Be warned this post is a monster…
Ok I am just over 1/20th of a way through my challenge and I have lost money. However I have not lost a ton just around 5 buy-ins or so. The question I have is this variance hitting me early on or am I just that bad? Also, I would like to investigate as whether or not the ultra tight early/ultra aggressive late Is indeed the optimum strategy for the SnG’s. The reason I ask is most players at these levels are playing one of their first 50 SnG’s. I used shark scope all weekend to determine that. It was roughly 85% were within this range. This means they don’t understand that KJ is not a good call to make at the bubble when you are medium stack and there is a small stack. So IMHO pushing any two because you have the position on the blinds just is not possible. Further more the amount of times I have been sucked out on when ahead when I do make move has been daunting. So we will get to that momentarily. I also will be going through most of my stats that I have had thus far and want your honest opinions. Please provide feedback as to what you think.
Ok first lets look at what I feel is variance. We will look at my numbers from when I was a statistical favorite, and see if my results fall in somewhere around this area. I will be using poker office to pull all of this information.
PP vs. 2 over cards- lost 4 out of 7 or 57%
PP vs. 1 over cards- lost 7 out of 10 or 70% - Interesting enough 5 of these were KK vs AK
Premium Pairs/High Pairs-
AA-
I won 80% of AA hands, 8 out of ten. Of these ten I saw the flop 6 times so of that six times I lost two or 33% of the time my AA was called I got beat.
KK- I won 41% or roughly 5 out of 12. Of those 12 though only 8 went to flop and of those 8 I lost 7 or 87.5% of the time I got called with KK I got beat.
QQ- I won 61% out of 13 and won 50% when seeing the flop.
Alright one thing I know for sure is KK killed me. Now I am really good at getting all the money in pre flop at this level. It does not take much usually a 4x raise to induce one these guys to push over the top with Ax or any two face/suited cards. 3 of the times I was outdrawn for KK it was on the bubble and I would have had a big stack going into the money. Being modest and saying that I just made 3rd on all 3 of these had my KK held up. That would be a 19.20 swing or put me down 2.80. Further more had just 3 of the bubble coin flips I ended up in due to non-profitable calls by my opponents I would have made a profit.
So from what I looked at and from poker offices perspective I made the correct moves. However, I don’t feel that they were the most profitable moves. I want to look into whether or not the tight early aggressive late is the optimum strategy. I have my doubts since in fact only about 5% of the players probably know what ICM, or fold equity is.
Not sure where to start but I am going to try some adjustments. Here are some of the ones I am going to try.
1. Play a few more hands. I am currently sitting at 14-18% seeing the flop. However I am winning 70% of the flops I am seeing. Of the ones I lose I am ahead the majority of the time the money goes in. I think I might be playing a bit to tight for this level. I say this because when we hit the bubble and I have 1200-1600 in chips the guy with 2500 considers me on my death bed and will call my push with probably top 40% hands. To further complicate things a resteal so to speak has no chance. These people want to see a flop. Then they check it down until one will throw in a raise. Now if a small or smaller stack makes the raise it is immediately called 60% of the time. “because they might be bluffing”. So my thought is on average you see 45 hands before the bubble here unfortunately people take almost 45 sec to a min for each hand. So can I afford to pass up hands like AJ, A10, KQs, for a small raise when the raiser could have A3/4 +.
2. Stop getting all in pre flop with QQ. There are just to many hands that might be played that win if an over comes out.
3. Draw more aggressively although normally it would not payoff in the long run. I have seen the majority of bets with an obvious str8 or flush draw on the board get called. SO the benefit could be huge.
4. Call or raise unraised pots with medium suited connectors
5. Adjust my three loss rule too quit if I feel the previous losses has affected my play.
As I am not an expert at these games at all this is just some trial and error to see if this helps my game at all. Please any insight anyone has would be helpful. I noticed using shark scope the people with small consistent profits that I have ran into here. Play about 40% of there hands. This is backed up by my stats on poker office. Is it possible that a controlled chaos lag style is optimum here? I am working on it now. Anyways I lost far too many games this weekend however I did finish off the last day ahead albeit barely but I did finish ahead.
I have to thank
Mark for the pimpage in his blog. Everything he writes is insightful and when I am having a bad day I spend a lot of time going through his stuff. I even used his posts putting a strategy guide together for my wife. She is a beast at 5 card draw and I am trying to get her to come to hold em. To add to that I have to thank Mrs. Dreams for allowing me to devote as much time as i do to poker, and not mention learned how to play for me.
One bright side is a guy that i helped refine his game about 3 weeks ago has turned 10 dollars I transferred to him into 500. good job man.
---URGENT UPDATE!!!---
I ask an receive before I even posted
Mark has done it again a very thought provoking post on party poker steps the first three levels. You can find it
here. I am going review it thoroughly and try to apply it to stars $3 turbo SnG's. Anyways I still want feedback.
---Back to original post---
onto the numbers for day 5 and 6
Day 5 - Games Played: 15, ITM %: 26.67%, 1st: 1, 2nd: 1, 3rd: 2, ROI%: -29.41%
Day 6 - Games Played: 13, ITM %: 38.46%, 1st: 2, 2nd: 1, 3rd: 2, ROI%: 15.38%
Totals- Games played: 59/1000, ITM%:33.9%, 1st: 5, 2nd: 6, 3rd: 9, ROI%:-8.77%
Labels: The New Challenge
