March was a good month for me and I was cashing in over 60% of what I was playing in. Along comes April and things went to crap. I'm cashing in less than 15% and people seem to be sucking out on me an inordinant amount. I've reviewed my HH's and have fixed a few leaks...but these are leaks that I had in March too. Time and time again I see people making idiotic calls against me and catching the miracle river to bust me out. It's very frustrating because I should be steamrolling these donks, but they keep beating the odds.

So, last night I decided to drop down a level so that my cold streak doesn't cost me too much money. (I generally played $5 SNG's, I dropped to $1 SNG's) Here's the problem. The play in these is so horrid that the best play almost seems to be to limp into every hand and just push every monster and hope for the best. Am I hurting myself by playing in these? Can I learn anything?

And for the executives out there...here's a graph:

I'm battling exactly the same issue, Yahkin! Was on a $5.50 roll which turned into a bust, so I dropped down. In addition to the problem you mentioned, I hate that the vig is twice as high (percentage-wise). I wish I just had a bigger bankroll so I could ride out the variance in the $5.50s.

And like you, I'm torn between making strategy adjustments in the $1.20s (trapping more preflop, playing more drawing type hands if I can get the odds, devaluing AKos) and feeling that this is bad for my "real" game. Just last night, in one of the first couple hands there was a raise and reraise/push ahead of me--and I had TT. Easy muck against serious opposition; but I actually called and was up against something like K7os and Q3s, and tripled up. But I felt sheepish and kind of unclean, lol.

Play more like you were on March 23rd. Less like you are now. J/K.

Honestly you need to post more hands and ask specifically about sit n go strategy. Maybe your run in March was a good run of variance and you aren;t playing as well as you thought you were. Or you might be on a bad downswing. Dropping down limits is always beneficial as long as you still take the game seriously. Stay with the basics and keep trying to plug leaks. Poker is just super frustrating sometimes, when you are winning it's easy and when you are losing feels like you can't do anything right.

Is the point of dropping down to avoid losing too much money, or to learn something and improve your game? I'm assuming it's the former, in which case you just have to adjust your play to the lower quality opposition and build your confidence back up.

I decided to start off playing at the $1.20's on Stars, partly because of bankroll and partly because I want to work my way up through the ranks. When I first started playing I quickly realized that a decent portion of what I had learned/read about SnG strategy actually didn't apply at this level because most players don't play the way they're "supposed" to play. I found myself wondering if it would be better for me to make a quick jump to the $3 or $5 level where the play is better quality, but instead I decided to focus on adjusting to the $1.20 quality play and becoming more confident at this level before moving up and learning to adjust to the next level.

Anyway, my point is if you're going to drop down to this level, you have to swallow your pride and learn to play against that kind of opposition rather than playing your $5 game at the $1.20 tables.

What the graph doesn't show is the 1000FPP Main event qualifier I entered in the middle of all of that. The level of play in that was much better and consequently I did a lot better. Took 4th out of over 400.

As for playing like I did in March...well, there may be something to that. The last week in March I went on a cruise. I took with me HOH 1 and 2, and spent several hours studying them. I feel it improved my game significantly, but now I seem to have more trouble in the micros. Very frustrating.

I've been on the exact same roller coaster as you, Yahkin.

Constantly being coolered and running into bad beats is very difficult to deal with. I went on a really bad run of losing sessions in SnG's and cash games. I believe my record is losing with AA 7 times consecutively in the run of about 2 weeks, it was absolutely sickening to experience. Add to that the donks out-drawing my two pair, sets, boats, etc, and it's just adding insult to injury.

I've been trying to do my best to fight variance by dropping down a level as well. That didn't go so good for the same reasons you stated above. Sometimes, playing well just isn't enough, the luck factor is just too overwhelming now and then.

One other adjustment I've made is to move from 6 handed cash games to full ring and play really tight aggressive poker. It's boring as hell but it has worked out well so far.

Good luck and I hope things start to improve soon.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm running just fine. Making money in PLO, NLHE, 7Stud, MTTs, STTs and random prop bets. It's all good. Just wish I had more time to play.

Yahkin, dips like that in your graph leans more towards leaks than variance. Over almost 1800 games i haven't had a dip so big ( slight brag obv). I suggest not only being critical and analyzing play but try and recognize what your mood is when you play these. It's not hard to get over the hump all you need is a Bubble domination strategy.

I am very critical of myself, but this stuff is crazy. It's not like I'm losing coin flips. I am generally way ahead when the cards are flipped.

I played in 5 SNG's yesterday. I know you don't have full details on the situation for all of these hands, but the fact still remains that I am way ahead when the money gets in.
My bustout hands were as follows:

Game 1
KK v. 33 All in PF. Villain turns a 3. Finish 24/180 - 18 paid

Game 2
KK v. short stack A4o all in PF. Villain flops the ace.
Flopped set of Jacks v. TPTK all in on the flop. Villain runner runner flushes. Chip leader to out in 2 hands with 4 left and 3 get paid.
EDIT: He had AKo and caught a K on the flop...so him getting all his chips in the middle was not out of line.

Game 3
AA v. QJs All in PF. Rivers the flush. 36/180 His call was for 2/3 of his stack.

Game 4
99 - Flop comes 572 rainbow. A pot size bet puts me all in and villain calls with A10. He rivers the 10. (He had only 300 left behind so he put his whole tourney on the line with this hand.)

Game 5
74o in the BB. Flop comes 742 rainbow. I raise, villain reraises and I push. He flips over A2. Rivers another 2 to hit trips.
Yahkin throws laptop against the wall and kicks the neighbors dog.

At the second break of Game 1, I chuckled to myself that I should just fold to the money with my 10k chips...to avoid busting out to some crazy turn of events. Apparently that was my best read of the game and I should have stuck with it.

If you want to hear stories about SNG futility, and busting out when you get the money in good endlessly, look up IQCrash and ask him about turbo SNGs, lol.

that's baby games. I lost with AA 8 times in one night. KK 3 times that night, QQ once and JJ twice

Wow, dude...that is rough stuff. Sorry to hear it.

I myself built up my bankroll a little bit with the $1.20 SNGs and so just a bit ago decided to try going back up for a $5.50 (thinking if I lost my buyin I'd drop back down). I'm currently first out of 17 left (started with 27), 1000 ahead of the next biggest stack. Which of course means...oh, and just as I type "I'll soon collapse" I'm down to 4th stack after a couple fast hands...oh, but AA got me back up a bit...oh, and my paired ace loses to a set of queens...jeez, a bunch of big hands in a row. Well, we'll see how it goes.

...and, sure enough: from first of 17 to out in 13th place. uggggghhhhhhhh....!!!

my 2 cents:
Do not go down to 1$ sng's. It will tilt you and it will damage your game. While in principal, going down is a good idea, there are limits to this. I think the negatives here outweigh the positives...

I've been on this bankroll rollercoaster this year and I have been giving this a lot of thought. Not knowing your specific situation here are some general reccomendations (I did look you up on sharkscope):

Do not play the 5$ 5 table sng's until you feel you have your confidence back. The variance in this game is quite large and level of play is surprisingly low (lower than single table 5$ sngs). If you do, bluff less, and when you make a hand bet large (you will get called).

If you are multitabling, don't. If you have distractions around, then make sure you are focused on the game. I know you have heard all of this before...

When you're running bad you want to reduce your variance. The bigger the field the bigger the variance, so sng's are ideal. You may also want to try other formats and other games. For example games like omaha and horse etc. (if you know how to play them). Sometimes a break in the routine is all it takes. Also consider turbo sng's (turbos require a very different strategy and way of playing, so read up on it before trying them).

Anyway good luck hope this turns around soon.

Hey Yahkin, this is admittedly kind of a brag post, but it's also a "hang in there!" post. As I said, I was going through the same frustration as you. Then at midnight, totally on a lark, I just decided to sort of randomly enter a $3.30 MTT, a type I normally never mess with. Six hours later:

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PokerStars Tournament #49446920, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $3.00/$0.30
913 players
Total Prize Pool: $2739.00
Tournament started - 2007/05/08 - 01:00:00 (ET)

Dear SlackerInc1,

You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $554.65 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
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Bankroll, baby!

And in the middle stages of this, I took a big hit to my stack when I got into a preflop raising contest--that turned into a push on villain's part--when I held AA. (Villain turned over A9os and rivered a straight.)

GRATS!!!! Slacker is covering everyone's strat tourney buyin this week!!!



A strange thing happened to me last night. I played in one SNG (Went and saw Spidey, so not much time to play.)
My best cards held, I folded those pocket 9's when the betting seemed odd, and all of my reads hit the mark.

Dear Yahkin,

You finished the tournament in 2nd place.
A $13.50 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Started headsup behind 3k to 9k. First hand I'm dealt AA and double up. Back and forth for a bit and then I flop two pair. My raise is called, and the turn puts 3 to a flush on the board. He was drawing to the nuts and hit. Oh well, nothing out of line there. We both played it right and I walked away happy.

The biggest confidence boost came via chat though from my HU opponent. Shortly after it began he said he knew early on that it would be him and I headsup. Thanks man, you don't know how much I needed to hear that.

I was pretty proud of my sharkscope numbers until this run happened. I didn't have the shark symbol, but both my Full Tilt and Pokerstars numbers looked great. ROI >10%, a tidy profit, etc, etc. Now they both look like crap. They'll be back.

Right on. Sounds like you might be turning a corner. In any event, I've witnessed your play several times, and I would definitely describe you as a good player.

*blush*

Thank you.

You mean this one?

Good to see we both have huge sample sizes to draw from.

come again?

Good catch, not sure how I missed it, lol.

Meaning I use a lot of multi-level thinking assuming that my opponents have a clue what is going on. In a higher buyin such as this, that actually works. In the micros, going beyond level 2 thinking just gets me in trouble. I'm pretty much forced to win showdowns in the large majority of the micros I play in. In this tourney I was not and could play smallball all night long.

I totally agree with Yahkin here. Though it sounds counterintuitive to be sure, I feel like this is true for my game as well. Look at how much better I do in our strat tourneys than in low buyin SNGs (most of the time). Mike Matusow seems to strongly feel this way about playing online in general (though I'm sure his stakes are a lot higher), because people just get so sticky with their hands.

Now, whether it's me, Yahkin, or Matusow, an argument could be made that we are not properly adjusting our strategy to suit our opponents. After all, if villains are playing "badly", how can they collectively "outplay" us? I think the answer is complex, and not easy to nail down. But my attempt would be like this:

The "bad" players tend to stick around and call (or make) preflop raises, or chase draws, they mathematically "shouldn't". But because so many of them do it on any given hand, they kind of "gang up" on the player who is playing "properly". If any given one of them doesn't suck out on the "good" player, another one likely will. Even if none of them do and hero gets a big stack, in a big MTT there will always be plenty more* loose donks (with big stacks themselves because they were the ones who got lucky--the rest are long gone) to continue to make kamikaze runs at our hero. And because they kind of come in waves, they will eventually take him down (most of the time). After the solid strategic players are wiped out, the clueless loose players kind of randomly flail away at each other until someone inevitably "wins" (happens to end up with all the chips).

But surely these people have to be exploitable; it just requires a different strategy (and, getting back to the original point, Yahkin and I feel more comfortable with the type of strategy that works against solid, aware players). I've been pondering this, and my working theory (as yet unproven) is as follows, for two types of donkish tables I often see:

(1) Passive tables, with lots of calling stations but not much aggression (except on later streets either with a huge hand or as a desperation bluff with something like bottom pair, or nothing at all). At the first blind level, and to some degree the second, you should limp in with almost ATC (and literally ATC if you're getting odds), and try to hit a big hand so you can take down a huge pot. Forget trying to play smallball, and don't try to use big bets to thin the field if you flop TPTK. Also, you perhaps should almost give up on AKos in terms of the conventional strategy of raising preflop to narrow the field, then if you hit, betting the flop big enough to chase out draws, etc. Won't work against these players, and your TPTK will look pretty shaky when the pot is bloated by the river and you've still got three opponents. OTOH, if you get a 5xBB raise preflop followed by a couple calls, this is a good time for AK to get back in the saddle as you can push it.

When you get to the third and fourth level of blinds, tighten up your starting requirements, but still look for opportunities to play nice drawing hands (suited aces, suited connectors, small and medium pairs) even if you have to call a raise in position. If you're going to play a semi-big pair (JJ, QQ, even KK to an extent) you'd better raise huge preflop, or else you're going to have to treat it as a drawing hand like the smaller pairs. Reraising all in with any of the higher pairs (even a little lower than JJ) should be considered.

At the higher blind levels, play a little more standard strategy, but be a little tighter in terms of making blind steals and other position plays, and a little looser in calling raises (especially with suited aces). When Ms get really low, just go back to the basic push/fold strategy and hope for the best.

(2) Aggro-donk tables. Clearly, limping and playing drawing hands isn't going to work here. You've got to be a lot tighter to a certain extent, but at times you've got to be looser (perhaps calling a push with something like 99, TT, or AQ that you wouldn't dream of doing against a solid table). Fold preflop most of the time, but when you jump in, be prepared to go all the way.

Make sense?

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*One reason I often prefer to play STTs, though all my profit paradoxically came from that 922-player MTT the other night.

google something called the "schooling effect". you might find it interesting, you've kind of hinted at it in your post.


you have arrived at the wrong conclusion about all of this. loose passive players are the easiest to beat for the most money.

start here: why exactly does somebody win at poker while somebody else loses? long term, say two people played 100,000 hands heads up. one sentence.

But the whole point here is that these pots are not HU.

ETA: Thanks for pointing me toward the "schooling effect" thing. Mostly the discussions relate to limit play (where it's even a greater problem from what I've seen); but this was still applicable to my point:

http://suckout.blogspot.com/2004/10/poker-...-selection.html
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I'd also caution against falling into the trap of relying on the presence of maniacs and horrible players to classify a table as "juicy". I'll admit, this is debatable, but it's my personal belief that you really don't want to be sitting at a 10 max table with three or four really bad players, especially ones prone to raising. Yes, indeed, there are large amounts of dead money being shoved into the pot. It's prime for the taking. But it's not a given that the skillful players at the table (i.e. you) will be the ones to take it. Both Sklansky and Miller touch on this (and probably others as well), but the presence of too many fishies creates a "schooling" effect that actually makes their individual piscine play (chasing gutshot straights and flush draws or two outers without the proper odds) the correct play, when two or three of them simultaneously engage in it. Their cumulative "bad" plays build the pot to the point where, magically, each "bad" play becomes "good". While that doesn't mean you can't profit from such games, it means you have to shift gears dramatically, to the point where you're likely better off simply finding another game.
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Another site calls the SE a "controversial" theory. Thing is, even those who argue that it is still +EV in the long run to play against "schools" of fish would have to admit that it increases variance. And IMO, this makes poker less fun, and certainly requires a larger bankroll. Also, I'd like to see this explored more in terms of tournament poker (which none of the sites addressed). I can see it being the least important over the long run in NL cash games; but in tournaments the problem is that you can't rebuy (unless it's a rebuy, lol) to give yourself another crack at the donk money. If they school up and take you out, you're out. And when the variance finally flips your way, as I mentioned, the massive amount of chips you earn are not as big in tournament equity as they would represent if it was a straight up cash game. See what I mean?

ok lets try this another way. what exactly does make a table juicy? who do you want to be sitting at your table?

Decent discussion of the schooling affect here too: http://www.chiptalk.net/forum/poker-strate...ing-effect.html

Yup, that was one of the first hits I got when googling the phrase.

Antistuff (love that SN btw), you asked what kind of table I consider "juicy". The juiciest to me would be a bunch of straightforward weak-tight players. A different question is what kind of table I'd most enjoy playing at if I'm not just looking to win the most money. To many players, these questions are the same. But for me, it's like tennis (another of my passions). I enjoy playing tennis against good players. If I could figure out a way to always play against beginners or say the elderly, I could rack up wins like crazy. But that wouldn't be as fun. Similarly, in poker I like playing against sharp players where I can use multilevel thinking, who understand outs and odds and so on.