Hey everyone.

So far I've played upwards of 400k hands over the course of half a dozen years (mostly recreationaly, until around 2 years ago), made some profit on Spin'nGo's (mostly 7$) before online poker was banned in my country (Portugal), and in December it came back. Since I was decent playing shortstacked, I figured I'd try 6-max Hyper-turbos, and this has been the result so far (not counting 50.00eur in rake-back):





My question is: Having played more than 2k games, can I assume that I've got an edge, or is it possible that these results could be a consequence of short-term variance? While I figure it is quite unlikely, the self-doubt is a real thing when you play high variance games and hit a wall every other time. I guess a second pair of eyes and someone with experience could shed some light on this.

Furthermore, since poker players have a natural thing for graphs, these are the results/stats since I've used PT4 (from about 1.5k games in, or 25% overall). While they do not cover most games played, I figured it could be usefull.










So there you go, please, feel free to straight up bash me.

Also, if any of you could identify any blatant leaks, I'd very much appreciate feedback. I bet a lot of you guys been doing this for way longer and way better than I am.



PS: If you've got any tips at all about the format, or know a good player that does and that I could reach out to, that would be phenomenal.

Thank you very much to everyone reading, in advance, and good luck to everyone at the tables!

damm thats a lot of graphs

you should be able to feel the edge when/if you have it....but i guess you just want to hear other people say you have it?

anyway, it looks like you have an egde....i cant know how big it is with the info provided, but if youre asking if youre +ev in these games, then yes...as you probably know already

2k hands at roi 8.8% at hyper turbo?! You either have an awesome player pool on stars.pt or you are a complete sicko who should be giving us all tips!! Look forward to your next post... keep crushing!

Cheers mate. It's just that I'm pretty much at a starting point, and wanted to know where I stand. Plus, I've been having some really bad runs as of lately (200-ish games), so the self-doubt became an issue. Just gotta press on and put more volume I guess. I know that 2.2k is laughable.




Well cheers. Don't know what the standard is suposed to be really, although a couple of winning regs I know are at 4% - 5% ROI. Up until the last couple hundred games I was averaging 10% ROI, but I just really care for the long term winnings tbh, not really one to take much pride on pretty graphs or stats.

As for Pokerstars.pt, I figure the average player is worse than the average EU player, so I can't complain. Unfortunately, I'm still having sessions playing against 1-3 good regs per table at times, which still sucks.

I'll be more than happy to post my progress here. Maybe 500-1k games from now? Hopefully the run bad will cease and I'll have interesting news/ topics to share with you!

youve been having bad runs but you prior to that obv had a good run ...its all good and normal


i guess having 4:2 regs to recs isnt great in hypers

but 3:3 or even 2:4 as you said, is awesome...what stakes is that?

Playing around with this:
http://pokerdope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/

suggests you are at least better than break-even and probably at least 3% underlying ROI.

I'm playing 3$ and 5$. Should've started playing 10$ by now really (we have 1$, 3$, 5$, 10$, 20$ and 50$ which sucks), the tables seem quite soft, even more so than the lower stakes a lot of the times. But I'm being quite conservative with my bankroll management, it helps to deal with the nominal swings playing hypers, which for a novice can be overwhelming. I've exercising the right mindset, but haven't reached a state of invulerability yet, unfortunately.

As for the amount of regs, sometimes I find the 3$ and 5$ unplayable really, specially when the 3 regs are the best kind. There isn't even the benefit of playing at higher-level thinking to improve, since the 10$-50$ tables at Stars.pt are softer than normal.

Awesome tool mate. Cheers!

Definitely an edge. The likelihood of variance attributing for your results is quite low over 2k games. Good work!

You almost certainly have an edge but who knows

I've played well over 200k of these with a winning win rate and the one thing I've learned is anything is possible. I've had 2k game samples with higher results than that and I've had 2k game samples that made me seriously question if maybe I was a loser all along who was just running good

I don't mean to discourage you because the odds are very good that you're at least break even or a small winner and potentially you are a crusher, but my point is that a 2k game sample isn't much more meaningful than a 100 game sample in this format. Play another 10-20k games and see where you stand or another 100k games if you want something meaningful. 2k games is a weeks worth of volume for many regs

is your account going up??? all that matters.

i have been a pro over a decade and can't even tell what my hourly or roi is but dem bills be gettin paid and the kids eatin good yo

haha...how come?

no HUD or shark scope coverage where you play? US?

It takes a very long time to get a meaningful sample in these games to determine your winrate/hourly, think like 50k+ games. Hopefully by the time you reach that sample size, you've improved enough to make the beginning of that sample no longer relevant, meaning you'll never have a legitimate sample for your current ability. Very likely the player pool has also changed enough during that period to make your early results even more irrelevant compared to the current situation and just because your ability has improved it doesn't necessarily mean your hourly has improved against the population

Bottom line, very unlikely anyone will ever know their true current winrate/hourly in these games beyond an educated guess, but if your account balance keeps going up then keep registering

A little bit off-topic, but still has to do with variance/luck, how to assess it and deal with it.

I'd like to know if the luck adjusted winnings in HM2 (all-in EV) is at all relevant.

I mean there are so many factors to variance you can't just reduce it to all-in EV. Sometimes it's the shortest stack at the table surviving 4 flips in a row where you could have reached the money 4 times already but didn't and your stack keeps getting reduced because of ICM/being card dead.

Sometimes it's running into the nuts (e.g. SB vs BB shove for 8bb with AT and the BB turns over AJ) which again would not count as being unlucky in terms of all-in EV.

How/when to take all-in EV into consideration at SNGs? When it's a really long stretch where it deviates a lot from your winnings line in either direction?

Youre prob a winner but a couple thousand games isnt much of a sample.

Another thing you can check is your chips won vs EV chips won by number of players. If youre running well above EV 6 and 5 handed, it's going to put you in plusEV situations late game near the bubble when youre in high equity spots. And your redline will be inflated. Likewise, if youre running bad early, your RL will be lower than it should be.

HU card distribution is a pretty big factor with there being such a big difference between 1st and 2nd. If youre getting coolered a ton HU (or running into more regs than you should be) etc, it's gonna drag your rl down.

Yeah, this pool has tons of spewtards basically that´s why OP and other regs have good results here. I´m doing fine but the pool and recs are dying, so action is going to be hard in the future. I hope we can join France and Italy till the end of this year, they are just gamblers too. We like that!

Yeah I figured that would be the case. Atm I'm comparing myself to other regs on Pokerstars.pt that're grinding my format aswell, and even comparing to them I'm probably the one putting in less volume of all. I can only imagine the absurdity that's going on on Pokerstars.eu.

My thought process was that if I wanted to move up stakes I'd need to perfect my game, and making the most +EV plays possible given any situation, and that wouldn't be possible (skill wise, I was not ready) with more than 2 tables at the time (I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I'm quite new to the actual "grind").

Altough that still stands, I now believe that sacrificing ROI and putting more volume, trying to play more and more tables is the way to go. Atm I'm doing 4 tables playing virtually as good as I was when 2-tableing, and I expect that number to rise consistently.

The only problem atm is that although I'm playing poker every day, I'm in the last year of Law School, and it's pretty time consuming.


We'll see how it goes. Thank you very much for your input. Having played 200k games, your experience is much appreciated. GL @ the tables!

Yeah, like someone said, it's pretty much a weeks worth of volume for many regs out there.

As to the variations you mentioned, it's true. Running bad early on or the HU is one of the high-variance factors in Hypers that can make or break a win ratio. Mostly the first one I believe. Generaly speaking, if you get the double up through early on, your WWSD ratio in the game should boom, as well as your PF all-in equity, since you can tighten up your calling ranges, even though your loosening your steal/ shoving ranges.

Like I said, haven't got much time in hands atm, so the volume input is still a bit scarce, but here's an update after another 1k games.





The run bad was real these past hundred games, but I eventually get it going.

Started off with 10 euros, up to 722 euros so far (including rake).

I'm feeling way more confident in my game though, 4/5 - tabeling (which isn't great, but I was 2 tabeling most of the time. But the nr will only increase). I figure that if I have a couple of weeks of good cards I can easily double my roll.

Playing a solid, solid game IMO, but there's still LOADS of room to improve, specially on the multi tabling department. I'm considering trying out the Table Ninja II software, might be handy, and there's really nothing to lose with the free trial.

That being said, thanks for everyone's input during my time of lack of faith in myself. I'm actually considering trying to go full time once I'm finished with Law School (May-July) and see where the road leads me.
I know myself enough to know that if that day comes, I'll be willing to read/ study the game for 3-4 hrs and play 8hrs a day and get back up when I get kicked in the teeth.
For now, I'll play when I can and keep you posted if anyone is interested.

Again, thanks to all, and good luck out there!

Muito bom GL

What's your % ITM ?

The ninja table is very good, you stay where you really have to focus, without having to search for seats and wasting time

Thanks. Currently sitting at ~38% - 20% 1st, 18% 2nd.

Today's session was fun.

14eur in profit from 3eur Hypers and 84eur in losses on the 5eur. Played 18 of these and cashed 1 in 2nd place.

Best part was there were not regs today! So I constantly put myself in +EV positions and got socked in the face ahahaha! I didn't make this thread to cry about cards, so I'll just leave the runbad to your imagination.

Better luck to all of you!