ok, having stated you will never play one, I guess you have contributed all you ever can to the discussion.

I would also love to see some $10 18 man sngs, the $5 one runs all the time and always juicy.

The ICM Trainer is just like those, it can run hand histories and give you icm quizzes on any situation you want to set up. I definitely feel like I should be winning at the $11's but even though I am right at the top in profit for the $6's in October my graph is pretty much even from all the losing at the $11's.

Two basic possibilities. Either poker is being mean and you are running bad in the 11's, or the style of play in the 11's is different and you aren't adjusting properly. I doubt it is that in sngs. I haven't played many $6 though.

I can tell you in cash games that is often the case. Going from $25 tables to $50 tables, or $50 tables to $100 tables, the 3 betting goes up, the continuation betting goes up, etc and you have to adjust.

I hope it doesn't mean that I'm running above expectation at the $6 games and the $11 games is what my actual skill level reflects!

heh, nah, I'm not that clever

When the limit hold 'em player from my story moved up per my requests, he moved straight up into my games (far fewer LHE games run than nl, obv), and so his presence took money directly out of my pocket. But I knew that would happen, and I was completely cool with it, because I like the guy, wanted to see him have success, and was confident that it was sound advice.

I mean, that's how I built up a roll pretty quickly. Starting playing Global in Aug 17 after not playing for about 4 years, had all of like 100 dollars to my name, busted it once or twice, and eventually some of my "shots" at the Winstons and Sonias or whatever got through and within just a few months of that was well over-rolled for all the SnGs.

I'm also a weird guy in that I basically prefer playing in tougher games and I don't care much for money in and of itself.

My aggro BRM recommendations are just straight up good advice. All sorts of ballers like Tom Dwan have talked about this in the day too. You rarely or never hear these guys saying that they practiced nitty BRM.

With that said ...

An implicit requirement of my advice is that you have to have the ability to eventually re-deposit if and when you indeed go broke, to compensate for the increased RoR. I wouldn't listen to anything I'm saying if I were a Washingtonian.

I've played almost all the SnG levels they offer and the only really major difference wrt skill levels changing is that the regs get only just slightly better all the way up to the 218 and the average fish is less loose/passive and more LAGSPEWY the higher up you go. There's not any level on Global at which the top regs play super well and don't make mistakes. There's only so much anybody can do at 8-20bb stack depth.

f tilt

You should hire somebody to drive over to your house and slap you upside the head every time you register for a 50c SnG. Seriously (unless you also are from Washington)! You have like 300 buy-ins.

Like, maybe just spend 30 minutes watching the higher stakes games and see all the dumb **** that goes on in those games as well, and at some point the lightbulb will click on in your brain that you are leaving ma$$ive money on the table and are also wasting a bunch of time.

I care too much. Let's burn a tree and calm down.

I don't know, man. Besides your formidable poker stats, you were talking about timing tells in another thread, and nobody I know but me ever talks about that. And I'm pretty ****ing clever.

In all seriousness though I do love that ****. I like to **** with people sometimes with timing; like, I generally try to always act after the same amount of time, but then (for instance) out of the blue when HU against somebody IP as the PF raiser I'll insta-check it back with a wide variety of hands just for fun. I swear 100% of the time I can almost hear that player palpably thinking in the moments after, it's super noticeable and out of character for me, and always slows them down a few beats compared to their normal timing. I don't think most people put too much stock into timing stuff (since it could be caused by lag/environment/etc), but very quick actions are more trustworthy in that sense so I just like to **** with people sometimes for no real reason. And then sometimes of course I do it for a better reason depending on context/player. That being said I'm def better at using my timing to manipulate people than I am at making confident sense out of their timing patterns on any particular action.

I similarly had been out of action for years, and had a pretty great start on Global myself. But I'm more of an MTT player historically, so after winning the very first tourney I played and getting 2nd in the 2nd (both $3 1R1A, but still; pumped me up), and then having a great first 400 or so games with more than a few nice scores ($55 and below with occasional shots), I def got **** on by variance when I reeeeeaaally needed it to not happen and can speak firsthand about the dangers of being underrolled. Especially when trying it as a sole source of income and needing to pull money out for real life stuff. Everyone says it'll happen eventually, and it's like, you believe it, but **** me if I was ever really prepared for variance to slap me as hard as it did. SNGs are actually what saved me in that sense, **** just started goin righter more often with the sudden bump in sample size of allins and such.

I don't necessarily disagree, and this is a thing I think about sometimes. But I also wonder how many unsung and equally or better skilled heroes have tried the same thing and fallen flat eventually, because they tried to make a run of it but got kicked in the nuts by variance for too long, like all of us will at some point or another, early on when it really mattered. Like, maybe we're just seeing the 0.4% of guys who were "lucky" enough to not get unlucky at the wrong times so they could get to the point of having a roll/income big enough to not worry about it anymore.

But the simple fact does remain that by definition of being a winning player, you will win if you can hold out long enough. So def something to be said for trying to find some balance there re: chasin that paper.

Well now this is kind of interesting, because "not being able to eventually re-deposit" is the same thing as talking about a dedicated bankroll, isn't it? So if you have more money that could be put into poker if needed, that should technically be considered part of your roll, even though obv I undserstand that very few people really can and/or do separate these things with the discipline they probably should.

Myself, due to circumstance I have fewer bills than normal for a while and am trying to make a run of it while I can and build myself up to a level where I can feasibly chase a liveable income on my lazy ass at home with decent but not crazy volume. But I have no other income, so yeah, even WA livin aside, I have to keep that RoR as small as possible. Either way though it's probably a terrible and impractical idea in and of itself so I have no real footing with which to feign responsibility. I'm probably just dooming myself to death by a thousand cuts.

Side note: After my post the other day I went and played my first Clifton. I came in 6th and was like "FU POKER12!" But then I played one more to close out my session after an otherwise good day and won it ("I LUV U POKER12!"). Got super lucky in that one guy literally took out 6 other players; went from 6 to 3 players in one hand with blinds still like 50/100. It was glorious. But then I had to withdraw $325 for bills and now I'm scared to play more.

Nice, thanks for the answer. I kind of figured it would be something like that. Was hoping there might be more of a clear cliff(s) rather than slight gradations, but that makes sense. Bolded is a good point.

Side note: since I happen to have the ear of the most profitable SNG player on Global, what kind of things do you do to improve your game? For instance, I was already doing well in SNGs, but finally got around to reading Colin Moshmans book recently after hearing it mentioned again and again over the years, and maybe picked up a couple new thoughts. Thinking about reading his HU book next. What do you think of these; still must reads, or yesterday's news given the internet/other sources? Any other favorite material to suggest?

Sage, I've never read colin's book, but I can tell you it wasn't regarded well by the sng community when it came out. It's the reason I never read it. My friends in sttf either said it sucked and went into the stuff he got wrong, or said it was ok but I wouldn't learn anything new from it.

That said it's pretty much the only book there is on the topic, so it can't hurt for anyone first learning. I probably would have read the book anyway (just like the other 30 or so poker books I've read) but I was playing cash games when it came out so skipped it.

Interesting. I've heard it come up on this website as well as others pretty much every time I've tried to search for SNG strat reading material, but never once was it in a "it sucked" context. Can you elaborate or link to any thread/discussion on it in that regard? I thought it seemed pretty solid, there are always one or two small things I might be resistant to in practice but nothing stood out as flat out incorrect. Although I admit after reading the beginning, I skipped a good chunk of the middle and just read up on high-blind/bubble play to kind of sanity check my own thoughts regarding that stage.

Well I wouldn't say I'm first learning, I've been playing and/or studying poker for almost 20 years now and have always done well. I've been at more than my fair share of final tables as an MTT player, so it's not entirely unfamiliar territory, I just never delved into studying the specifics of SNG play until recently. I wouldn't say reading the aforementioned book taught me anything brand new about poker, or even SNGs, but it's sometimes important to be reminded of fundamental ideas that have maybe fallen by the wayside of your mind over the years and maybe need to be reasserted. I've read a lot of poker books over the years, and something I've always liked to point out is that even though the vast majority of them are filled with the same type of material, I was always able to pick up one or two angles that maybe I had forgotten or not exactly considered that way before.

So I like reading books and such, reviewing important ideas from time to time to make sure I haven't carelessly fallen into bad habits. Especially when playing on a site like Global where it's basically impossible to review my own play. But yeah obviously in the case of older books especially I don't want to end up taking bad advice to heart.

You bring up some good points, Mr. Bender Bending Rodriguez.

The stuff you bring up with regards to my durrrr BRM is very valid, it's probably survivorship bias on my part. It kinda goes back to how I used to learn poker; by watching the top regs, mimicking what they did while playing a small number of tables and thinking about why they took their actions. Like, that will get you to a certain point, but you're gonna eventually be held back by a lack of concrete knowledge. It's a fuzzy way of learning but I admit I still do it today, I'll just sit back and watch dorian1 and mountaindew14 play 10/20nl and try to understand their lines.

I've never read moshman or seen bencb's videos or any SnG specific instruction. For SnGs I just mess around with ICMizer. I've basically always played poker by straight intuition, so I'm very much the wrong person to ask for gameplay specific advice. I'd talk to hodler, whenever I read his posts I get the impression he's a heavily math-based guy and actually knows concrete stuff about SnGs.

Over the past few months I've finally put in some real work, which is why I've been messing with nl cash so much. Got the Matt Janda books, some book that came out in 2017 that's tailored for live nl cash, which I didn't realize when I bought it, but it's a solid book anyway, have a free pdf of the 600 page textbook The Grinder's Manual, and I bought pokersnowie and piosolver.

Snowie I think will give little or no help for SnG/MTT play, mainly because it's hopeless wrt playing against fish and the fields are much softer in tournament play. It might have some value for higher SnGs which can often be 1 fish 5 reg games, but I wouldn't worry about it, definitely not for ICM situations, but it might be alright for early game play in reggy games.

The thing I like best about snowie is when you train against it it will take these weird fps-looking lines which in fact will be more +ev than typical lines but are so rarely taken by humans because they're such high variance plays. Opened my eyes a bit with its 2x pot lines and its click-back raises and stuff that I had always assumed was straight fishy.

PIOsolver is f complicated and I'm still trying to fully navigate it. The newer Janda book has some decent info on tournament play as far as I can tell.

I loved this youtube video about piosolver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxXK5FuKjtE

The Grinder's Manual is just the ****, I love that thing and I've already learned a lot from it. It's nl cash specific but a number of principles are obv gonna translate to tournament play. Never thought I'd read a textbook again but that's exactly what it is, feel like I'm dropping out of college all over again when I read it.

Probably nothing that I'm saying will be new to you, unfortunately, especially because this is all a couple years old by now, but that's what I've been up to.

Sage, it's been 10 years so can't link, I'm sure the discussions took place in the single table tournament forum bullish*t threads, as that is the group I have always been in, even when I didn't play them anymore. It why I know the high rollers poker12 talks about, and know there are plenty of crash and burn outcomes you don't hear about. The book Ship It Holla Ballas!: How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker's Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew was written about that group of friends. We all met through sttf and started having get togethers in Vegas. I was one of the old guys in the group, so by default a father figure type roll. That's where my custom title comes from is winning the heads up tournament from our first get together party. I will never win against a tougher field again. Thank god for luck in poker!

I've always had the same attitude about books you do. If it helped win one pot it payed for itself.

+1 there definitely should be some more mtt sng's in the lobby I would play those all the time! Would be great especially during the day when scheduled mtt's can be a bit slow. I think 18 and 27 man $5/$10/$20 would be going all the time. What do others think about this?

the $5 18 mans go off all the time, would love to see more and bigger buyins

Greetings gents. Took some time away from the Global streets after yet again throwing BRM discipline to the wayside and going near busto earlier this year. Stepped away from the internet and put in some hours grinding low limit live games, and even managed to bink a 5 figure score in a live donkament. Turns out the low stakes live grind is tough to balance with a job, band, and home life, so I’m back to the internet and high volume opportunities it provides. Anyway, after resetting the graph and proclaiming to social media that I’m beginning a 100 to 10k bankroll challenge, I am back on the Global Grind. I’ve enjoyed lurking on all of your wholesome SNG poker discussions in this thread during my online hiatus, and I’m looking forward to battling it out with all of you again. Hopefully having to disclose my graphs and progress on social media regularly will keep me accountable and practicing sound BRM strategy. See you all out there!


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all the time seems like a stretch but some would definitely go. one thing i dont understand about global sngs is the amount of buyin levels. the player pool is already pretty small, why not get rid of a few? something like 1, 5, 16.5, 33, 55, 110, 218

This is my concern as well. I'd rather they contract some games than add new ones. HuSnGs or more 18-mans or anything else would stretch us too thin.

learned last night that if you've reset your stats on sharkscope you can instantly un-reset them in the same "opt-in/opt-out" tab

guess that means I'm back to spending too much time on sharkscope and less time actually playing poker

took a break from SnGs for a couple months, the games are still more dead than they were 12 months ago, but LESS dead then they were 3 months ago, in my estimation

New fish still get born pretty regularly, as other fish die out. Global has been advertising pretty strongly, I've seen it at baseball games, and at chess.com. I see an ad every time I'm losing a blitz game to a titled player but win on time

still can't effectively grind the SnGs after about 2AM EST, unfortunately, although it's good to see the dude yayoshow back, he grinds the same graveyard hours I do.

the nl cash games have gotten tougher, or maybe I'm just not game selecting well, but fish are always gonna love them turbo 9mans -- SnGs why can't I quit you?

https://prnt.sc/lgw2rw

Still struggling to make it stick in those damn $11 games!

I know it's hard to accept, but 300 games means nothing, 1000 games doesn't mean much. You really can't base things of short term results. Are you playing well, do you notice the mistakes the other players are making? Do you get it in ahead more often than not but lose anyway?

Basically after enough time you know when you are playing winning poker, then you ignore the results assuming they will get better eventually (assuming enough bank roll). The really, really bad runs will still make you doubt yourself though, nature of the beast.

So basically SNGs barely run, even if the PLO ones actually run sometimes now, and there are 4-max hypers. Looks like that’s all I missed.

Yeah, for some mysterious reason the SnGs are dying. There are plenty of fish ready to play SnGs 24/7 but they don't sit until other people sit first and a bunch of the "game starter" type regs are gone. Drives me crazy when there are two or three superfish ready to play but end up quitting because it takes 30 minutes just to 1-table the game of their choice.

I genuinely think Global should get prop players to play SnGs. Just one or two more regs to multitable at non-peak hours would exponentially increase the number of games running. If you build it, they will come. Everybody wins.

Also, I'm running ultra terribly in nl cash but I can't seem to give away a SnG so I'd like to play more of the latter atm.

Consider this my monthly whine post on this issue. It just makes zero sense to me.

Ya it seems like weekdays, especially late night, are dead AF these days. Even the micros take forever for games to pop. I imagine high stakes games are even worse. Pretty depressing for night owls

I haven't noticed much difference in Hypers besides the highest stakes. Nobody typically registers them during the hours I play, myself included. I did, however, reg $100s for ~6 hours today and I played 10 of them. That's part of the reason (the other being high rake) I don't like playing them; it's not fun playing $100+ hypers when you get ~10 a day.