I like Smash's idea (and I don't know if it was really his to begin with, but for all intents and purposes... etc) and I'm going to start my own series.

I started with $75 a week ago and currently have $225 in my account on PokerStars. I differ from Smash's series in that I play only sit and gos. While cash games have great appeal, I believe that beating the $100 and higher sit and gos regularly could bring some real profit.

So. There's the plan. I'm running my $75 up to $3000 playing sit and gos and some big tournaments exclusively. In keeping with the rules (that I, by the way, do not wholly agree with) I'm only going to move up a level in sit and gos and large tournaments when I've got 30x the buyin in my bankroll.

I guess the point of this is to show some of the less well-known strategies in sit and gos and tournaments in general. In PokerStars sit and gos, blind stealing is central to any winning player's game. Knowing when the other guy is trying to steal is also pretty important. The first hand I'm going to show is a great example of this.

PokerStars Game #1369900546: Tournament #6172059, Hold'em No Limit - Level VI (100/200) - 2005/03/17 - 03:39:38 (ET)
Table '6172059 2' Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: RED-74-RUM (7780 in chips)
Seat 2: Milknhoney13 (5372 in chips)
Seat 4: dork_NETT (900 in chips)
Seat 5: matthewklebe (1660 in chips)
Seat 7: gebba (2305 in chips)
Seat 8: McBeasterson (2213 in chips)
Seat 9: BleedBlue44 (6770 in chips)
McBeasterson: posts small blind 100
BleedBlue44: posts big blind 200

This is a 2 table $5 sit and go. My position is 2nd in chips (I'm BleedBlue44, nice to meet ya) and I have the big blind.

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to BleedBlue44 [Jd Ah]
RED-74-RUM: folds
Milknhoney13: folds
dork_NETT: folds
matthewklebe: folds
gebba: calls 200
McBeasterson: calls 100
BleedBlue44: raises 1000 to 1200
gebba: calls 1000
McBeasterson: folds

I wanted McBeasterson to fold, but when I made the bet, I was expecting a call from gebba. Sure enough. He was just a little loose

*** FLOP *** [6s Qd Th]

Not an ideal flop. D'oh.

BleedBlue44: checks
gebba: bets 1105 and is all-in
BleedBlue44: calls 1105

A pretty easy call. The size of the pot and the size of the blinds make it realistic to believe that even if my AJo isn't the best hand, I can call and still go on with the tournament. There is 600 (blinds) + 2000 (my raise and his call) + 1105 (his all in) in the pot, so I'm facing a bet of 1105 to get a shot at a pot of 3705. I'm only really worried about him having AQ, a flopped two pair, or a set. The fact that he could play any two cards preflop makes it a very difficult thing to put him on any hand.

*** TURN *** [6s Qd Th] [4d]
*** RIVER *** [6s Qd Th 4d] [7h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
BleedBlue44: shows [Jd Ah] (high card Ace)
gebba: shows [8c 8h] (a pair of Eights)
McBeasterson said, "hahaha"
gebba collected 4810 from pot

It turns out that I made the right call. I was only a 60-40 dog when all the money went in, and the pot was laying me odds to easily call it. This is very typical of my play.

My style of play is in some ways similar to how DN describes the way Gus Hansen plays. I don't mind taking the slightly worst of it when the money goes in because the nature of the players allows me to continually build a chip stack. Occasionally there are situations that make me adjust and play differently, and it's those weird instances that I intend to post and analyze.

In this one, I took what was left of my money and kept pushing. I went into the heads up match with a 3-2 chip lead and easily won the tournament.

For all those interested, I hope to help you better your tournament play.

I really like your idea and will be very interested in seeing the results.

Hopefully I will be able to improve my SnG results as well.


I like that you are doing this in the strategy forum.

Congrats and I'll be waiting to read your posts.

I may have to limit it to $1000. I can't see myself posting all my thoughts here in $50 sngs with that on the line. I dunno. Let's just say whenever I want to quit?

funny..i was just thinking of doing a SNG experiment after seeing this bankroll requirement on a website.
$5+1=$170
$10+1=$220
$20+2=$500
$30+3=$800
$50+5=$1100
$100+9=$2200

where i will start with $170 and move up when I hit the min. bankroll requirement for each SNG level.

And record my ROI and ITM and post results, and key hands where I would either bust someone or where I would get busted, big laydowns,hands where I would take a big chip lead..etc

Never, ever, accept 20% juice. If you're going to play SNGs, stick to PokerStars. PartyPoker's $5 level is attrocious

Just a bit of advice.

yea i dont play much SNG so i dont know what other sites fees are. Thanks for the advice. This is probably gonna end up to be just a personal experiment..to see how I do. But thats in the future. I'm mainly focusing on Limit holdem for now.

Best of luck. In my personal experience, I do much better as the starting chip stacks increase vs blind structure. On PartyPoker, there's very little time for the better players to make the decisions that separate them from the less skilled. Starting with 1500 chips on PokerStars is a HUGE help.

I could have never built up $150 in 7 days on PartyPoker playing only$5 tournaments without some ridiculous luck.

just wondering if you think UB has a good sit n go structure. They just changed it from starting stack of 1k to 1.5k...blinds used to start out at 5-10 but now they start out at 10-20. The blinds move up kind of slow, but then again I don't know what poker stars site is like.

I can't really comment on UB because I have not played there. The reason behind my never playing there is that I've heard of some pretty dishonest things going on with Phil Hellmuth.

It is a good structure for some play, not a crap shoot IMO. I find that you don't need to try and build a stack as quickly as before. Blinds go up every 12 minutes. Most of the regular SnG's last anywhere from an hour to an hour and forty five minutes.
UB does have "Turbo" SnG's that make the blinds go up every 5 minutes. This can be a better scenario if you don't mind a bit faster play. I find in these that players are trying to hit hands quicker b/c of the structure, but I still wait for the level to get up a bit before worrying about the blinds, this works pretty good for me b/c it seems like more players have busted then it gets shorthanded and I switch gears. The turbo is also nice b/c if you have only 30-45 minutes you can play.

My only wish is that UB would adapt Party's and Star's multi-table SnG structure. (they only have single table SnG's)

I only play at UB..i think the lay out and players are the best. as far s SNG structure I like it, it gives you more chips so you can be a little more creative..and not so much a crap shoot. I do wish they would have multi table SNGs tho

i have seen a couple ppl mention this experiment of sorts..

what was the original test?? and what were the guidelines??

thanx

I don't know of anybody specifically doing it before Smash, but I'm sure it's not his idea alone.

Smasharoo started with $50 and made up rules for how he would advance between stakes and such. He would only move up a level if he had 300xBB. He'll keep playing until he hits $1000, and the interesting stuff along the way will get posted in his threads. Supposedly, he's moving his over here to Strategy soon.

Supposedly, he's moving his over here to Strategy soon.


He is?

News to me.

According to JW, yes.

Well best of luck in your sng experiment. But your play with the AJ was horrible after the flop. If you intended to call his 1100 all in bet (which was a fine call) then you should have moved in because although you said he was loose he probably would have folded with two overs with that kind of board. It is a quite simple tournament strategy, if you are gonna call an opponents all in bet (and this goes if you do not have a strong hand) then you should be raising your marginal hand into him because it gives you the added chance that he folds.

What if I check it there and he bets something like 400 into me?

There are multiple ways to play a hand. In this case, I felt like I could get enough information by his action after the flop to decide if he was scared (big bet) or if he was feeling invincible (small bet).

Maybe he folds to an all in. Maybe he calls. Like I said, he's loose. I try to get as much information as I can, and I felt that checking to see what he'd do was my best shot at getting him to tell me how strong he is.

I agree completely with bdluss. I'm not crazy about the all-in check/call with AJ on that hand. True, the pot odds were there, but that was kind of in retrospect. You had two overs and a gutshot for 10 outs with two cards to come, that's true, and the odds in that situation say call. However, that had to be at the very BOTTOM of what you'd put him on, and a lot of situations would have you way behind. What if he was just doing a FILG push ("f**k it let's go") with something like AK? Or worse, he's paired the queen and is playing one of your kickers?

Tournaments are about trying to stay away from near-breakeven situations for all your chips. The best tournament players avoid that kind of situation and for the worst ones, it catches up to them eventually. If ever you're in a situation where you're out of position and rationalizing that you're probably behind but the odds are right to call off all your chips, I think you need to re-evaluate things.

All that having been said... nothing personal, and I look forward to reading your posts. Good luck!

I may have explained this before, and maybe I have not (so that's obviously my mistake), but my philosophy is that I'm willing to take slightly the worst of it into these types of situations because "getting lucky" is more important to me than having the best of it when there's a showdown. I make my money in sit and gos by taking blinds and having no showdowns whatsoever. If the table makes that impossible, I adjust my play accordingly, but in this case, I was able to do just that. I went through my reasoning in this hand and decided that I was making the right call based upon my own thoughts. You're free to disagree with that, but I'll reiterate that even if it appears that I made a mistake in this hand, I do this on a regular basis and it's a strategy that's a proven winner.

I posted this particular hand as a sort of introduction to what my strategy is all about. You can cackle and say, "So, your strategy is to lose?" but... I guess I could just point to my results.

No offense, but you need to take a gander at the chip counts at the start of the hand before you make this comment. I have a 3:1 lead on the guy that I'm involved in this hand with.

Really though, that hand was decided preflop. It's the kind of situation in a controversial post I talked about a few weeks ago.

Basically, what happened in that was the guy was big stack, it was 6 handed, final table, 10k in 200/400, and he had 7s6s on the button. He decided to raise to 1000, and the shortstack in the small blind pushed for 3500 total. The guy thought about it for a while, and decided that he's not worse than 60/40 behind two overs, and was only really behind to an overpair or a penalty card situation, like A7 or 66. So, he called, and cracked AKo. He was getting 4900 on a 2500 chip call.

I pointed out that while the math behind the call was correct, he had really decided to make that call pre-flop. By making that raise, he had decided he was calling the all-in no matter what the guy with 3500 did, because by raising that way, he got himself in (effectively) an inescapable situation. To his credit, the pot was laying him better than his odds to win the hand by the re-raise. But, that's by the RE-RAISE. If you cut it right down to where the money came from, he put up 3500 against 3500 with 400 dead with 7 high! However, the point I'm trying to make is it's not a great play to be committing yourself to technically give yourself the odds, but still not be a favorite to win the hand (IMO). I don't think that frequently making yourself a 60-40 dog when the pot lays you 2:1 for all your chips is a great way to play tournaments. Cash game, that's different, but in tournaments, you only need to be wrong once, and it's over.

It should be noted that there were several dissenting opinions. I'll be the first to admit I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong in the future. This is just my opinion, though.

So in the interests of being constructive, it's my opinion that if there was a mistake in this hand, it was raising 5x and half your stack with a freak-nasty trap hand like AJo. That's the point I was trying to get across. By making that raise, you can't fold for an all-in at any point from any caller. So effectively, you've pushed pre-flop cold with AJo, because you CAN'T lay it down if someone moves you in. THAT, I feel, is the problem that needs to be identified. Again... trying to be constructive. Other people's input on this forum has made a world of difference to me... I'm only trying to return the favor from my own experiences.

You're still not looking at the stack sizes. I had 6600 chips and could easily risk it here with AJ against him. He called half his stack preflop with 88 against me; was that a mistake?

I really do think you need to reread this hand.

So what if I lose the race or get involved in a 3-to-1 dog situation? I have 4000+ chips left, which is more than enough to continue playing my game. I did that and won the tournament.

While it's true that the size of your stack is no excuse for making a mistake, I can rely on lucky breaks and close situations IF I've got a stack like I had at this table and all indications are that I can keep playing my game if I get busted once or twice.

I said I'd be the first to admit a mistake... and I guess I did. I didn't see that you had 6600 to his 2000ish in 100-200 blinds. That's a perfect situation to take it to a race with a shortstack for a third of your chips when what you'd have left over is still more than average. Plus, winning a race would have put you in a dominant position.

I would not have advocated that play if it was for all your chips. Being a big stack to knock out smaller stacks is exactly like that... taking calculated risks. I'm TJ Eckleburg and I approve of that play.

Thanks. And yes, I completely agree that putting all my chips at risk like that against a huge stack is a very, very stupid mistake. I'd be glad to have a reasonable mind like yours following my experiment. Feel free to drop by and give your opinions any time, I promise I won't attack you