People's ranges don't change all that much imo. I mean they might change a little but there are people who are notoriously too loose and many other who are notoriously too tight and that rarely changes.

As for moving up I'd recommend just playing your normal 60s and mixing in a few 114s at the same time. But really though you shouldn't be in a hurry to move up if you're making decent money as it is. There is something called the Peter Principle in business world that says that every employee will be promoted until he gets to a job at which he is incompetent, and then he remains there. This is something you see all the time in the poker world too. People will move up in limits as long as they're winning, then finally find a high enough game that they're not able to beat, and instead of playing the game below at which they're a winning player, they stay and struggle at the higher limit.

Chip count at the end of day 1: 0. Only one really eventful hand, I was at about 12k chips with blinds 200/400. I raise to 1050 utg+1 with qq, folded to bb who calls. Flop 2h4h7d, bb says all in after a few seconds thought, I snap call, he had 65d, 3 on the turn, gg me. Other than that I just bled chips all day.

how disappointed are you that AlexM never followed through on sending you a signed pic of her/himself ?

Fwiw I wasn't griping about the regs being there, I was asking if you knew some way, or had a suggestion to increase the traffic so you guys wouldn't have to keep playing each other. I know you are right about the step 4's, and since they did that, they might have well made the steps winners able to cash for T$ or W$'s and kill them all together.

Haha I totally forgot about that. Now I am quite sad that stars had the audacity to lie to me about such a treasured item.

Ya after rereading it my response sounds harsher than it was meant to be. I was just saying that if they implemented anything that would make the regs have to play less (like letting people only win 1 seat) that the volume of step 5s and 6s would halt to almost nothing.

As for how to increase traffic while having less regs in each one, I think this is pretty much impossible. If anything, increasing the number of step 6s going (if this were possible to do) would increase the number of regs playing them, up to a point where they were no longer profitable for the regs. It's kind of the same thing that happened in high stakes sngs There are so many regs that they are barely profitable for anyone anymore unless you heavily multitable them.

you should confront the guys at the PCA asap

sigh

enjoy the bahamas and safe travels home!

Hey Jorj just noticed your well now.

Few questions (not sure somebody asked them already):
In the first part of 2008 you were playing a super standard/conventional SNG strategy and you were pretty much flat, I recall having notes on you and I made some unconventional moves because I was sure you were folding a lot given the massive multitabling, then you changed strategy.

Did you notice that some regs were taking advantage or you made some changes in your game?

Some players believe that 114s are the toughest games in the high stakes scenario because many reach that level therefore is plenty of good regs, some of them get burned due to variance and they will never step up while whoever goes up tend to play all the other high stakes games profiting from all the random fish.

What do you think?

Thanks!

Do you think an exchange/juice free sports betting site would work where the customers just bet among themselves? From a programming perspective how difficult would it be to set up. Could it be profitable if the site automatically took the opposite side against customers with a winning percentage under 45% after a decent sample size say 100 wagers?

Thanks for an excellent well. You're an inspiration to all sng grinders

At the beginning of last year I was trying to play more tables. I think I was averaging about 22-24. It's hard to worry about small pots when you have that many going. My results definitely suffered though. After a few months I went down to averaging maybe 18-20 and while that still seems like a lot it really does affect how much time you have to play hands quite a bit. I don't really want to discuss my strategy all that much for obvious reasons though. And yeah I noticed a few regs were taking advantage so I adjusted a bit.

I don't know that 114s are the toughest but they're definitely not easy. The difference between the 114s though and the higher games is the level of aggression in the late game. The 300s and 500s are just way more aggressive in that people just don't miss spots to shove, while in the 114s I still see missed shoves by some otherwise good regs.

The bigger games are definitely not full of random fish though. Each game at the 500 or higher level might have a couple really bad players but the rest of the field will usually be top notch players. However the bad players in the 500s and 1ks can sometimes be worse than the bad players in the 114s.

There are already sportsbooks that do this, they just take like a 2% commission from the winner. Examples are matchbook and mansion and betfair. They are decent ideas but sometimes it's hard to get the volume you want with them. They are probably really good for smaller bettors though.

Being able to pick 45% winners sustainably is a lot more difficult than it sounds, because by definition it means that you would be able to pick 55% winners and crush the sportsbook just by picking the opposite side. And there are very very few people who can pick 55% winners over any decent sample size.

How cool is it being friends with Jim Geary?

It'd be really cool if he won the PCA.

What changes would you make to Stars' VIP program?

I would make it more obvious how the program compares to rakeback at other sites, i.e., what % rakeback a supernova should expect. I would add more incentive beyond the 1 million vpp mark as I think there are quite a few people besides me who would go for 2 or 3 million if the incentive was higher than it is now. Currently I make more $ for the first million than I do for the 2nd or 3rd million, which is just silly.

As for changes to the lower tiers there are probably some worth making but it's hard for me to comment on that as it really doesn't affect me.

Overall though it's a great program and I can't really complain much because I wouldn't be doing what I do without it.

how do u play so many tables at once?

I don't know, just start with a lower number of tables and then when you get comfortable with that amount, add 1 or 2 more. Just keep repeating that. For other tips look elsewhere in this thread as I've talked about it a little before.

do you not get bored of sngs all day?

Amazingly enough I never really get bored of it. I would have thought I would have by now. I got a little tired of it the last 2 weeks because I had to get 210k vpp in 2 weeks and that was a little monotonous, but normally I'm taking 2 or 3 days off a week so it's not really that bad.

In every job, it seems like there's always a 'what's next' factor... like if you wanted a promotion or a raise or whatever...

Are you at all worried that you've maybe peaked in terms of earnings per year since you're obviously on the top of your game in the biggest games available? It seems that you're almost the SNG equivalent of the people playing the big game at Bellagio...

Ya it's pretty unlikely I could make much more than I am now if I continue to play sngs. But if this is my peak and it's sustainable from year to year it's not a bad peak to be at. I would almost certainly make a lot less at least at first if I tried to switch to anything else now. At some point I may have to do it if sngs keep getting tougher, but for now there's plenty to be made for a player who is barely above breakeven before rakeback.

No real questions, but I just wanted to say thank you George for doing this. The whole thread has been a good read.

+1. Very good read.

Thanks everyone it's been really enjoyable from my end too.