Sit & Go Tournament Poker: If 96% favorite isn't good enough....

Can`t really add to the fine advice already given to the OP.

You said it yourself Jazz, the game is getting you down and you aren`t enjoying playing at the moment. A while back, after months of bad beats, I also became disaffected with the game I had previously loved. I gave up playing altogether for around 7-8 weeks and considered never returning. Of course I did return. Anyways, I tried stepping up from $5/$10 mtt`s to $20/$30 mtt`s/stt`s.

My return to the felt was very successful, netting over 7.5k profit over the next fortnight. Playing with a more relaxed outlook, better knowledge of the game and a step up in levels helped me enormously.

Go bury your head in the Chess board for a few weeks and return refreshed and properly ready for action.Hope it works for you! Shug

man...i know hwo it is....my variance is so wild i have seen my ROI go from almost 200% to - something back up to 100% back down to almost 0 in a 3 month period

Come on, you're more intelligent than that. Who cares what the odds were once 4 cards had come out? It's when you get your money in that matters. Keep getting it in good, and you'll win in the long term.

I don't even need to tell you this. You're going to be a winning player in the long term, because you have a good grasp of the principles and you're striving to improve your results. They'll improve, as long as you don't let the red mist take over.

FWIW, I think you should play $5 games exclusively until you're rolled for $20. Then mix $10 games with $20 games and see how it goes. This experiment is just too dependant on circumstancial luck for my liking.

then I sure as hell can't win as a 3:1 favorite. This is such **** ****.

Game #4668190299: $20 + $2 Sit & Go (35408926), Table 1 - 80/160 - No Limit Hold'em - 18:25:41 ET - 2007/12/29

Seat 1: frankieditori (2,470)

Seat 2: STLRams73 (2,620)

Seat 4: Oskarsson (1,650)

Seat 5: JazzOne (1,215)

Seat 8: Nubtard (2,300)

Seat 9: x Sparks x (3,245)

x Sparks x posts the small blind of 80

frankieditori posts the big blind of 160

The button is in seat #8

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to JazzOne [Ac Qs]

STLRams73 folds

Oskarsson folds

JazzOne has 15 seconds left to act

JazzOne raises to 1,215, and is all in

Nubtard has 15 seconds left to act

Nubtard calls 1,215

x Sparks x folds

frankieditori folds

JazzOne shows [Ac Qs]

Nubtard shows [Ah Tc]

*** FLOP *** [2s Jc 7c]

*** TURN *** [2s Jc 7c] [Ks]

*** RIVER *** [2s Jc 7c Ks] [Qc]

JazzOne shows a pair of Queens

Nubtard shows a straight, Ace high

Nubtard wins the pot (2,670) with a straight, Ace high

JazzOne stands up

Yeah, you seem to have little to no steam control. And the questions you have been posing lately indicate that you aren't confident in your game, even for pretty basic decisions. I think you're doing this strategy because you're bored and frustrated. You need to develop some patience. Try meditation maybe.

Glad we're on the same page ForClosure...sorry for stepping into you earlier, I hope we can move on.

I just deposited my first 50 2 days ago. I've had A8s with a AA8 flop get cracked by quad 3s, and plenty of other bad beats. I lost 25 dollars within an hour, luckily i was able to pick myself up and am now above my original deposit of 50. With comes horrible swings, and can just be so much worse. Try to relax and not go on , that's how I lost my money.

Have you seen my recent posts? I lost as a 96% favorite with one card to come. I got AA cracked by some knucklehead playing T6s. I mean seriously, this is getting a bit unreal. What are the chances of losing all those **** hands? You could for a year and not see half the **** I've seen in the past three days.

I have repeated this question over and over, and I never get a satisfactory answer. How can you get 30% ROI when these suck outs happen over and **** over. I'm so disgusted with FTP right now. I'd like to know when I'll get one suckout go my way. Oh wait, never, because I don't **** call off my chips with A rag!!!! ****!

I really want everyone to start holding on to their hand histories, because the software I am writing will clearly depict what happened AFTER all the money went in, and how much you were ACTUALLY ahead/behind. The numbers won't lie, that much is for sure, so stay tuned...

It's not, and I never said it was. That was a reference to a different thread. Try participating in the forum for a while before getting sarcastic, OK Chief?

The running bad part seems to be a theme lately for most everyone. I was just in a $6 turbo and in that game I saw quad queens vs aces over queens and quad 8's vs a str8. The river had the magic cards of course

Unfortunately you are only a favourite, not a certainty.

Peace and Love x

I mean no card on the turn could make him the best hand, but then again, backdoor gutshot SD is a legitimate draw on

Thank you Riddim. You do give good advice. I hope there are no hard feelings and sorry about my less than tactful beginning here in these forums.

Peace,

ForClosure

Amen Riddim.

If you were running bad over hundreds of SnGs, maybe I'd feel sorry for you Jazz, but we all go through hot and cold streaks. It's called variance.

No he wasn't.

You guys are partly right. I'm sick and tired of playing $5.50 games. That's the crux of it. I'd rather quit than keep playing these micro stakes. It's getting to be a huge waste of my time. My goal from the beginning was to move up, and variance has kicked my ass every time I try to. I know it seems like I'm tilting, but I post these hands to sort of prove that my losses are coming in large part due to ****. And I don't mean 55/45 ****, I mean 96/4 ****. Check this out:

Game #4672487463: $5 + $0.50 Sit & Go (35441589), Table 1 - 100/200 - No Limit Hold'em - 1:39:47 ET - 2007/12/30

Seat 4: JazzOne (740)

Seat 5: fenlar (7,190)

Seat 6: kingsbaseball (2,260)

Seat 7: Soundchaser777 (3,310)

JazzOne posts the small blind of 100

fenlar posts the big blind of 200

The button is in seat #7

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to JazzOne [Kh 6h]

kingsbaseball folds

Soundchaser777 folds

JazzOne raises to 740, and is all in

fenlar calls 540

JazzOne shows [Kh 6h]

fenlar shows [6d 7d]

*** FLOP *** [9h 7h Ah]

*** TURN *** [9h 7h Ah] [7c]

*** RIVER *** [9h 7h Ah 7c] [9c]

JazzOne shows a flush, Ace high

fenlar shows a full house, Sevens full of Nines

fenlar wins the pot (1,480) with a full house, Sevens full of Nines

JazzOne stands up

The blinds are now 120/240

I lost a coin flip where I was favored to get short stacked. Now my dominant hands loses to some more ****.

Oh, and the money went in on the turn on that 96% hand ostrich. There was one card to come, and he was drawing to two outs.

I wish everyone would leave me alone about this. I want help with my table strategy. The bankroll thing is a done deal. I will either move up, or I will find out that I'm not good enough to play for the stakes I want to play for. Either way, it's go time. I'll either be around for while or not, but I'm not going to play $5.50 for another year. Seriously, I don't see the point of continuing to playing $5.50 games. What am I trying to do? Build another $1,000 bankroll so I can keep playing for nickels? It's pointless, and I don't enjoy it anymore. I want to move up or take a looooong break. An average $5.50 takes an hour to play, and my average profit is under $1. I make $35 per hour during the day, and then I come home and play for $0.50 per hour. I'm not trying to for a living or anything, but I'm just saying that my time is worth more than $0.50 per hour, especially after some of the **** I've seen lately.

Everyone thinks I'm tilting because of the money. I'm frustrated that I see ridiculous plays rewarded over and over. Just once I'd like to play in a game where a donkey didn't get a huge chip lead and hammer the table to death with QJ raises under the gun.

I'm really starting to regret quitting chess to focus on . At least in chess it's clear why you lost. You can't get mad at someone else for your own poor play. When I I feel like I'm trying to exploit a tiny statistical edge. I'm like a casino, making a penny on every dollar. It just bugs the **** out of me when I get my money in with a huge edge, and I constantly lose. Then I see people with enormous ROIs, and I wonder how it's even possible to do that. How do they avoid suckouts?

I guess I have some tough decisions to make, but to me $5.50 is chump change. I gave a bum $10 the on Chirstmas eve because I felt horrible. I was buying tamales for my family, and my girlfriend and my daughter were playing in my Infiniti sports car, and this guy was outside in the cold, hungry. $10 means nothing to me. I felt good to give that guy a tamale and a few bucks. After losing a couple games to complete idiots, I feel like a horse kicked me in the gut. Perhaps one of the reasons I want to move up is simply to lose to better opponents. I am tired of losing to complete idiots. And if I can't beat $11 tournaments, then I'm not a good player anyway, and I should probably quit.Last edited by JazzOne on Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:29 am; edited 6 times in total

If I had to guess, I'd say that the pre-flop all-in is where most folks get the major irk factor, and is the source of a lot of frustration. When playing micro stakes, all-ins are extremely common at almost every point of the SNG or MTT, and I think you will encounter many a situation where you come out on the bottom, only to be left feeling disparaged. This is the area of my game I have been working on more than any other - out play my opponenet post-flop. Take the following hand for example:

Stars, $10 + $1 NL Hold'em Tournament, 300/600 Blinds, 8 Players

UTG+1: 12,375

MP1: 10,170

MP2: 20,810

CO: 8,953

BTN: 3,295

SB: 10,908

Hero (BB): 7,855

UTG: 14,150

Pre-Flop: (1,350) A J dealt to Hero (BB)

7 folds, SB raises to 1,800, Hero raises to 7,805 and is All-In, SB calls 6,005

Flop: (16,060) T K 6 (2 Players - 2 are All-In)

Turn: (16,060) 7 (2 Players - 2 are All-In)

River: (16,060) 4 (2 Players - 2 are All-In)

Results: 16,060 Pot

SB showed 2 2 (a pair of Deuces) and WON 16,060 (+8,205 NET)

Hero showed A J (high card Ace) and LOST (-7,855 NET)

This was a $10 rebuy with a prize pool over $100K. I wanted to take the approach of not rebuying or adding on, so I played very TAG. At this point in the tourney, I began to sense that my opponents viewed my blinds as "free", and I had also been really cold-decked the whole tourney. So I made a play back at what I thought was an attempt by my opponent to steal from me. Instead, I wound up in a coin toss for my entire tourney life which I naturally lost. Immediately, I analyzed this hand and asked myself if that was the right play. I deemed that it was an OK push, but that if I really wanted to give myself a longer tourney life, I should of either flat called to see a flop or folded. A brave move would of been to re-raise without shoving to show strength, but I don't think I had enough stack for that.

In the end, my point is that I want to reduce the number of pre-flop all-ins that are flips. When you lose these, they are often in very important situations, and when added to your "real" bad beats - cracked AA for example, they can really grind your nerves down to nothing. Now I know the OP was not a race condition, but I just wanted to add to what Riddim said, because it made me further realize that if you want to solely rely on your skill level, you need to play post-flop as much as possible when you are going to put your entire stack on the line.

I fully understand where Jazz is coming from (as far as , not the $38/hour job). I often feel like I frequently take more beats than anyone else. That and a combination that I have an amazing ability to go card dead for long periods of time, that when I finally get a hand, I get sucked out on and I'm out of a tournament. Or in Omaha8, where I turn the nuts, only to have the river constantly send me out. It is very frustrating, and why I only play $5 games and lower. I seem to have gone on more bad streaks than good streaks.

This being said, I do have times where I simply do not feel like playing or busy with other stuff. If I don't feel like playing, I won't. I try to use this as fun and a chance to bring in an extra $50 to my income if I do well enough. I pull $50 at a time. I've been playing on my current bankroll for 2 months, and it started when someone transferred me $5.50 to play an MBJ Season 4 tourney. I won $67.50 from it, and have played on it ever since, even withdrawing $50 at one point.

To Jazz, just keep grinding it out. Try some multi-table SNG or tournies. A deep run in those can help your mind frame. Also, play some of the forum events if you're worried about bad players. There are very few in these (almost none in the MBJ). In the end, it should be fun, as I don't know of anyone in here who does this for a living. It's ok to vent for a little bit, but if it's still bothering you 30-60 mins. later, try taking a break.

One final thing and I'll be done is try not outplay everyone on every hand. I can run into problems doing this. At some point, I will realize people will not always fold bottom pair no matter what, and it might take some time to realize who these people are. What you probably try to do and I do to is to put your opponent in a tough situation and make them think. What is upsetting is when you make the perfect play, and yet they call with a very marginal hand that is good. I believe most of them don't do it because they think they have the best hand, but because they have a pair and will go for it. One thing I'm working on is that not all players have the same knowledge as we do, and while it's nice to take advantage of, it's frustrating when they "luck" out and win. Good luck at the tables and hope your and all of our luck may turn with the start of the new year.

Let our hands win when they should and allow us a suckout every now and then.

Jazz, you're properly rolled for $10 SNGs and you feel that you have the skills to beat that level, then I'd suggest you play those games exclusively. You have over 40 buy-ins at that level, and I'm sure that you will probably get enough of a thrill winning at that level to justify playing it.

If you go on a run that brings you down to $250ish, then you may need to re-think things. It seems to me that your game is plenty good to beat that level.

Quit this silly experiment and focus on the $10 games, and nothing else.

Whats up Jazzone! The popularity of this article pursuaded me to read it. I cant argue with any of the great advice here; minus the comments of jungleman12> your opponent is not drawing dead unless the hand he is drawing to cannot win buddy and minus the negative feedback of heinekin007> a better question back to him would probably be how is it not a 96% percent favorite to win (wouldnt hold my breathe on a reply). Moving forward, it doesnt sound like you are on at all. You are not questioning perfectly logical play. Just seems like you are tired of the natural downswings of that are keeping you from reaching the next limit and are venting on this thread... understandable.

You asked a question about strategy. I have one suggestion, I dont know how well you could descibe this as strategy, but it involves short stack situations pre-flop. I saw no problem at all with the all in move that you made in the hand at the begining of this thread.... short stack & a hand worth moving all in with. A way I like to vary this move at times when I am short stacked w/ a marginal hand and know my all in pre-flop will be called by someone who has me covered (especially out of position) is by just calling and immediately moving all in on the flop regardless of what hits. The opponent might see something that scares em and in return fold, but in the situation you descibed it probably wouldnt have changed much because of the weak cards he was capable of calling with plus the fact that he got a piece of the flop. Nonetheless its just away I like to vary the all in move @ times.

Thanks for the encouragement. I am planning on depositing some more money soon. Plus, I just qualified for Iron Man, so I'll be getting a bonus in January.

A lot of people have commented on my apparent . I have thought about that a little bit tonight. Even though I get very upset by suckouts, I don't really change my approach to the game or get impatient. It may be difficult to see that given my angry posts, but I use this forum to vent my frustrations so I don't at the table. I've been getting my money in good nearly every game, so I'm happy with my play.

My girlfriend says I am probably frustrated with right now because I've been playing a ton of games to make my Iron Man qualifications. Now that Iron Man is over for December, I can relax and get down to some quality .