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Dennis_

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That's a really brutal run! :wow:

IMO the biggest losing play styles in those SnGs are probably either big nits or underbluffers that are rarely able to win enough chips to cash (at least vs regs who quickly recognise to avoid calling bets from these players), or super aggro maniacs/calling stations (usually with no ICM understanding) that manage to donate all their chips before cashing.

I think quite often also SnG players neglect studying post flop too much and spend all their time studying ICM preflop ranges and all in spots. Maybe occasionally playing some cash games for a shorter stack (and studying the hands afterwards) at stakes that hardly matter might be an undervalued way of studying.

Anyway, I doubt any of this applies to you, but just in case. Probably just really bad luck, hopefully the luck turns for the better soon! :popeye:

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Always crazy that from the moment you run bad or play bad it feels like all the years of practice and studying goes out of the window and makes you think that people outplay you all the time. It's hard to keep confidence up when you have to take a big hit bankroll wise. From the examples it's easy to see you got the money in good so you just need to keep going. If you are 100% sure that you beat the games it's just down to variance so you have to keep playing and even move down depending on your bankroll management. Wish you all the best of luck!

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@Rushbie That´s easily said but I challenge everyone who goes through a really poor 20.000+ games stretch to just "deal with it"

@CuteRaven The biggest losers should be the ones with poor ICM play and the whales. I agree that the deepstacked play isn´t entirely irrelevant and it´s quite possible that the other regs even have an edge there over me, however I don´t think I am terrible. ICM play is more important however and that´s where I almost certainly have a big edge over the vast majority of the player pool.

@P0kerM0nk I agree, it totally scatteres the confidence. Moving down though would be entirely besides the point, as I would be missing out on the promo. My psyche is going to break way before my bankroll in any case

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@Dennis__Yeah those whales/maniacs/ICM fish are def the biggest losers, I think the super nit regs come after them in terms of how much they lose.

I think it's often underestimated how much postflop actually matters in these SnG in the early stages. Having the big stack on the bubble has a lot of extra EV that ICM does not measure, because the big stack is expected to force so many folds/steal so many blinds. I might have understood wrong of course, I'm def not an expert!

Anyway, I'm sure you know the strats better than I do :D. Just some ideas on what could be studied more still. If you a really good at ICM then maybe the logical thing to do is put more focus on postflop or early stage ranges when studying?

But yeah I don't think you are bad postflop based on what I have seen.

 

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Fortuna was a bit nicer to me today. I managed to win a couple of flips as well as deliver some beats and coolers. On top of that I cleared 40€ of the welcome bonus and cashed in on some of the small tickets from the rakeback program. I cut the losses by 400€. That´s still -900€ but hey, maybe we can make something work.

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You can't ever use a hand like TT as a 4b fold imo. The decision point is whether to 4bet run it, jam yourself, or nit fold. Tens has no relevant blockers to a 5bj range to use as a 4b fold. AK is gonna be a pure shove for a lot of the 5man sng regs I think. Villain may also trap AA pre. If you were ever gonna 4b fold in this spot, use AQ.

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I've enjoyed catching up on last 6 months of this blog, tough run, I've been there, when you think it can't get worse, it absolutely can. 

TT hand is very tough, difficult to say without knowing your reads on the btn. I'm never 4 bet shoving and folding to 3bet is def an option.  4betting can be good because hj or co can make bad decisions; either co or hj flats or hj shoves and we have a reasonably easy call.

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what a turmoil today. Started out with an amazing run at 25s. But as good as I ran at 25s, that bad did I run at 50s. Sigh. Couldn´t win a meaningful allin. Soon the playerpool grew enough at 50s and the odd 100s to play them exclusively while still getting most of my volume on Party Poker (where I consistently ran quite well). After about 9 hours of grinding things turned a bit and I finally got following much appreciated message for the first time

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followed by a few other rather fortunate turns,  ending the day exactly where I started it. Gotta take it.

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the session started bad again. Losing my flips, what else. There was a fortunate turn though with me cashing both 100s, one first and one second. The loss is now at 560€. I will finish my weekly volume on Party Poker now and then use tomorrow to study a little bit and relax before the big grind starts

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first hour of the challenge. The action wasn´t great. One 50 and only a few 25s. Games soft as always:happy:but that could easily change in the near future. I won the 50 but ran really bad in the 25s. Managed to make up another 40€ though. The extra few bucks when cashing are certainly being felt

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day 1/28

Set a new record. Played for 13 hours straight. I played the table count down a bit once to go to the toilet and prepare supper, but still had a few games running all throughout. I am number 1 on the leaderboard now but the difference to number 2 is quite small. 3rd is way behind though. The games were significantly tougher than usual, unsurprisingly. There are still a few recreationals and bad regs though. But the environment could easily change rather quickly.

 

My results were a complete rollercoaster again. I got crushed at 25s and 50s for the first 2 hours, being something like 600€+ down at some point. In stark contrast I absolutely sunrunned at the 100s. Nice, right? Well, they were far and few between unfortunately, so it didn´t really make up for the misery endured elsewhere. The post midnight part of the session showed some compassion though, I had some success at 25s and 50s (100s had dried up by that point). We are now down 170€ from the original deposit.

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Very nice! You dug yourself out of the hole in only about a weeks time.

Funny looking ICM spot. I wonder how these sorts of dynamics affect postflop play, probably the small blind can play pretty crazy aggro 🤣. Maybe a lot of huge overbets to threaten stacking the big blind (if the big blind is aware of ICM)?

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day 3/28

I´m a bit gobsmacked. I played 12,5 hours straight without a break, considerable amount of tables and I was present in every 50+ (with no 100s running today). Despite all of that, nr2 cut the gap by a full 90 points and nr 3 isn´t far behind either. That means that the individual on number 2 had to play 90 SNGs MORE than me. That´t what I call dedication.

Anyway, I sunrunned the first 4 hours of the day, then had some mixed results and got destroyed quite badly for the last 4 hours. In the end I won another 540€, which doesn´t even feel that good because we had literally twice the profits at one point but of course I should be happy with it. 

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day 4/28

today was one of those days where everything I do seems wrong. I lost 1.435€. That is a new negative record. I probably won less than ten 50s in the 12 hours of play. It just feels like whatever I do, it always ends in disaster. I feel like just burying myself and never doing anything ever again.

Fwiw I have a 353 points lead on nr 3, so realistically speaking it´s a fight for 1st and 2nd place now.

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Oh no, that's a terrible run :/.

While playing today, I was thinking that some of the highest volume players on the tables seemed streched a bit thin by playing too many tables (or could just be tired). Folding a lot to aggression, timing out, never really bluffing...I was thinking that by playing so much volume it's possible to lose much more EV than the prizes of the leaderboards are worth. I don't know if this applies to you as well or not (although I think I know which alias you played with today), or if it applies to any of the players. Could also just be some sort of small sample size illusion of mine.

GL in recovering from this downswing :)!

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Unlucky Dennis. Brutal to lose that amount in one day.   

FWIW I think CuteRaven is right. The 5man SnG format is all about eking out profit from high volume and small edges. It's obviously great playing in games that are rake free, but it seems like the games have got so much tougher on average that they really aren't any more profitable than they were before. Instead of paying the site rake, I think it's just a case of everybody's ROI has reduced and win rates might even be lower now than they would have been before, paying rake.

I also think it's naive, maybe even a little arrogant to think that you can get away with playing maximum tables or close and maximum stakes all day and expect to have the same edge that you're used to having.  Especially if you are playing the 100s too. I have played maybe 5 100's on here, all pre promo and they were super reggy then, all the ones I played were 5 reg affairs, I can only imagine they've got even worse with this promo.

I think you also need to evaluate whether it's worth it. Going balls to the wall, 12 hour sessions every day for 125 euros difference in the leaderboard. It seems hard not to lose MUCH more than that in ev from worse plays/ misclicks/ time outs/ mental strain/ tiredness/ fatigue/ mistakes from mass tabling over the course of the week. Promo's like this should be about the pursuit of profit at the tables with leaderboards as a bonus imo. For all you know 2nd place could be down thousands and it's a lot of the regs lower down the leaderboard who are scooping up a lot of the money at the tables.   

I also agree with CuteRaven in regards to what he said about high volume players. There is one fairly high volume reg who's game I am a bit unimpressed with. (I'm pretty sure it isn't you).

There are gonna be decent players like Raven jumping into these games playing maybe 4-6 tables and getting all sorts of reads on all opponents and being able to exploit the mass tabling regs who are forced to play a more auto-piloty GTO strategy/ exploitative strategy vs pool tendancies because they have too many tables to follow the action.  

Sucks for you to have such a horrible day after clawing back your downswing. I'm sure the game quality will be better over the weekend so hopefully the poker gods will be kind to you. I still think hiding your balance for things like this is benificial mentally. I think with the approach you're taking it is very possible to lose money over the course of the promo which would be a disaster when you're putting in so many hours. You're lowering your ROI per game in exchange for more volume which is gonna increase the swings. I think the games have been reggy enough since the start of the promo that you have sufficient reason to have doubts about how much of an ROI you actually have when playing so many tables.

 Good luck. I enjoy reading your updates.

 

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You are both right of course, playing many tables causes unnecessary errors and might not be max EV. I am, however, keeping the table count low enough to barely ever time out, differentiate between regs and recs and have some bluffs in spots where people are generally quite value heavy. Sure there are some misclicks, misreads and tough decisions where I am lacking the time to think it through properly. But you also have to keep in mind that high volume isn't solely for the leaderboard. If I can halfen my winrate for the sake of getting in twice the volume let's say I would end up with the same table profits.

I will finish this week with the same volume, then reevaluate. Maybe I'll head for 3rd place next week

Edit: out of curiosity, who do you think I was at the tables @CuteRaven and which reg do you mean @Groggy?

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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.

 

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