The most profitable time to play is usually late at night if there are any games going. It's usually pretty easy to get in good games at this time; the only problem is that there usually aren't enough games going to make it worth playing, at least for me.

My favorite time to play is whenever the fishies are playing I suppose.

Most of my sessions end up being something like 1pm-7pm, just because the games seem to start going faster around 1pm, and by 7pm I start to get hungry and tired so I quit.

I rarely play more than one session in a day. I like to get it all out of the way if I can. The thing is, during a session it usually takes like 20 minutes to get enough tables going at the beginning, and at the end I might only be playing a few tables for 10 or 15 minutes while I'm winding down because the games ended on the rest of the tables. So actually it would be somewhat inefficient to play more than one session in a day because I would have less tables going for longer periods of time.

Thanks for the replies. Do you think maybe youve peaked? or the skill level across the board increased dramatically. Also you mustve been well off to be able to lose those figures. 100k !

Elite in 09 yet?

Haha no I've only played like 9 days so far this year. I'm at about 170k vpp. I'm guessing I'll get it sometime in May or June unless I start playing more.

Hi Jorj !
I'd like to ask you why did you shove with 2-2 yesterday in the warm-up ?!!! You did the most difficult by reaching the 50th last players, but you seemed bored, and maybe a bit too agressive, don't you ?!
Why don't you play more this year? Are you on holidays right now ? Why did you directly buy-in for EPT Monte Carlo, like QuasiFiction or DNA did, instead of winning the qualification in the step 6 ?
Many thanks for this interesting thread, and for your quick answers.

I know you said you have a backup internet card currently...but do you have any bad stories of losing connection before you had one? I think I've lost connection during 3/4 sessions and was unable to get it back...definately sucks flushing thousands down the drain. Kinda dumb that I waited so long to purchase one considering it pays for itself with its use one time.

Also I currently beat the $60 turbos at a 7% ROI over like 4,500 games or something...I have considered just VPP whoring and playing all the 225/335/555's I could and just trying to break even/ maybe have a 1% ROI or whatever...but in the end doing this absolutly does not help you imrpove your overall poker abalities much. I kind of feel like im cheating myself by playing SNGs...

Do you ever feel like that? Like yeah im making money but im definately not getting better at the game of poker and people are passing me up everyday in terms of overall skill level. Does that ever eat at you or do you just not care/think about that because in the end its just about $$$$ ???

Hopefully you come back to this thread and see this. gl man, see you on the tables.

you are a machine in sngs. I've played a few thousand in my day, and a bit with you although i play more cash/mtt. do you think that i am a winning player at the 100/200/500 turbos? (mman_status) thanks -mike

can you talk about your 2009 to date.

seems like you were playing big to start the year, but have recently been playing a lot of the no rake hypers to nightly mtts and sunday majors.

The 22 shove in the warmup was super standard, I had like 13bb and I was like 2 or 3 off the button, no one is ever calling wide enough to not shove there. Playing it any other way is either way too conservative or just asking for trouble. I just got unlucky that someone else had a big pair. So goes poker.

I haven't been playing much this year because I'm on like a 80k downswing since the end of December and it's just not that fun right now honestly. The games have gotten considerably tougher also and I'm not sure it's even worth playing for now.

I don't understand your Monte Carlo question, but I won a seat for being Elite last year.

I had to call a friend one time to play for me when my main internet went out and then my wireless card wouldn't work because I hadn't downloaded the latest software for it. So my friend who normally plays like 2 or 3 tables was trying to 20 table the best he could. Luckily my connection came back in 5 or 10 minutes so it wasn't a complete disaster anyway.

IMO you're better off staying at the 55s. A 7% roi at the 55s could easily translate to a negative roi in the bigger games, especially if you're playing with scared money at times.

Ya sometimes I feel like I could be learning more about how to really play cash games or whatever instead of just sngs. I don't care for the sake of being "good at poker" though; I couldn't care less about that. I've already mentioned in this thread that I don't think I'm particularly great at poker. I mean I know I'm pretty good, but there are lots of people who are better than myself. The only reason I'd change to another form of poker is if I thought I could make more money doing it, and that just seems unlikely. Although with the games being really tough (and me running bad) that could possibly change in the near future.

I'll always come back to this thread as long as people have questions, it's kind of fun for me to do this actually.

I barely remember your name honestly but that's a good thing for you because I tend to remember the bad players a lot more easily than the good players.

I couldn't really say whether I think you're a winning player, just that those games are very tough to beat unless you play really well.

Let's see, I went to PCA and lasted about 3 levels there but had an awesome week, never even left the resort. Obviously I haven't been playing as much this year, mostly because I'm running so awfully in the bigger sngs, and because I'm not sure that they're worth playing anymore. The bad players just aren't that bad anymore (with a few exceptions) and it seems like there's new good players playing the bigger sngs all the time now. There are lots of good players who are losing a ton lately just like myself, and a few others who moved down in stakes or changed to a different game (probably the smarter ones imo).

Ya I've been playing the hypers a lot the last week or so. They're kind of fun and addictive. I really have no idea how profitable they might be but I needed a change of pace because the regular sngs were just pissing me off frankly. I mean I understand swings and I could be reading too much into it but it feels like the higher stakes sngs are close to unbeatable right now, especially for a 20 tabler. I'm sure I'll be back eventually but maybe not, who knows.

You was UTG + 2 and I wondered if shoving this hand is the best way to play it. If you are called, you 'll be 50 / 50 in the best case. Can't you fold it as 6 men have still to play after you ?
You (and DNA & Quasi for example) are in the "Direct EPT Monte-Carlo Buyer-in" list of pokerstars, and I wondered why.

Thanks for your answers jorj. And as we say in french "Bon courage pour la suite !"

Without getting into a strategy discussion in my well, I will reiterate that the shove is by far the best way to play the hand. I doubt any other way of playing it is even close to correct. I had a stack of 1 million and I can increase my stack by about 20% here if everyone folds.

I think that they listed all the players who qualified for Monte Carlo through the VIP program under 'Direct Buyin'.

Second only to "we surrender" as my all time favorite French saying...

I must just say I allways railed you when I played my micro SnGs gave me luck hehe

Ok. Thanks for your quick answers.

I dont think a 7% ROI in the 60s (got up to 8% yesterday and back down to 7 after a bad sess...so id say like a 7.8% roi) would translate into being a losing player in the 114s/225s/335s.

I mean Spacegravys ROI is only 5% or so in the 60s and gidders is also at 7% and those are like the most solid regs in the 60s. I dont think any $60 reg has a better ROI in them then me. I know spacegravy is on 20-22 tables at most times, but Im on ~15 so I dont really think his ROI would pass mine if he dropped a few tables, but who knows.

To be honest though i dont think SNGs $225s+ will be profitable anymore without some form of game selection. Even late at night atleast 7/10 are regulars and its usually 8 or 9 of the 10. It pretty much sucks.

I really think they should add SNG buy in tickets to the FPP store or something. Maybe that would get some more fish into the games.

Glad I could bring you some luck!

I wasn't saying that it necessarily would translate into a negative roi in the bigger games, just that it possibly could. I don't think spacegravy's roi in the bigger games is that high; I'd doubt if it's more than like 1% in the 300s and higher. The games are just really tough at that level and it's hard for someone who grinds the 60s to really appreciate how much tougher it really is.

But yes like you said game selection is very important at the highest levels and honestly I probably don't do that as well as I should. My strategy is usually to sign up first and hope that other regs would game select after me but in reality this doesnt happen much. It isn't rare to see a game with 9 good regs go off. I have no idea what the 8th and 9th regs could possibly be thinking when they sign up but they still do it.

Hey George, thanks for doing this well. Great read!

Can you give me a brief explanation of what benefit/rakeback you get for playing the volume that you do.

I understand that you get VPP but how does that translate into cash. you talked about using the points to buy your wife something. Is that what you are referring to as rakeback or do you actually get $ from stars for having a certain amount of vpp/fpp. Do you have to turn those vpp/ffp in for the bonus or do you get to keep them?

Sorry if this is not clear. I guess my question revolves around your statement that you would not be playing sng if it wasn't for rakeback. I don't understand how accumulating fpp is the same as rakeback.

Hows life?

yeah hows things going.

Basically you can redeem fpp's for cash or tournament buyins or various other things, so while it's not rakeback in the direct sense, it's fairly trivial to turn it into cash. I think the equivalent rakeback I end up with is about 65% although I'm kind of just pulling that number out of my ass. I know it's pretty close to that though. Ask MicroBob, I'm sure he could tell you my rakeback percentage to 5 decimal places or so.

I hope I answered your question; if not, feel free to ask more.

Life is awesome! I can't complain. Funny story, I was playing around on the computer yesterday thinking that we (wife & I) should go on a trip somewhere next week. My wife was out shopping at the time. So she comes home and the first thing out of her mouth is "Let's go somewhere next week." WTF? Hi psychic mind reading wife.

So anyway we start thinking of places we want to go and we can't narrow it down. I get the idea to write like 10-15 places down on scraps of paper and put them in a hat, and whichever one we pick we'll go to for a week. We start writing places down like New England, New York, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, and a few others. Then we look at our list and realize it's really freaking cold in almost all the cities we picked. So we scrapped that idea but I think we'll use it at some other point when it's warmer.

After discussing a bit we narrowed it down to San Diego and Napa. I wanted San Diego only because I haven't been there since college and we've already gone to Napa twice together. Obviously she wanted Napa. But then I gave in because I realized I really like the idea of drinking wine for a week again.

We decided to just wing it on everything except the plane tickets and see how that goes. It shouldn't be difficult to find a motel there in February. We've never really gone on a trip before without having most things planned ahead of time, but we're going to Europe for a month in April and want to try to do that without much of a plan, so this should be good practice. Last year in Europe we felt a little bogged down by having all of our hotels and transportation booked ahead of time because we wanted to spend longer in some places and less time in others, and it's hard to know this until you get to the places.

Sorry about the rambling!