nice.those 180s are highly variance but the field is pretty weak.
continue work off table and u will be fine

First win day in a long long time. Nothing fancy.

Also ran above my allin chip ev, which is nice for a change. Hopefully the start of a comeback

Trnys: 27
ITM: 11%
Roi: +95%
Profit: +64$

Tomorrow is my birthday. So im off. Grind will go on on monday.

Dont feel good about this hand. Should i just have shoved on the BB donk bet?

PokerStars - 1500/3000 Ante 300 NL - Holdem - 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 23.56 BB (VPIP: 19.90, PFR: 16.94, 3Bet Preflop: 5.76, Hands: 1,358)
Hero (BTN): 20.69 BB
SB: 22.45 BB (VPIP: 14.34, PFR: 14.31, 3Bet Preflop: 8.88, Hands: 781)
BB: 23.29 BB (VPIP: 20.83, PFR: 17.78, 3Bet Preflop: 6.25, Hands: 48)

4 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.9 BB) Hero has 7 8

fold, Hero raises to 2.1 BB, SB calls 1.6 BB, BB calls 1.1 BB

Flop: (6.7 BB, 3 players) 5 K A
SB checks, BB bets 3.35 BB, Hero calls 3.35 BB, SB raises to 10.39 BB, fold, fold

SB wins 16.75 BB

I like the flop call.

Most of the hands BB is folding to a jam will check-fold anyway on a blank turn, whereas if he has an A you get to find out if the turn is a before you decide whether to put the other 15BB in (over two streets).

My thoughts on the hand. I think villains range primarily consists of kx, 5x perhaps some weak aces+occaisional random bluff. If i shove He will probably fold all those hands. Except the ax. Which i think is a really small part of his range. And at the moment we have 8high. So making all those hands fold is very good.

The problem is. I dont have a value shoving range here. All my value hands would flat. So yeah. In retrospect i agree with my own call now

Meh. All the big flips keep on going the other way.

Got 150 buyins left. Doesnt look good

I love variance. #keepyourfriendsclosebutyourenemiescloser

Grind is on again. Im going to battle the armies of variance and overthrow them with sheer volume.

Going to add the 3.5$ 45s to get more volume done.

Be careful with volume as this doesn't defeat true variance, nothing can. If you play 5 times the number of games you simply see 5 times the variance at a lower roi (if playing the same payout structure, note speed of games matters little to the mathematical variance, more games is more variable.)

When players speak or complain of variance they are often talking about downswings and fixing one of these by playing more tables often backfires. If in a downswing it is quality that counts not quantity, the usual winner if you push too many concurrent games is the site via rake not the player. The optimal number of tables is complicated but adding tables when seeming to run bad isn't a good plan.

I can totally agree with this argumentation.

duly noted guys

If you share your profit results and roi over your largest sample, it will be more clear about whats going on. 180s are inherently variance filled, but $2 180s should have possible ROIs for good players well north of 20% which should smooth out the variance alot.
So far in almost every post you've mentioned something about variance and not much on what you feel your actual edge is. You showed a graph of 10k games and while it didn't show profit results, just chip ev, theres a few things that 10k games can tell you. If your true roi is 20% a 10k game sample of $2 180s has a 70% confidence interval of $3,872 - $6,130 with roi ranging from 15% - 25% ROI. A 95% confidence interval puts you at $2,899 - $7,143 with an ROI between 12% - 29% ROI. So if after your 10k sample, your results didn't fall somewhere during those ranges, then it means your true roi is most likely not 20% and if it's not at least 20% then that's going to be a very significant factor in terms of how bad your variance will be. Just to give an idea, if your true ROI is only 10% it's theoretically possible to have a losing sample over 10k games (although very highly unlikely) and at 20% it isn't.
This isn't an attack on your skill and is meant to be as helpful as possible, and I think that if you start a format or stake level and your first 10k games at that stake level you incur what would be a bottom 30% probability run right off the bat, it makes more sense to treat it as if the problem is you and not variance and then you can start to move forward.

Also FWIW avoid using chip ev to tell how well you're running, in 180s stack sizes become so large near the end of the tournament, losing a few flips can show huge discrepancies between actual and expected, and also it tells you nothing about your ICM performance which has a decently large effect on final tables (getting in a flip 6-7 handed as a relatively large stack against the same will result in a negative ev result even though you may have been slightly favored to win the hand and did).

Thanks for your input. The 10k graph does show profits. Bottom right. As you can see ive got a roi of 8%. But i also ran a gazzilion chips below ev. So yeah. Its probably a lot higher.

About icm. I have struggeled alot with this. Used to follow it very closely. But after talking with some other regs i mostly ignore it now. Calling slightly tighter. But not nearly as tight as icm suggests.

With your volume and bank roll requirements investing in HRC or similar and using it for said spots would be invaluable. Why are other regs ignoring it? Has any reg said they use cEV on FT?

Fair point but he stats adding 45 man's to increase his volume, which assuming correct adjustments will actually decrease his variance. ( imo sacrificing some expectation to do so)

yeah. ive spoken to several regs (>20% roi) , and analyzed a lot of big winners in my db, who mostly ignore icm. Not complete ofcourse. There are spots where you most def need to take in into account . Atleast thats what they told me. Just skim off the bottom of the chip ev call ranges, etc.

ICM overvalues fold equity i think. Because it does not take in to affect that you still have to realize that equity.

For instance if you look at full final table, and we have a 10bb stack utg. If you adjust the call ranges for the villains (cause HRC makes these too tight) then HRC says we have to fold hands like 77s and AJs. I used to do that. Cause thats what ICM dictates. But now, i just shove those hands. And a lot wider also.

Yes, if the plan was swapping 180's for 45's this would decrease variance - I was assuming by increasing volume the idea was to play more tables. It would be possible to play more tables at 45's and still decrease variance as the variance is for 180's is massive, it is about 3 to 4 times as high as for 45's.

Swapping out larger field games for smaller ones (if profitable in them) is a sensible plan if you cannot cope with the horrors of high variance and high swings. Smaller games also take less time so you could play more at the same concurrent table count. Playing the optimal amount of games is complicated, my advice would be to occasionally think about it and try to find a reasonable approach that balances out your needs and aspirations.

On a full FT HRC will be quite close to accurate on it's rec's if you do use the correct opposition ranges, if you are finding that it is obviously too tight I suspect that you may still have the opposition call ranges set too wide.

Imo there are some spots where the table stack dynamics would allow you to increase your $win-rate over correctly setup HRC and you need experience to spot these, for instance perhaps pushing wider like the mentioned 77 will allow you to bully the table if you do get called and win, the double up allowing you to bully through into the HU stage relatively safely. Generally the icm tools recommendations are decent though, and FGS can sometimes be even better still.
[edit] I think being in position utg so going through the blinds next is a reason to widen the recommendations a little.

Every high stakes SNG player I know (and I know quite a few) all agree that playing within the bounds of proper ICM is paramount. I've had numerous students over the years that have tried to argue against being ICM knowledgeable and it's never a good argument. If you can assign accurate calling ranges for your opponents in HRC there's literally no good reason not to follow it even UTG, since if you use FGS 1 it accounts for the fact that you will be in the bb the following hand. Once people I've worked with start to take ICM study seriously their win rates have always improved. Normally the people that make the "ICM isn't important" argument are people that just don't want to put the considerable work into learning it and would rather just convince themselves that it doesn't really matter. MTT players are super notorious for ignoring ICM and it pains me to see how much money they light on fire sometimes.

On that note mixing 45s with 180s is a terrible idea. The payout structure for 45s is INCREDIBLY ICM heavy on the FT, higher than any other SNG including 18s. There are plenty of spots on 45 FTs on the bubble where hands like 1010 and aks are folds to pushes, have even seen hands like JJ be a fold. So if you play 45s and 180s together while not knowing the ICM and you play your 45 like a 180, you will leak MASSIVELY on the ft. The best game to mix with 180s is 90 man KOs.

@sandmanness Are you talking about highstakes (lol) 180s players? Cause 180 mans have the lowest icm pressure of all sngs. I agree that on 45s icm plays a much bigger part. And i intent to implement this in my game. But folding AK or JJ seems to me as insane. Cause what icm does not model is when you do win, you can bully the table to death. if you have a CL its just such an advantage as opposed to being a helpless midstack.

I wonder why you didnt respond to my: "hrc overvalues fold equity, cause you still have to realize this equity".

I think this a pretty big deal. the future game simulations do not quite capture this. cause they only look 1 or 2 hands "ahead". And do not take into affect that we need to play to the end to realize any equity. And every 5min the blinds go up.

Here we have a 45 man FT, with a pretty standard stack set up, 3-4 short stacks, a few middle stacks (one being us) and 2 big stacks 8 handed (bubble) with blinds 400/800 and 50 chip ante. As you can see, the BN is jamming 60% into one of the short stacks in the SB and us in the BB with 11.5 bbs. Nash jam for the BN is actually 100% but the overwhelming majority of people dont know that you can shove atc on the BN here. So against a 60% shove AKs is a terrible call, massively losing play. JJ is ok, but is only ok against 60% and a decent amount of players aren't even on 60%. Against a 100% shove AKs is still a fold, have to be 99+. If you make one more smaller stack, JJ would prob turn into a fold .



And no I wasn't talking about high stakes 180 players, I'm talking about high stakes players. ICM is incredibly important in ALL forms of SNGs from 6 max to 180s. In terms of skill, 180 players generally have much lower overall skill than say 6 max players, hence more 180 players trying to ignore ICM. And yes ICM is softer in a 180 but it is definitely still there and has a pretty decent effect on your ranges 8,7, and 6 handed where the impact is the highest.
HRC doesn't overvalue anything, the concept you're talking about isn't really a quantifiable thing. The fact is, yes you can get a big stack and yes you can use a big stack to your advantage but wielding it far into the future to do damage to the rest of the table isn't really how it goes. People don't play correctly and 180s have more fish in them than other SNGs so if you try to bully the table consistently, someone will eventually look you up too light and ruin your plans. Knowing potential ev anymore than 5 hands into the future doesn't really gain any significant advantage because of bad players deviating from solid play. When they do, you are forced to tighten your range and then you took a neg ev risk to get a big stack and then didn't see enough advantage from it to warrant the risk of deviating from ICM.

i was not only talking about the bully factor. Wouldnt you agree that with a big stack we can play a lot more hands? Whether its raising,shoving,calling shoves,calling raises,3bets, etc. And the ability to play more hands in a turbo with ever increasing blinds is a very good thing for us imo.

I still believe that HRC overvalues the foldEQ. It mostly considers a hand in a vacuum, and thats just not the case. I do think that the pushEQ is alot closer to the actual equity. Cause when you shove your will always change the stack dynamics. Either we bust, double or gain some chips.

I did add the 45s, not only to increase the number of sngs i can play during the day. But also because the variance is so much lower. Sometimes i could barely get 10 tables running. Now i always have around 15. Which is a reasonable amount. And should not affect my winrate that much.

You can say what you believe but what youre stating isn't correct. The plain fact is that if you undervalue ICM you are making mistakes and limiting your roi. After over 20 million hands in SNGs in my career plus the close to 1000 hours I've spent working with HRC and ICM factors in every format of SNGs I'm trying to give you the information you need to succeed. If you chose not to follow it, then I guess there's nothing more I can say here. Good luck.

thanks for your input sandmanness. Appreciate it. Could you explain to me what precisely isnt correct.

i am stating this:

1. making "slightly" -ev icm shoves/calls/3bets is ok, cause creating a big stack is worth it: chip utility, bully factor, much more opportunities for making +ev plays in the future. as opposed to being a caged in midstack.

2 hrc does to a large degree (they have fgs) analyze hands in a vacuum. So it does not take into effect that:

(a) the blinds go up every 5min
(b) we cant cash out

Because of a and b, i think HRC overvalues our fold EQ.



Your obv a super experienced player. Could you explain why my reasoning in those 2 points is faulty?

Thanks

Regarding a)

Given the following situation:
3 left, 1st pays $2, 2nd pays $1.

Blinds 80/160, stacks
BTN 600
SB 1600
BB 800

How much are those stacks worth to each player if
a) the 100/200 level is to come in 3 more minutes
b) the 100/200 level is to come in 6 more minutes

I'm not saying it would be identical if you were able to simulate the tournament to its end, but it's not clear to me why it would be much different and therefore how it should change ranges.

I do share a bit of your scepticism by the way, but not for the reasons you state.

Guys I think you both have a point

Regarding using GTO poker dictated by ICM models. What I do is think of it as a benchmark from which to deviate from. Which almost all of us do to some extent, like shoving wider then GTO from EP instead of getting blinded out. We all now the limitations of the model we are basing our play on. Another example is shoving wider or tighter then GTO because of the nits or maniacs in the Blinds.

We all make adjustments. But regarding making adjustments for non isolation factors like chip utility. gaining an ICM abuse situation etc. The value of these adjustments are hard to evaluate and impossible to quantify. I don't think that means we shouldn't consider them but it is a mistake to make overly large adjustments for negligible considerations.

The models we use have limitations but that doesn't mean we should ignore them. What I'm trying to say is $EV should be the benchmark we make our conscious adjustments from not cEV.

( we should also try to ensure that the adjustment is proportional to the factor(s)triggering the adjustment)

Very interesting discussion about icm on 180s.After having played thousands of them and most mtt-sng agree with SandmanNess that ignoring icm isnt a good way to go on any sng format.Not only that but also mastering icm is key.
But its important also to note that icm is a model,and has its imperfections.But that doenst mean: "isnt perfect,lets ignore it".It means more lets understand where its weakness are to adjust it a bit,but being aware that althought imperfect,its the closest theoretical approach we have,and a really good/accurate one.

This tiny adjustaments,are a very tricky/difficult thing to do correctly,and a good example of it is the future game simulation calculations.Althougt for some game formats doesnt make much difference,on others is key and previous results without this tool were more inacuratte and even wrong sometimes (mostly on very shortstack and heavy icm spots).So regs who were adjusting well to this icm flaw were doing better than the ones who were just following static icm calculations.

Thats because one of the flaws of icm model,wich is that it´s a "static" model.But there are other tiny flaws that are difficult to calculate/compensate,and is something that imo goes with experience/work/study and maybe some ability on these things.

But as said its important to be very carefull here,and not deviate much from icm without knowing really well what one is doing and with very good and well thought reasons,or we will start just burning money on the most important stage,the FT.
Of course dont forget to adjust villians ranges as villians dont usualy call/push exactly as icmizer/HR ranges ,wich makes a big difference to start...
And also be very carefull with the "bullyng" other stacks reasoning to deviate from icm.Why I see your point,I´ve seen people doing very dumb moves and throw away stacks on FTs with this excuse.

I´d say the line between adjusting well and starting to burn money is very tiny :-P

Edit: just saw now URagnatha wrotte a very similar post to mine,with much better english though xd

Edit 2: Oh,and of course sng-mtts aren´t dead and wont probably never be.Good regs just win half the $/game they won years ago,but still win obv.Just more work/study effort needed,as in most poker formats nowadays.