Back to the Action!

I hope everyone has had a nice summer. I sure did! After 5 sunny weeks in Florida, I’m recharged and ready to get back to the tables.

 I started off the fall by breaking my one of my own rules (typical). Rather than sticking to the single table knockouts, I played a slew of $4/180 man sngs and $10 mtts. I had several final tables in the 180s, but no top 3 finishes. I also got deep in one mtt busting out 29th out of 10 000 players. Unfortunately, it was a freeroll and all the real money was at the final table. All in all, I donked off too much of my bankroll without any significant results, but did have a lot of fun doing it! After that misstep, I moved back to the knockouts.

I have been running a 22% ROI at the $1.40 knockouts, but dislike playing at that level. The ROI is nice, but the amount of real cash has made me impatient. To remedy this situation, I started testing the water at the next level which is $4.10 ($3 buy in + 0.75 bounty + 0.35 fee). My first few attempts went well. So, I started running sets of 4 which is much more comfortable than the sets of 12 at the $1 level. I then moved up to sets of 6 and am now testing sets of 8.

Multitabling 6-8 tourneys seems to be my current sweet spot. I can comfortably follow the action on these. Moreover, by the time I’m ITM, usually half the tables have closed. Thus, I can have 4 tables open without any overlap on my screen which allows me to get the reads necessary for the endgame play. I don’t plan on adding more tables.

My results at the $4 level are nearly identical to those from the $1 level. I have played just over 100 $4 knockouts and including bounties have a 19% ROI. More importantly, my actual profit per game has more than doubled. I have had too many 4th place and 2nd place finishes though. I’ll probably play another 100 or so of these before considering the next level which is $6.75 (5 + 1.25 + 0.50).

I have been rushing to get to the $6.75 knockouts simply because that is the first level where the Pokerstars fee is down to 10% of the buyin. As I’ve said before, the high fees at the micro levels eat up too much of your ROI. Also, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in skill levels between the lower buyin amounts.

It is worth noting that I have also played a handful of normal single table sngs at the micro levels, usually due to registering for the wrong tourney... Anyway, I have noticed that the knockout games are much more aggressive during the early stages of the game. The play resembles that of a tubo, except that the blinds are moving nice and slow. By the time the blinds get to 100/200 in a knockout, the tourney is at the bubble or already ITM. Whereas in the normal sngs there are still 6 or 7 players left at this point. I believe this difference to be important.

In the knockouts, I play ultra-tight the early levels only playing hands that I know exactly where I stand postflop. Sometimes I’ll get big hands and double up early, but typically, I get to the bubble without having played many, if any, hands. The blinds are still so low that this is not a problem. One well timed reraise against the sb who thinks he can steal from you every round and you are back in the game. In the normal sngs however, you are forced to shift gears while there are 6 or so players left which seems to make it slightly more difficult to get itm.

To sum things up: single table tourneys are building my bankroll and multi-table tourneys are depleting it. I guess I’ll stick to the sngs then for the time being :)

Good Luck at the tables!

Roland GTX

PS: We need to schedule the next private game for August. Benko asked me to suggest a date. How does Sunday 22 August at 9 PM work for everyone? Benko’s answer will take priority. So, I won’t set up the tourney until I hear from him.