Okay so this is my first post :/.
So at the moment I am mostly playing live sng's, at my friends place. We usually have 20-50$ buy-ins, and the games are really fishy, most players can't play poker at any level. We got 6 regulars and maybe 5-10 not so regular player. Usually we got 5-7 players, and the prizes are 2/3 and 1/3 split between winner and runner up, rebuys are on, and almost 100% of the time somebody rebuys. The thing is that if you rebuy, you can choose how your amount of rebuy will split. For example we have had prize structures like 150$/40$ or 90$/90$, imo we should change that but doesn't that allow me to exploit that rule in some way? For 6 people we usually have 1500 starting stack, and 20 min levels (10/20,15/30, 25/50, 40/80, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200). Games usually end at 100/200 level if there isn't like 4+ rebuys.

So I just wanted to ask how would you approach these kinds of games, and how to improve. I find it really confusing that I have lost really much, and players who haven't played online beat me statistically. Of course the variance is huge .

So the regulars, regular A is really bad player, though he still has won most of the tournaments, and lately have had a really good run. During the last maybe 30 tournaments he has won really much and had great card run. His playstyle has IMO many leaks, but maybe I am wrong. Before he had this long and good run, he played really tight, and just waited for the nuts and relied on that he could double up from some of the weaker players. Lately he has changed his playstyle a lot. He often tries to bluff pots post/pre flop and flats pf with nuts etc. Since he have had such a good run, it's extremely hard to play against him because I always think in my mind that he has the nuts when he is just bluffing with air. Last time I found myself all in pf with 88 against 27o and I lost .

Regular B is my biggest opponent, since he can play really well. He never plays drunk like the other players, and has played some games online and knows the math well enough. Plays first levels standard abc poker, but when the levels grow starts widening his range a lot and playing really aggressively preflop. On 4 max with +40bb stacks he opens almost everything from button, and 3bets alot from the blinds. Always the same betsize, so really hard to get any reads. Hardest situations versus him are for example I have small ace, big king, small pocket pair on big blind with small stack, co folds, player B bets 3bb and sb folds. I feel like I lose big percent of my stack if I try to play against him, so usually I just play too tight and wait for the nuts and try to get chips in pf.

Other regulars are bad and I know how to adjust my playstyle against them to exploit their leaks. I know this post was messy and sorry for my rusenglish . So the last questions if anyone ever read this . How should I improve my playing on live games? There it's really hard to write hands on note / trying to calculate opponents ranges is mostly on head and I don't have good memory. Basic online sng math should apply, but I find it really hard to use it on live poker, since it's slower and I THINK that overall much more nittier.

thanks and sorry

In the basic hands thread, this scenario comes up:

First hand of a $5. I have 100BB (Everest). UTG limps. I have TT and...

[limp for set value/raise it up]

The reply to this was:

Limp.


Why is it always better to limp here instead of raise say 3.5/4x?

I hope this question is well received. This is my second post. I'm finding the info here really useful and I wanna avoid being redundant.

I'm reading a lot about the trouble with sng wizard re opponents' hand ranges. 1) I'm not entirely clear, does sng wiz even estimate the opponents range? but 2) more importantly. In light of that, when going through my push and shove hands after a game on sngwiz, I will alter the hand ranges to see if it changes the result, and the change is often negligible. A push remains a push and a shove remains a shove.

Am I missing something? or is it just that blinds, position, chip stacks are much more central to the equation?

danke

1) Yes, SNG Wiz does make an estimation, but it is rarely correct. If you do not adjust the hand ranges of yourself and the other players, you will get terrible results. That is also one of the weaknesses of SNG Wiz...you can't include or exclude specific hands. 10%-range of the SNG Wizard is always to gonna be the same...if you have a read that your opponent min-raise/folds AQo in this spot you can't use this information in SNG Wiz.

2) Basically what SNG Wizard does is to calculate what hands you can shove/call +EV. One part of your EV is the fold equity. The more often your opponent calls the smaller the FE is. The other part is your 'real equity', which is the equity you have against his hand. Then it considers the probability of both events takeing place and considers this in the EV. Last but not least, it considers the ICM. All the ICM does is to give a Chip a $Value. In Cash Games you can consider 1$ = 1$. In a 9player 50/30/20 STT the winner of the tournament will receive 50% of the price pool even tough he has all the chips and the second who has no more cihps will still get 30%.

To come back to your question; if you get the same result when you shove 20% and if you shove 10% in the same calling range, your SNG Wizard is not working right.

raise 4x

art, please post a hand for review, or ask the question in the beginners question thread. Thanks.

@Janne^

You sound like you are on the right track watching opponent tendencies. I would suggest maybe posting a hand that gives you trouble, and we can give you our opinions.

huh?

9man 3 handed 3rd to 2nd is a 10% improvement.

6man 3 handed 3rd to 2nd is a 35% improvement. (Basically... 0 -> 35, insteed of 20 -> 30 in 9mans)

Im really confused at how you could think the "bubble" factor is higher at 9mans 3-handed...?

Yes SNG Wizard estimates a "range" for every spot... fortunately this range is often far from being correct.

Hmmm... are you altering the ranges more than 1-2%??? Because if you do (and you should) you'll end up seeing huge differnces.

Blinds, Position, Chip Stacks, Villain calling/reshoving/whatever ranges are all that SNGs are about.

Bitte.

Currently playing fun steps and have a question for a general strategy.

I'm reading this: http://www.cardschat.com/low-stakes-...t-strategy.php and they seem to have a wider range when the blinds are small and get tighter as the blinds go up.

From what I have heard, it's better to be super tight when the blinds are small since it's not worth it to steal them but as the blinds go up, your range should widen to steal higher blinds and people will be more wary of playing against you in these situations.

Any book/video/thread that explains a suitable strategy for single table tournaments? thanks

Just a quick hand checkup, from 18mans (4 paid)

1)
PokerStars - $3.16+$0.34|300/600 Ante 50 NL - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 4.3 BB
BTN: 4.57 BB
Hero (SB): 9.7 BB
BB: 19.03 BB
UTG: 7.4 BB

5 players post ante of 0.08 BB, Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.92 BB) Hero has A 8

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 9.61 BB and is all-in, BB calls 8.61 BB

Flop: (19.64 BB, 2 players) 2 K K

Turn: (19.64 BB, 2 players) 4

River: (19.64 BB, 2 players) K

Hero shows A 8 (Three of a Kind, Kings) (Pre 43%, Flop 29%, Turn 14%)
BB shows 7 7 (Full House, Kings full of Sevens) (Pre 57%, Flop 71%, Turn 86%)
BB wins 19.64 BB


BB is solid. This isnt an ICM fold is it?

Fold pre

Does anyone know at what blind levels in a standard Pokerstars 9-man turbo SNG the bubble occurs the most? For the 4-5 lowest buy in levels.

Is this correct?

L7 100/200+25
L8 150/300+25
L9 200/400+25
L10 300/600+50

?

150/300

Super standard shove.

Its about right. Aat 1$/3$/7$ tourney you have the bubble more often at 200 without antes than 300/600, tho.

So Lock has a pretty good feature where it tells how much you are playing by percentage. This is all from 6 max tournaments. Not sure if this will work, but if someone can analyze my play, that would be great. I know it is not a huge sample size, but it is enough to get a good idea.

Viewed Won Fold Check Call Bet Raise
Prefolp 39835 15.5% 63.6% 5.0% 7.3% Empty 18.7%

Flop 20.9% 12.4% 17.3% 22.6% 9.9% 17.3% 6.0%

turn 14.7% 8.7% 9.2% 19.4% 10.7% 13.6% 4.0%

river 12% 7.0% 8.4% 16.3% 7.2% 10% 2.4%

showdown won 2182/405


If anyone has any advice for me that would be great.

I've played a small sample of 6-max turbo's on PS, and finish ITM ~40%, mostly due to finishing 3rd so many times. I feel like I push/fold correctly (stacksize is almost always 10-20BB by then), and if I session review with SnGWiz I almost always have done the correct action. Is this just variance? Any glaring mistakes a novice can make around the bubble?
Further I finish 2nd a bunch more times than 1st. If I want to practice HU play (after I fixed the bubble-problem), what would you recommend to play? HU Hypers so the blind/stack ratio is around the same?

I´m having pretty much the exact same problems. Some things that have improved it so far:

- Minraising on the bubble. This obviously depends on the villains at your table, but it's certainly applicable at my stakes (3.5 KO's Stars). I was surprised at the amount of folds a minraise gets, even with small stacks.
- Less push/fold HU. I used to prefer shoving, but minraise/fold, limp+bet flop, call minraise/donkbet are getting a ton of folds. I'm sure that these moves are terrible at higher stakes, but they're working for now

When entering the HU shortstacked, this helps me even the stack sizes. When villain shoves ATC, you obviously just have to call with a decent hand and hope to double up.

PS: Most people I end up HU with are really terrible, if I'm up against a decent player I'll probably get owned

Sounds like fine advice and its a good start to improving.
Minraising even when 7-10BB?
I do a lot of push/fold when HU, i hardly ever limp and only minraise/2.5 (villain dependent) when 15-25BBish effective.

Let's see tomorrow.
Thanks!

Yea even with 7/10 bb´s, but when your stack is in that range it´s really villain dependant. If he´s aggresive you´re better of shoving. It works great vs tight passive players though. Even if they call, a min/halfpot bet on the flop takes it down a lot.

Hello guys, I'm a new SNG player with only a few thousand sit and gos to my name. Lately I have been playing the 9max Hypers on Stars, but I'm facing a weird situation that I would just like to ask if it was normal or not.

My results so far (c. 740 games) are slight positive with a roughly 2% roi. That's OK for hypers I guess, but of course due to the nature of the variance this sample is nowhere near enough for estimating the validity.

My concerns are raised when I checked out my chips graph:


If this were a cashgame graph, I'm sure we would all like to have it. 300 buyins up in chips in 16,000 hands seems pretty solid no?

My only theory is that I must be terrible at bubble play? I have no idea and I humbly call upon the aid of STT!

Thanks!

Post your finishing places table. If you finish 4th more then 3rd/2nd, then you have a problem.

I found this aswell, and after reviewing my play, I realized I was calling way to wide on the button. (6 max, 3rd is bubble).

It seems you are right!

First: 115/375 ~ 15.7%
Second ~ 8.3%
Third ~ 9.4%
Fourth ~ 10.5%

So how would I go about fixing this? Should I be more tight on the button both in regards to steal range but particularly calling range?

Thanks!

I found spending time in SNGWIZ and then reviewing games to help.