I guessed about $300 an hour earlier in this thread but I really don't keep track well enough for that to be anything better than an educated guess.

what in your mind is easier...a newb getting good at sitngos to the point of being able to beat the midstakes level regularly or a newb getting good at cash games to the point of being able to beat the mistakes level regularly?

I don't recall you but I looked you up in PokerTracker and I only have 3 steps sngs with you. From the hands I looked at it looked like you played fine, but obviously it's hard to tell much from 3 sngs.

I've been approached by a few training sites and I've turned them all down for various reasons. I don't see myself making videos probably ever unless I was offered a lot of money. It would have to be significantly more than I earn from playing, because if I have a choice between making videos and playing I'd much rather just play. It just doesn't sound very fun to me. But the bigger reason is that if I was doing it I would have to make a choice between not revealing everything I do, which wouldn't be fair to the people buying my videos, and giving away all my "secrets" and possibly lowering my own earn rate by having people play better against me, and I'm not really fond of either option.

I don't think it's fair to the training sites to reveal which ones have given me offers so I'm not going to say.

1) The easiest way is just to look at how they play certain hands, and also try to figure out what hands they don't have. Like there are spots where people should be pushing really wide so you call really wide because you have to, but sometimes you see a certain player show up with a pretty good hand every time in that spot, so you can probably tighten your perception of their range. It's probably easier to make ranges for players in the higher games because you play the same players a lot more often. For an unknown player I usually assume fairly tight ranges in the late part of the game until they show otherwise.

2) I play 6 max sngs occasionally and really it seems like the average player in the 6 max is probably worse than in the 9 max. They are definitely worse when it comes to ICM. Every time I play them I lose though. My roi in 6 mans is like -12% over probably 500 or so of them and even though I could possibly be +ev in them it's still frustrating to lose in them pretty much every time I play them. The other reason I don't play them as much is because it's obviously hard to play the same number of tables of 6 mas as 9 max.

3) The future of sngs is hard to predict. I think a lot has to do with how the poker sites promote them. If they are heavily promoted they will draw more fish and will thrive. If they are not promoted much it will be all regulars playing each other. Making the rake lower would probably help the games in the long run too.

4) Of course people think it's weird when I say my occupation is poker. It brings up interesting conversations sometimes though. I'm still a little shy about talking about poker to non-poker people, because it's so hard for them to even begin to understand the poker world. 5 years ago I pretty much told no one that I was a poker player, but now that it's more socially accepted from being on tv all the time I find it easier to talk about.

5) I'm not much of a TV person, I've gone multiple years in the past without owning a TV. Pretty much the only time I watch TV now is when football is on, and I shouldn't even watch then, but I like football too much. Other than that I just put the radio on and listen to music.

6) It took a lot of convincing to get my wife to even start dating me because of my being a poker player, but finally she did. After a few months of dating she realized I make pretty good money from it and that I'm not some degenerate gambler. She is completely supportive of it now.

I would play pretty much any game that has the words "hyper" and "turbo" in it. But yeah I think they're probably pretty profitable but more importantly they're really easy to multitable.

The action is a little slower but not THAT much slower. I think the action slowing down has more to do with the fact that the PCA draws a lot less people to the steps than the WSOP or WCOOP does. It would be more worthwhile to compare the number from last year's WSOP steps to this year's WSOP steps.

The thing is with stuff like this is you can't worry about it and wish things were like they used to be. You have to adjust to the games or you will get left behind. If the steps were no longer profitable I would find something else to play. If poker overall wasn't profitable I would find something entirely different to do with my life.

I have 21 BOP tickets right now.

Ya I usually have somewhere near 20 tables going for the whole time. Once you get used to it it's not really as hard as it seems.

I have no idea because I have no experience in cash games. From what I can tell from the Elite thread there are a few self-proclaimed mediocre players making like 150k a year or more playing 1-2 nl because of the VIP program. I'm not really sure what the sng equivalent of 1-2 nl would be but it's hard to envision anyone making elite playing sngs below the $60 level, and even at that level it would be quite a bit of work.

4 players left in a 225 10 man sng

Blinds are 100/200 you open in the CO for 440.I'm in the sb w 66
Whats my play?

150k is very lowball estimate at 1/2 FRNL, 150k is a reasonable estimate of .50/1 FRNL for the year. As for the game play 1/2 is considerably tougher than most levels of sngs, ask rizen about this one

Hey George, I have a few questions:

1) What do you think you would do with your time if you didn't need to work anymore? Would you still play sngs and/or poker?

2) I noticed your roi is somewhat significantly higher at the 555s than 335s (1% vs -2%) over a decent sample (several thousand games at both levels). Have you noticed any difference between the quality of play at these levels, or do you think this is mostly due to variance?

3) What did you do at the programming job you had before you got into poker?

Thanks!

Is it more fun to accumulate VPP's than actual money

Do you stake any body

i heard in monte carlo they usually have 20k and 40k sngs. have you ever played those when over there for the MTT's.

Have you ever played on a 30 inch monitor. I know you are comfortable with your setup, but i 20+ table and find it so much easier on a bigger monitor.

drink of choice

you are the man, gl to you this year.

George:

Situation
SNGs 3min levels , no regs at all and off course , very loose players.
If you adjust their calling range , you are always folding acording sngwiz or sng power tool.
You cant wait for BvB push ( to wider your push range ) cause there is always a limp or 2bb raise.
In general lines:
1)Do you ignore ICM and start calling with A6 the allin from UTG?
2)If you review your ICM and get a lot of mistakes (acording ICM) , do you modify your game until they become free of mistakes ?
3)When is valid to ignore ICM ?

Thanks in advance

Wat?

Pretty sure I need more info than this.

1) I don't know, it's so hard to imagine not 'needing' to work. I mean unless you have an absolute ton of money you can always use more. I suppose I would travel quite a bit but I mean I already do that really. Maybe play Guitar Hero more? Haha this is so hard to answer.

I'm sure I'd still play poker but probably not as much as I do now.

2) I think it's just random luck. The 555s and 335s are mostly the same players so there's no logical reason they should be that different.

3) I wrote scripts and then some GUI apps for a computer networking company. It was so damn boring, I was never meant to be a 9to5er. I actually really enjoyed computer science in college but I hated it as soon as I started working. Or, more accurately, I hated working.

No, money is way more fun to accumulate. It would be silly to think otherwise. The VPP are just a coincidence really. I mean it was kind of fun to be the first to a million and to end up with 3 mil and stuff like that, but it was never my ultimate goal.

I staked about 9 people in the WSOP main event but none of them cash. I buy large pieces of people in other live events sometimes when they don't want to put up the whole buyin. I'm not really looking to make a business out of it like sheets or someone like that though. I do it mostly for fun. (Which is good because my horses don't cash very often)

I've never played on a big monitor. I'm pretty happy with how I do things now. Not to say that I won't change at some point though.

I'm not much of a mixed drinks person. I'll drink some occasionally but usually it will be random things I order off the menu, like the foofy drinks like pina coladas or something. I don't really have a favorite though. I drink a lot of red wine, pretty much any type. My favorite beers are Guinness and Fat Tire but I'll drink pretty much anything except the flavorless American beers (I'd probably drink those too if it happened to be the only thing available).

Well your questions are somewhat confusing but I'll try my best. Feel free to ask more if I don't answer properly.

1) I don't see why you'd make a bad call (assuming this is a bad call) just because you're not getting opportunities. Most likely if people are playing this bad they will bust each other soon enough and you can sneak into the money anyway. By the way I wish the games I played in had problems like this.

2) Of course I adjust my game if I see that I'm making bad shoves or calls. It would be silly not to. No one will ever be completely free of mistakes though, you can only hope to make as few as possible.

3) Good times to ignore ICM are when maybe you have a stack that isn't very workable for whatever reason, but if you can win a hand you can put yourself in a good situation. Even in situations like this you aren't really ignoring ICM though. You're still using ICM along with your own judgment to figure out what the best play is. Realistically though at any of the smaller limits you're probably better off just following ICM as closely as possible until you really are able to figure out good reasons not to.

Cash player who has little to no knowledge of ICM other than the definition. Plays tourneys/sngs now and then and is definitely +ev in the early stage but finds himself just guessing with shove/fold ranges near the end. Probably does it better than the average fish in most of the $20-$50 sngs and the Sunday major MTTs (warmup/million, not the 500) but still has a ways to go. How would you teach him to get better? Best specific tool to work on that? btw this may be me but I'm sure it's a ton of other cash players or just new sng players as well.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36...t-jorj-372703/

George

What would be a calling range for a casual player who u dont know but stats says is loose more than average player ?

If it dont reveal your play ( i dont want this !!) , this guy is on BB , asume even stakes for the whole table. Which is your push range from BTN or SB ( is SB ATC ? )

You have 13 BB , even stakes on bubble , blinds are bigger enough .... Do you still raise 2.5x in a loose game that BB will see Flop almost for sure ? Or dont take SNG Wiz advice and risk more than 10 BB pushing ?

Do you have any moment that you believe You have to change your play cause you see your results breakeven or poor profit?

What is the most realistic sample size that you trust you are playing good ?
I take for me about 700 sngs . If I reach this amount and Im 0.5% roi I tried to change something . Is that correct ?

Sorry for the amount of question , but is not very common to have a player like you here so I will be a bit abuser :-)

how good would you have to run to get to 2% ROI on sharkscope?

how many tables would you have to drop to see an increase in ROI?

Study ICM until it is second nature to you. Power Tools and SNG Wizard are both good tools. I use PT personally.

This is probably a fold against most sng players. Very few people are raise-folding there enough to make a shove profitable.

My calling range for a casual player in the endgame will almost always be tighter than that for a regular. Even if their stats show them being looser it's usually that they're looser in the early game and not the late game.

Second question is way too vague to answer. I need more specifics.

I push more than 10bb probably more often than most regulars. Mostly I do it in situations where I know it's profitable anyway and it's just easier to play it that way sometimes when you're 20 tabling.

I'm always looking at ways to improve my game. I'm not sure that it's necessarily because of a breakeven or losing stretch though. I'm pretty much always looking for ways to get better even when I'm winning.

Regarding sample sizes I really have no idea. Obviously the higher your roi, the smaller sample size you need.

I was at 2% roi a few days ago but it dropped because I sucked the last few days of the year. I'm happy with anything that's not negative really though.

If I only played like 12 tables I think my roi would go up a little bit. There are certain hands I would play differently if I was playing less tables. Sometimes when 20 tabling I'll play a hand the "easier" way if 2 ways of playing it are close in EV, even if I think the way I'm playing it is slightly worse. Obviously I wouldn't have to do this 12 tabling. As for how much difference it would make, I would doubt it's very much, maybe like a percent or two.

Sometimes when I have less tables going I tend to make stupid decisions though because I'm bored and want to play hands I shouldn't. In a way 20 tabling keeps me playing better. So possibly my roi would be worse with less tables.