Groggy

You've gone from one extreme to the other. Mass tabling every 25, 50 and 100 that would run for the promotion, to just grinding the €4  stake. I played with you a lot over the promotion, you're better than playing €4  as your max stake and you know it. Playing €4 as your max stake feels to me more like an attempt to limit how bad a losing session can be as opposed to an earnest attempt at grinding out profit. I would be very surprised if your current strategy would net you the most profit over time as opposed to grinding at least 10's and probably 25's as well. You won €5500 (excluding rakeback) over a 20k sample on party last year, at average stake €12.50 and stated you felt you ran very badly to only win that. I believe Party SnG's are significantly more shallow, so your edge should be larger on unibet. You say you don't have a winning history at 25's on here yet. I think you can attribute that to a combination of bad luck and mass tabling high volume during the SnG promo.

 

It seems like after your swingy run higher you have the mentality of trying to not lose which is going to cost you a lot of money long term. Day to day results are irrelevant if you're rolled for the games you're playing. You need to open yourself up to getting smashed every now and again in the short term to make more long term. A 5% roi at 4s is the same profit per game as 2% at 10s and 0.8% at 25s. At best 4's should be games you can autopilot on the side for ev while focusing on the bigger games. You're investing in your edge long term when you grind SnG's, so why bother about short term.

Hi Dennis. Have you considered that playing your normal style and shoving ICM approved ranges is a mistake at the limits your playing. The Q8s hand for example you could easily find a limp and play post. When opponent's make big ICM call mistakes, which they will in abundance at those stakes, it affects the ev of both players in the hand negatively even if you played it properly. Play more exploitatively.

 

I'd prefer to use my upcoming bonuses as SnG/ MTT tickets.

There is no science to finding the perfect amount of tables, just do what feels right for you/ what you enjoy.

This data tells you absolutely nothing. Of course you're going to have bad results in the SnG you bust first out of 4 and good results in the one you're in longest, which is deeper/hu by the time you're out the others. Also the sample you are worried about is so tiny its irrelevant. Don't divide your games up like this, just look at your overall ROI.

What is there to resolve? What you described sounds like a good ICM strategy by your opponent. To stop him doing this you either need to put chips in the pot and fold to a shove, win an all in vs him or jam into the away players bb until the away player busts.

The guy renowned for his books on ICM plays a hand ultra nitty on a bubble, who'd have thought!

 

I can see why you shared these hands though, from the outside they do look pretty strange. Seeing the QT river check back actually hurts my soul a little bit.

 

Dara is an ICM expert. It would be pretty off-brand for him to risk his ambassadorship and reputation in the poker community for a few euros. I think he would figure that might be slightly -ev.

I like your take on it. Pity we'll probably never know their thought processes. 

Those hands are fun. I can make guesses on what is happening in most of them but obviously it's quite a few levels above me!

I think what is happening in the first hand is that OTB is using tens without a heart as one of the most efficient turn bluff raises. His hand has really good blockers to JT and AT which LLinus is always putting stacks in with, and it's a fairly efficient bluff in that it has 4 outs to the nuts and 2 outs to a hand that is going to win often. Holding tens reduces LLinus' strongest value combos a lot when LLinus has all offsuit versions of those hands in his range. Maybe he expects to get instant folds from some of LLinus' weaker Ax on the turn. If he expects some of these to fold, when LLinus calls and the king rolls off and LLinus shoves, he might discount a lot Ax from LLinus's range. (or possibly doesn't expect Ax to shove river for value) so when he faces a jam thinks LLinus has enough bluffs (potentially T6h-T9h, J7h-J9h, 54h, 53h, 43h) to profitably call now when he only needs to win 20% of the time, even though originally it was a bluff. For value maybe he figures LLinus only has JT, KQ, some AQ but not all, possibly some KJ KT stuff. I have no idea if LLinus is supposed to value shove a bare ace here. If your LLinus with a hand like AT here, what are you expecting to call you if you shove for value? Maybe LLinus does shove any Ax, and maybe tens can still profitably call, you could probably count the combos.

Also one thing to consider is LLinus is an absolute GTO machine, so he is probably going to find an perfect bluffing frequency to balance out his value range (unless he is going for an exploit), so when you have a hand that blocks LLinus' value and unblocks his bluffs, it's probably one you have to call.

Guess I'll offer my 2 cents on the hands seeing as you posted them.

The Q8 get it in for value is interesting. The dynamics heads up provides can be interesting. It worked for him this time but seems overly ambitious to me. I don't think you get owned, he just finds your lightest ever jam here with a hand he shouldn't have. I think flatting in position and playing turns makes sense with your hand.  It's nice to have a natural bluff with a hand that has no connectivity with the board so that you can still find bluffs on cards like 6s, 9s, tens, jacks that are gonna connect with you a lot, and it's also a hand that isn't really that sad to fold on the turn facing a bet. Also when you jam and get called you probably only 30% vs his range, maybe even a touch less if he shows a lot of better fds.

Lovely being shown a bluff in the A9 hand, but think you get a touch lucky here. Villain's bluff is good and he uses a good combo. When you're bluffcatching having a 9 is a pretty bad card as it's a card that's frequently in his bluffing range and never in his value range. (95, 96, t9, j9) I honestly would just fold turn and get bluffed, but nice that it worked out. Seeing him show this combo isn't proof of an overbluff and if his frequencies are reasonable your call down is going to be losing quite a lot imo.

 

Unlucky on the downswing. I actually watched the full podcast and found it super interesting. His mental game was really impressive and I think it should be comforting to you about how he talks about how standard going on 100+ buy in downswings is.

 

One thing that kind of surprised me is the figures he eluded to. He kind of implied he'd expect to make in the 160-200k usd range by the end of the year. That's obviously a lot of money but that seemed kind of low to me, for the 'best' SnG player in the world who has to endure some wild ups and downs. He also puts in some ridiculous volume by the sounds of it.

'The games seem much softer than at the beginning of the promo', must be because I took a week off ;)

 

 

Interesting post. I'm curious as to why you expected your win rate to be better than your historic ROI when the games were much more reggy than usual? Was rake on the 25's 5% before the promo? 10-15% ROI in the games that ran seems difficult, although maybe not impossible. I would be very curious to see how you fared at the end of the month compared to this guess if you are willing to share. I would also be interested to know what aliases you commonly used in the pools if you are willing to reveal that. I wonder if the high volume reg you felt you have a huge edge on is the same one who I felt I have a large edge on. It would be hilarious if we were both thinking of each other ;) But I think I know who you mean.

 

In terms of liquidity the games were certainly best in week one. In terms of game quality I would have thought the weeks would get progressively easier. A lot of regs generally get excited for promos like this, over-extend, burn out then drop the volume, meaning their slot is more likely to be filled with a recreational, who don't really care about playing in rake free games so will roughly play the same amount every week (unless the increased difficulty of the games put them off). I think saying you'd rather have these bad regs in the line ups than a -30% roi rec might be slightly stretching it, but it is certainly nice to have players in the pool that you have exploits on.

 

 

I don't know the answer to your question I'm afraid. I'm sure there are some GTO defence ranges ICM adjusted out there at varied stack depths somewhere. I haven't studied ranges or the format, it's just my opinion, it isn't necessarily correct. I would defend A5o so to me it is marginal. I would like to know the answers to the questions your asking myself.

The problem with a hand like A4o is it under-realises a lot postflop just because of how badly it hits boards. It's just a hand that we are going to lose with a lot even when we are still ahead on a lot of flops. In terms of raw equity of course it is doing well enough to defend vs btn, it just doesn't get to realise that equity efficiently.  The reason there are negative ICM implications is because we basically always have to call down stacks when we make top pair just because we are massively lacking for Ax hands when we call preflop given we reshove a lot of Ax hands. Ace high boards are significantly better for button so it is a board we should face a lot of aggression on.

In terms of suggesting river check fold that would purely be an exploit play against the pool, we are definitely supposed to get stacked here. I don't think opponent's are bluffing big size often enough, especially on this kind of board. The 3rd diamond improves a lot of potential bluffs to high equity semi bluff jams on the turn. (T9, K9 one diamond) So realistically, what bluffs are we going to see the average villain show up with at river given this line, other than perhaps T9 or T8s without a diamond?

The main reason I'm playing 5 man SnG's is also just to experience a different game type, poker has been feeling a bit stale for me and I've enjoyed the change. I enjoy promotions that feature leaderboards that give me an incentive to grind. 

I suspect at the highest stakes 5man SnG's KQo would be shoving pre but it seems unnecessary in these games. It feels a bit lazy and gives opponent's fairly easy decisions. I think mixing some flats and some 3bet folds is going to be good. Especially as the pool is probably going to 4 bet jam too tight.

 

A4o I would guess is just a fold pre. Seems close for chip ev as it is and with ICM considerations is probably going to just be a fold. You are almost defending to try and flop a bluffcatcher as a fairly best case scenario. It feels like villain is gonna insta-win on quite a lot of boards and when lots of money goes in on ace high boards again it feels like we lose a lot. As played I don't think shove achieves anything after villain has cbet 3/4 pot. It seems unlikely they are gonna have a hand like KQ/KK for that size on the flop, let alone call with it even if they did when our only potential bluff is T9. I actually think it's more of a check fold than a check call, and that the pool is going to be massively under-bluffing this line if we check and see a jam.

 

53o hand is a lot too loose pre, it isn't even a defend heads up. Your hands are tied till you reach river which is the decision point. I actually think you stumble into a good bluff-catcher just because there are so many potential bluff combos and situationally on the bubble it's easy to over-bluff to apply max pressure. Think of all the AK AT A9 A8 A4 A3 K9 KT T9 combos with one heart that could potentially get to the river this way. Your hand blocks a few value combos and unblocks villain's most likely bluffs.

I think it's possible you might be underestimating the importance of deep-stacked play for win rate in these 5-man sng's. I've put in quite a lot of volume at them in the last 3 months-ish without ever studying ICM (although I have played a lot of MTT's and Satties in my time so I think I can make decent guestimates).  I think it would be arrogant to think that much of my edge is going to be in the ICM spots but my ROI is still good. I find the pool to be better preflop than they are postflop and I think that's where most my EV is coming from. 

You probably didn't play 'worse than your realised'. It's very easy to be results orientated in this game we play. I find that on the best days, you don't play nearly as well as you think you did and on the worst days you don't play nearly as badly as you think you did. A lot of the time the difference is just in how you ran, whether it be in all ins or less obvious ways like your bluff-catching, bluffs and the card distribution of you and your opponents. That's not to say you shouldn't work on your game, but don't let the financial results of a session dictate how you feel you played. I've had good winning days where I've been disappointed with how I've played and terrible days where I have played my A game.

 

Think the 53o hand you recorded before is a perfect example. On another day, when you're stuck money you call and are shown a value hand and beat yourself up and think your terrible, but the same situation happens on a day your winning and feeling good, get shown the bluff and you think you're a poker god. The reality is it's a marginal spot vs population when you reach the river and you really could go either way (although it should just be an easy fold pre).

Great gesture by unibet. Nice to see Dennis rewarded for his honesty.

Was this manual payment given in the form of bonus points or cash? I received the automatic payment at midnight, but I don't believe I received a manual payment.

I have an €1100 euro ticket for the unibet open that expires March 6th and have a few questions.

1. Is there any version of being able to hold onto the ticket for a live unibet open down the line, whenever that may be?

2. How many more opportunities will I have to use it if not today.

The ticket is a general ticket I received for hitting the 1.25 million point milestone in the last quarter. It wasn't a satellite for this specific event.

 

 

I know of someone who played 6-man SnG's on another site. He was the best reg in the pools and was finding the format a bit stale so he flicked in a few MTT sessions. He couldn't believe how soft they were and basically transitioned over to them full time and was better than nearly all the MTT regs already. I think he still plays some 6 man sng's when they run, but as far as I know makes a better income now. It's easy to be lazy and stick to a format you know/ are comfortable with but sometimes it's worth giving new things a chance.

Where do you think (some) other regulars might have an edge on you? (If you are being completely objective) Where do you have an edge on them?

It's hard to say what average ROI is possible in these line ups (What is even considered a good ROI in this format?) but considering all these games have been completely infested with regs since the promo started, where a healthy amount of line ups have literally been all regs, the average reg must only have made a 1 or 2% roi so far. Obviously some will have a better ROI than that and some will have lost. There hasn't been enough recreational players in the pools to account for the mass amount of regs. Recreationals don't care about rake, so there's probably a similar amount of rec's in the pools now as there were before. 

I've been there before as well Dennis. You get super pumped for a promo like this and think of some figures in your head of what you'd like to win (even though money orientated goals are super bad) and go super hard for it and it just ends up being disappointing and you end up feeling disillusioned with it. On multiple occasions I have doubled my hours and increased my tables for rake race promos and subsequently end up doing worse than an average month. I've been there before with confidence issues as well when running bad.

 

I think the game quality has been pretty tough, moreso than I expected. For me there's a big jump in the standard of the average 25 5man that runs and the average 50 5man. It seems like with your 6-man hyper background that the shallow stack part of the game is the main area where you're making your edge over other players. It could well be that at deeper stacks your -ev vs at least some other regulars in the pool, especially with your table count compared to theirs. It could be that it is neutralizing your shallow edge a fair amount which is really cranking up the variance. Maybe play an amount of tables which is comfortable and get really dialled in. Maybe focus on what some of the other regs are doing and keep an open mind. Maybe you like some of the stuff they're doing which you could implement into your own game. Maybe you don't like how they are playing and you can feel more confident about your edge. Maybe you aren't adjusting to the player pool efficiently enough and losing ev that way by trying to play too 'GTO'. It's a high variance format. If variance had gone in your favour your confidence would be sky high and you wouldn't give grinding hard all the tables a second thought.

 

With your skillset you have some transferable skills to other formats to make some extra money there. Grinding satellites should be a really decent option for you. As should playing small field tournaments where you are going to end up playing short handed/ heads up reasonably often with a large edge. I personally think grinding SnG's for a living is one of the more inefficient ways to make a wage in poker, it seems you have more players at 100bb/ mtts 'giving it away'.

I think it would be harsh to say on the forum. Also I think I have a pretty good grasp on their game now so I don't want them to read this and maybe reevaluate their play style.

I don't know if it's you but there's a player in the pools called TonnyP who seems good.