Hand 6
A few hands out of the break its folded to me ontb with A7s... raising and then folding is out of the question so i shove... sb wakes up with 99.. bb is sitting out. stack:9702

I shove with A8o in bb when chipleader just completes in SB... he types that he was just checking to see if i know how to play :) stack:10102

blinds come around again and i have A8s in SB, loose player limps in utg+1, chip leader calls ontb... I shove... they both fold. stack: 12452

I steal blinds with 54s in MP... tables seems to have tightened up alot.

In bb again this time with ATo... same player from last time limps in in MP chipleader completes again in sb... I shove... they both fold :) stack: 15902

Hand 7
short stack is now put all in by BB and limper from last two blinds min raises utg... by now i know this guy sucks... I call with T8s ontb... I bet half pot on flop and he folds. stack: 18422

Hand 8
New table, made ill advised blind defence. called btn 3xbb raise and had to chk fold river after firing two bullets on flop and turn. stack: 13927

My 'M' drops to 8 and i get really active again taking down a few uncontested pots. But i really had a great run of hands

Hand 9
I've been really active so i get calls like this.

Hand 10
And this.
edit: viewing this hand again, i realized that i shouldve just shoved flop... an A or K turn would have been a disaster. And he's more likely to call with a weaker hand like AK/AQ on the flop than turn i think.

Hand 11
This is former same chip leader who kept completing his small blind when i was short stack. Taking notes and having software are important becuase u never know when they will come in handy. Earlier in the tourny i saw this guy bluff raise a scary river after villian showed weakness... when he made this river bet, i wanted to kick myself for slow playing.But i chked the note then i check his stats which had unusually high river aggression...then called. stack: 65477

Hand 12
I pick up 66 in BB and villian from last hand opens utg for 3xbb... we're basically even in chips, I call. I flop set and lead right out for 4k, little more than half the pot. He reraises to 9k... ididn't think he would call a shove because of how much he had behind and i didn't want to call on such a dangerous flop... so i decided to 4bet taking it up to 20k. He then types something in the chat like "are you sure?" then shoved for 31k more. I briefly considered JJ or TT, but decided there were just too many other hands he could have here and called. He showed J9clubs. stack:114978

FINAL TABLE
Few hands later I reached the final table as a HUGE stack, having an almost 3:1 chip lead over the 2nd place player.

its 2am here now and i have work in the morning. So i will go through the final table another time. If you have any questions or anything to say, just leave a comment and i will try to answer asap.

Variance & Tilt in micro stakes sngs

On average how many tournaments would you expect to win in a given amount of tournaments? I'm not sure exactly but we all have a rough idea in our heads, even if we have never articulated it to ourselves, that we are comfortable with. Beyond which we start to feel the pressure of not winning. This number is different depending on your skill level and the type of tournaments you play.

Beginning last friday, I've gone 72 tournaments without winning a single one. The buy-ins range from the $3 & $6 45 man turbo sngs to the $4 180s and a few low buy-in MTTs. Over this time i've had 2 2nd, 1 7th place finish in the $3 45 sngs, a 5th in a $4 180 sngs and a 214th in a $3 mtt... thats it. Over this time it seemed that i could not catch a break, that no hand was safe. It was just impossible to win a race. Villians called with complete crap and still won against me. It was brutal.

However, Variance in sngs and poker in general is inevitable. You just have to be prepared for it, be able accept it and continue to play your A game. How do you prepare for variance? Its one thing to know what variance is. But when your AA gets crushed by A2o or Q4o as happened to me just lastnight, its hard to sit there and go 'well thats just variance'.

For me, after playing 6 max cash games and having huge swings of hundreds of dollars @ 50nl i'm better able accept losing 20+ tournies in a row, after all its just not that much money. So first step in dealing with variance i'd say is knowing your tolerance level and having proper bankroll management. By bankroll managment i'm not talking about what is considered standard on the forums, but what you're comfortable with. Being comfortable for me means that losing 20 x avg. buy-in doesn't make me go "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST LOST $X DOLLARSSS!!!!"

The 2nd step is to realize that you don't 'deserve' to win, because there is no deserve in poker. An excellent article that illustrates this point is called The Grossness (or beauty) of poker. An excerpt taken directly from that article really illustrates this;

Three poker playing friends are each offered 100 separate bets in which they’re a 2 to 1 favorite. They can place a $400 wager on each individual bet. In other words, 65% of the time, they win $400; 35% of the time, they lose $400. Now at the end of the 100 bets, they compare results to see how they’ve done and to their surprise, each has a different bankroll, in some cases, thousands of dollars apart. Three different guys, all making the same wager. Three very different results and likely, three very different opinions of their game.

That said, I was still unable to completely accept variance and therefore experienced variance's closest relative;Tilt.

Even pros tilt, it is almost just as inevitable as variance. I personally think that its impossible to not tilt ever, but we can manage tilt. The key to managing tilt imo is recognizing what triggers your tilt response, recognizing that you are tilted and having a pre-planned response to being tilted.

I don't tilt as easily as i use to but there are several things that tilt me.

1. Consecutive beats over a short period of time
2. extremely poor play by opponents... e.g. L/c preflop with Q4o, Callings 2/3rd psb on flop with gutshot drw, calling another 2/3rd psb on turn with gutshot and a pair, then making two pair on river to take down my AA

These are the two that come to mind right away. I very rarely tilt because my AA loses to something like 77 AI pf or when it flops a set on the flop, but bad play as in #2 above gets me.

Of course there are different levels of tilt so recognizing that you are tilted is also very important. There is full blown monkey tilt, where you completely lose control. There is the slow creeping tilt, where you slowly get looser and looser limping hands you normally fold etc etc. There is tilt where you decide to play hands differently than you would normally; slow playing big PPs, larger than normal open raises with AK, etc etc.

To manage tilt effectively you should have a plan on how to deal with tilt... is it to stop playing and take a walk, sit out for a short while... take a few days off. i have one of those squeeze balls that i throw sometimes, other times i just stop playing for the night... in extreme cases i may take a few days off.

SOUND OFF: what works for you? how do you handle variance and tilt?

Add your ideas on the subject.

gl at the tables and don't tilt!

Big stack strategy in Small Stakes Sngs

Most strategy post on the net focus' on playing with a normal stack or with a short stack. But how do you play if you have a big - huge chip lead? Time and time again i've seen the big stack misplayed in small stakes turbo sngs, and i've been guilty of it also.

Some common big stack mistakes in small stakes sit n go tournaments;

Sitting out
This strategy is employed alot in the early stages of multi table turbo sngs. This is often an indication of a weak player who's afraid he/she will blow it if he continues to play. Not a very good strategy as you give up a huge tactical advantage and you learn nothing in the process. You don't lose what you don't put in, but still you should at least practice self discipline by seeing you're cards and folding. It also shortens the table and will give the aggressive player an advantage.

Raising alot/every Hand
The maniac strategy. These players have often lucked into a big stack and now their natural tendencies are taking over. They raise and refuse to back down without regards to position stack sizes or odds at all. These players can be difficult to play against, but generally i see them as a good double opportunity.

Limping/Calling too much
Like the maniac these players have probably lucked into a big stack, but of the two strategies i'd prefer the maniac's style because he's at least applying pressure. these guys fail to take advantage of the big stack and allow players in the blinds and other players to see flops cheaply. Becareful trying to make a move, because these guys will call

These mistakes essentially negates the advantage of having the chip lead. Some pro players are known to take slightly -EV gambles early in tournaments so that they can obtain a large stack. This is because having the large stack allows you to create alot of +ev situations, especially on the bubble and late in tournaments when the tables are short handed.

In Micro Stakes Sngs I don't think its necessary to gamble early to obtain a big stack but if you do get one you can also create these +ev spots.

So what is the correct strategy? how should the big stack be played?....

pt. II