I started my bankroll with 50 bucks and played .2/.5 limit for a few weeks until my bankroll was about 60 bucks. Then, I just started getting careless and playing 5 dollar SnG's. I cashed about 5 SnG's in a row and was up over 100 by the end of the weekend, so I decided to slow down and go back to playing cash.

I started at the .10/.25 NL table and for the first day I did pretty well. Made about 40 dollars in two hours and then took the rest of the day off.

The following day, I was getting worked pretty bad. It seemed like I was at a table with a bunch of call stations. I'd make a play at a pot and get called by a guy with pocket 3's when there were 5 overcards on the board and he had played the pot timidly the whole time.

Or my favorite, I'd have to go all-in with my A/K and get called by Q/4 os and him hit two pair on the flop.

I don't know if I'm just in a drought now or what, but I really want to go back to playing SnG's and leave cash play alone. All my friends say to keep grinding it out during cash games, because I'll learn patience and a lot about the game..

Blah..

Oh, all this was online at Pokerstars.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Personally in all my experience as a player low limit holdem is the hardest game to win at. my suggestion is to move up in stakes i find that anything below 3-6 holdem is basically impossible. if this dosen't jive with the bankroll try omaha hi/lo. Learn the basics choose your starting hands carefully and watch your bankroll grow. Low limit omaha hi/lo is THE EASIEST way to make money in almost any poker room.

Hmm, interesting.. I'll give it a try.

Right now my bankroll is still at around 100 dollars, so I'll see if I can't brush up on Omaha and try it out.

Actually, you probably should play super-micro if you roll is $100. Like play the $.05/$.10 games.

Oh shit, you ARE kidding, right?

Please don't try it, that terrible advice and I promise you will go broke.

$10 and $20 sng's are full of fish. if you just play good hands and nutpeddle, you should cash in more than 1/2 of them. live games, imo, have a lot more variance since you dont ever just lose a set amount (unless it's your entire br)

microlimit games are not good ways to build a roll, it's simply a waste of time. try playing $10 sng's for an entire day, i think you'll be happy with your results.

Moving up is a bad BAD idea. First of all, with your roll, if you get a couple bad hands, you're broke. Secondly, low-stakes games are the EASIEST games to beat. You just need to make some adjustments. Let me say it one more time: If you cant beat crappy players, good ones are going to tear you a new one.

Omaha on the other hand IS a good idea. Most low-stakes players really, really suck. I suck, and I still turn a profit at high/low limit.

Ugh. Say it ain't so.

No, no, and no. Playing $10 and $20 SNGs with only a $100 BR is asking to go broke. It is an insanely stupid idea. I mean, to claim that if you "play good hands and nut peddle you should cash in more than 1/2 of them" is ignorant and just flat wrong. Yes, there are some bad players in those SNGs. I can also guarantee you that there are plenty of bad players in the $5 SNGs, which won't completely ruin this guys' bankroll like $10/$20 SNGs will.

Secondly, microlimits are very good places to build a roll. Many of the players on this site got started playing .05/.1 NL or some other micro limit game. No matter how bad you think the players are, you are gaining invaluable experience without the risk of going completely broke. The more hands you see, the better you should become.

Also, go out and buy SS Hold'em. Trust me. You want to.

And, in conclusion, yes....learn Omaha. Limit Omaha Hi/Lo is honestly the most laughable fishy game at most sites. I've also been playing lots of low stakes Stud H/L and been winning consistently. I can't stress enough how much playing small stakes tables of Omaha or Stud can make you a better overall player.

Best of luck building a roll.

Obviously both of you came to this forum because you want to learn more about poker, and that's great.

I'm going to say this the nicest way possible: That is the worst possible suggestion for you in the entire world, and the person that posted it needs to read here more often.

It is simply a mathematical fact that low limit games are the EASIEST to beat compared to higher limits DIRECTLY because the play is so bad.

If you cannot accept that premise as true then you really don't have a chance to become a winning long-run player... ever... period.

I'm not trying to make fun of you, I'm really trying to help you.

I deposited another 100 dollars (boosting my BR to 200) and am going to start playing .15/.25 NL... Thoughts on this?

kcb, it's on the light-ish side, but it's not terrible. Assuming you're decently solid, the "risk of ruin" isn't intolerably high.

10x-30x max buy-ins are usually recommended for NLHE.

jopke?

I expect better from MIT !

8)

Not enough to be completely secure. Especially if you're relatively inexperienced.

I did well at .15/.25 with 100 BR, but never made it a habit to play it often because of the risk of going broke.

I'll try it out.. If I start losing a lot of money, I'll drop down a level..

$10 sng's are definately the softest games i've ever played online. i played probably 50-60 freshmen yr of college, and was able to build a roll for 150 to 800 just off of $10 sng's alone. i havent found an easier game.

w/ microlimits, you can have a good rush for an hr, and end up being up just $10. multitabling sng's, if you play correctly, you can make $100+ in just a couple hrs.

im not saying this is for everyone, but it's how i built my roll.

and seriously, if you cant beat $10 nl sng's, well i suggest sticking to limit

First: 50-60 is a small and insufficient sample to see if it's at all representative of your true win rate.



Second: you are not averaging $100+ playing ten dollar sit and goes in a couple hours. I promise you that. You may have had a good run within that tiny sample of 50-60, but it's just a rush like you would experience in a small stakes cash game. The difference is that "rushes" and "downswings" are more pronounced in STT's when the outcome of an entire tournament rests on a few key hands.

The best players out there average only marginally better than 50% in the money win rate. 50% leaves you with an average of $7 per STT, assuming each pay position is as probable as the next (and unless you have some atypical phenomena in your play that skews that figure, it will be). Most people won't come close to averaging $7 per tournament.
Each tournament takes between a half hour and an hour to complete, i would guess (i could be off). Suppose 45 minutes is the average roughly. The best you could hope to acheive is $10 an hour per table. Playing 5 tables at once, you're still - assuming you're the best of the best - not making more than $50 an hour.

A typical winning player won't average more than a buck or two per tournament, if that... and a typical player will not be able to keep up with 5 tournaments at once.


The competition may be weaker at STT's, but that's more than compensated for by the fact that any edge is diminished significantly when the blinds go up so quickly.

i completely understand that the top pro's only avg. 50% win ratio at sng's. i also understand that i could rush and win a couple in a row, and end up dry for the next 10. and i know that my 50-60 $10 sng's isn't a large sample size by any means

but i think you're missing my point

im simply saying that $10 sng's are the easiest online games that i have ever played at. the blinds may approach fast, but w/ the looseness and fishinessl of your opponents, these tables are incredibly easy to beat

top pro's may only win 50% of their sng's, but they're playing against much much better opponents. at these levels, a good player can avg. a 50% win rate

so 50% win rate = $6.50/sng.
let's assume you can multitable 3 tables effectively and that the avg. table is 3/4 hr in length
3 x sng/(.75 hr) = 4 sng's/hr
4 x 6.50 = $26/hr

even at just 40% win rate = $3.20/sng
4 x 3.20 = $12.80/hr

that's about 50BB/hr playing .15/.25

I originally built my roll playing $10 SnG's, then I hit a downswing and decided to learn limit and I haven't really looked back since. I still play some SnG's, but I don't play them as a means of building bankroll anymore really. More for a change of pace and to have fun. That said, they can be incredibly frustrating so it's not always much fun, but I digress. I really disagree with your figures here.

First of all, your 50-60 SnG numbers are a drop in the bucket, as are the very extensive records I kept over the course of somewhere around 150 $10 SnGs. According to Poker Prophecy I had 145 $10 SnG's, with 45% ITM, this is about the same as what I had in my database, and I kept more details in my personal records. When I hit my major downswing and switched to limit cash games, My ROI was about 30%, which I believe is on the high side of what a good player can expect (this is based on stuff I've read...incidentally I highly reccomend bet-the-pot.com for more SnG related info.) I was 2 & 3-tabling them and it was on Party, so they were done in a little less than an hour. I had my hourly rate figured up at about $7.60 an hour. You might be able to bump this a little higher if you can 4-table and show slightly better results than I did (I say slightly better, because my PokerProphecy stats put me in the top 20% of all players in their database...therefore, you're not going to be doing significantly better than I was, over a long period of time).

Basically, $26/hr. playing $10 SnGs is flat-out preposterous. At best, you might be able to make $10/hr., but you'd have to be damn good and play at least 3-4 at once. That said, it could be more profitable to play SnG's than cash games, depending on your skill level and proficiency at each. I'm too tired to run the numbers right now, but I'd say the two are probably pretty similar if you are following proper bankroll guidelines.

Finally, to the OP...I just want to mention that SnG's are a completely different animal than NL cash games. The strategy is completely different and the game plays differently. You can be a very good SnG player and a total donator in cash games, or vice versa, though if you're good enough at poker to do one of them well, you can probably learn to do the other. My suggestion would probably be that you play $5 SnG's and limit cash games following proper bankroll guidelines. If you're having trouble with NL cash games, wait til you have a bigger bankroll, then play the micro tables to learn.

you're right, my numbers are a little high

one reason is that i forgot to include the buy-in in my calculations [doh], but the other is that i guess im overestimating a beginner's sng multitabling ability.

i'll agree that for a beginner, a more realistic number might be in the range of $8/hr. but with that said, i still find it more lucrative than microlimits and still stand by my statement that these are the easiest games to beat


hrmm... i think i'll play 20 hrs of 3-tabling $10 sng's and see what my profits are. this shall be interesting (and yes, i know 20 hrs isn't a large sample size, but i just wanna find out)

Another reason your calculations are high is that you're forgetting the juice. A ten dollar sit n go costs you 11 dollars to lose.

Personally... I don't believe low limit sit n go's are very profitable at all... especially with a bad structure. On Partypoker especially, the structure lends itself to a LOT of coinflip situations by the time it's 5 or 6 handed.

No.

Im talking about the best players at the $10 sit and go level. Pokerprophecy has a history of the top ranking players, based on a huge database of virtually all players. The minimum sample to be counted is, i believe, 300. There are only a dozen or two players on party, party skins and a few other sites combined that have a ITM record greater than 50%.

You also neglected the rake in your calculation.

You also neglect the fact that your win rate goes down when you multitable.


And finally, you're overestimating the edge that you have against bad players. It's not enough to overcome the crapshoot-esque structure that the rapidly increasing blind structure imposes on players. That is the reason the competition is so poor in the first place. Highly skilled players are unwilling to play in games where their edge is relatively weak. Poor players are more inclined to play in games where chance is the primary determinent of success.

Even supposing you manage to average comparable rates at sit and goes, you still have to deal with the higher variance of tournament play. That's definitely a terrible thing for you if you already have a small bankroll. There is absolutely no question that tournaments and sit and goes have higher variance, and require larger bankrolls for the equivalent level of stakes in cash games.

If you think of what a sit and go actually is, it becomes obvious. It's a cash game where, every 10 minutes or so, the people who have not yet lost all their money are forced into playing successively higher stakes games until one player has busted. It obligates you to play in high stakes games, where your success often rests on the outcome of an individual hand. You will never encounter a situation like that in a cash game. It is the equivalent of starting with a $25 buy in at .50/1 and moving up to a higher stakes table every 10 minutes, until you either bust or quintuple your buy in (not exactly, but htat's how it would be if 100% of the prize pool was paid to first).

on the topic of SNGs...what should your bankroll be for these? Im at 75o and im kind of comfortable at 20 dollar ones...is that too high or too low?

On the actual topic of discussion, i think low limit games are the go-to games for cash beacuase a winning players strategy is so basic and simple yet it works. Personally i like limit more, but im in a funk right now so it isnt as enjoyable to put in a session. Although right now i have bankrolls on multiple sites...and my "sng" site is full tilt, which is about the same win rate after a couple of months...we'll see what happens.