Normal vs Knockout SnGs Revisited

After playing more than 750 single table $4.10 knockouts since August, I thought it was about time to take a new look at my results to see if knockouts are helping or hurting my winnings. I requested an account audit from Pokerstars so that I could see all the bounties, even from the tourneys where I wasn’t itm.

If we ignore the bounties and consider these to be $3.35 tourneys (this is what Sharkscope and Pokerprolabs do), then I have a 16% ROI which is equal to 0.52 profit per game. I’m happy with this and to see I’m at least making money playing these things.

If we look at the bounties alone, I have won 578 bounties in 765 games. I’m losing money on the bounties averaging less than one bounty per game (75%).

If we put it all together and simply consider these to be $4.10 games, then I have an ROI of 8% which is equal to 0.33 cents profit per game. In other words, I’m a winning player at this level, but the knockouts are taking a huge chunk out of my profit. I doubt the knockouts are that much softer than the normal sngs. The rake however is too high in the normal $3.40 sng. So, I need to move up to the $5.50 level.

I’m going to test the waters playing $5.50 normal sngs for the time being and see how they work out. I need a 6% ROI to equal the 33 cent profit per game I have had with the knockouts. Hopefully, I can manage a bit better.

I played two sets of $5 games yesterday. My first impression was that people were more cautious durng the early blind levels and not busting out as fast as they do in the knockouts. However, most players were also too passive on the bubble. I won money the firs set, lost money the second and ended the evening up one dollar – lol! Profitable, but not exactly 33 cents per game.

I’ll keep you updated as always.

Roland GTX

Improved Step Tickets

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I won a Step 1 ticket in a Pokerlistings freeroll last week. My goal was to convert this into a Step 4 ticket that could then be used to enter the Sunday Million. After bouncing up and down through 4 games, I still had a Step 2 ticket. Previously, there was no way to cash out these tickets before reaching Step 4 ($215). So, unless you were serious about winning a package like benkogambit, the Steps weren't a good investment.

However, last night I clicked on "Tournament Tickets..." in the Pokerstars lobby and was surprised to see a whole slew of cash prize tourneys that I could enter using my Step 2 ticket ($27).  Rather than taking the greater risk of trying to reach Step 4, I regged for a $22 buyin + $5 bounty knockout MTT with 15 minute blinds. There were about 250 entrants and the top 45 were itm. There were plenty of platinum and supernova vips in the tourney, but people were playing as if it was a $4/180.

I doubled up on the first hand of the tourney winning one bounty. Then stacked another guy winning a 2nd bounty a bit later and was among the chipleaders. With less than 100 players left a lot of middle sized stacks were getting desperate and all in shoves preflop were becoming the norm. A guy with 3000 chips shoved and it folded around to me in the bb with about 5.500 chips. I was holding KK and made the call but lost the hand and most of my stack with it.  I never recovered from that loss, but did manage to get itm ending up 34th. This was not my Sunday Million dream, but $44 bucks profit from a freeroll is definitely welcome.

Well, the point of all this is that the lower level Step tickets can now be used to enter certain other tourneys. This makes them a very interesting option. Let us know if anyone else takes this route.

Roland GTX

December Private Game

Seabreeze sent me the info for our last tourney of the season, and it is already set up at Pokerstars. Let's hope for a good turnout.

PS: I'll be gunning for you MrE and I'll be playing to win! I've been working on my Gus Hanson maniac style preparing for the December game. If you are ahead of me, be prepared for some action if you dare raise. If you are after me, be prepared for being forced to call a preflop shove for all your chips. One of us will be the first man knocked out out of the tourney if I have my way - LOL!

Roland GTX

Step 1 Rollercoaster

I played a PokerListings freeroll on Sunday and won a Step 1 ticket which I put to use last night while playing a set of $4.10 knockouts. It was a good evening all around, but as this game shows, I had some huge swings in luck! I haven't reviewed the game myself yet, but I was happy with my tight-aggressive play.

Step 1

November Leader board

Here is the updated leader board with MrEMC2 sitting rather comfortably on top - congrats! Seabreeze in in charge of the December game, our last tourney of 2010.

Private game november 2010

Hi,
here's the hh for yet another exciting private game. It turned out to be as expected, with MrS, Roland and myself playing extremely tight, just to make sure we're not running into some nasty early bustout :-)))
Haven't analyzed the hh yet, but I was getting lucky at the right time, and managed to knock out Roland on a coin flip. I'm not certain about all the other hands as I was playing a 10/27 at the same time, where I made it HU and 2nd place with a nice cashout of $72.
I was lucky to get either the right hands, or the right hits when needed, and knocked out the others one by one. Sorry for the Ax ag Kx, seabreeze. Congrats to Wollmar and Seabreeze for itm, it was 2nd in a row for u, seabreeze?

Tough Competition in a 2/180

Well, I was going to post a hand history from the end game of a 2/180, but could get the replayer to work. I ended up 2nd at any rate. It was a typical donk-fest and I got quite lucky myself a few times. Anyway,  even though most of the players in these things are horrible, there are always some scary-good players lurking as I realized at the final table of this one.

I had a huge chip lead at the final table and was getting playable hands. However, after getting an all in reraise response to my first steal attempt vs MRL123 (he was to my left) I knew that he wasn't to be messed with. I decided the best course of action was to put my big stack to use and deny all reraise opportunities by going into push - fold mode. This worked nicely until we were down to the final three. I was still chipleader with about 120K and the other two each had about 75K. I was steadily wearing them down when I shoved from the btn with 99. yadonesun11 final picked up a hand and called with AA. MRL123 got knocked out shortly thereafter and I was heads up with about 1/4 of the chips.

 In the first hand heads up, yadonesun11 completed from the sb and the flop was KK2. I thought my 52s looked pretty good so I shoved in all my chips. He insta-called holding K5o and won the tourney.

Check out the stats on these two TAG players: MRL123 and yadonesun11 - yikes!  I didn't check them until after the game, but I'm glad I avoided trying to outplay them post flop - they are not what I typically expect in these tourneys!

I hope to see you in Sunday's Private Game!

Roland GTX