Beginner's Guide to Self-Analyzing SNG Hands - Page 2

suzzer99 · #11 01-20-2006, 07:31 PM

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I was stuck with -ROI at the $33s for what seemed like forever.

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Like 3 weeks? Seriously I am impressed though. It's one thing to say "I have a 22% ROI over my last 213 SNGs from last Thursday until noon yesterday." and another to say "My BR went from A to B to C" and moving up so rapidly w/o losing your shirt.

Bazuul · #12 01-20-2006, 07:37 PM

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I can't get the poker tracker replayer to do anything while the hand is playing. It's like the whole UI is frozen. Does anyone else have this problem?

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Make sure win% isn't selected in the "Show" dialogue box in the upper-right corner of the replayer. I believe it enumerates all the possible outcomes before it gives you a result. If you have it selected when you replay a hand preflop, it basically locks up the UI while it runs through the outcomes of every possible flop/turn/river. I always leave mine off. If you want to experiment with it, turn it on while you are already looking at a flop against other players with known hole cards. The calculation with 2 cards to come is much much faster and it'll give you win% odds next to your screen name on the replayer. It tries to do what PokerStove does much more elegantly.

Pat, the author of PokerTracker, mentions that this is a limitation of the application environment that he designed PokerTracker with. So use PokerStove instead.

Hope this fixes the problem.

psyduck · #13 01-20-2006, 07:45 PM

This is amazing that you've gotten through to the 55s in just 10 weeks. It took me 6 months to do that (albeit I moved up veeeeery slowly and cautiously).

Very nice post. I have it bookmarked [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

suzzer99 · #14 01-20-2006, 07:50 PM

Are you supposed to count from when you started playing, or when you found 2+2 and decided to stop being a donk?

1C5 · #15 01-20-2006, 07:53 PM

I just tried this and it is kind of time consuming.

What I do for the set up which suits me better.

1. Get HH mailed to me after I bust out.
2. Review HH using the better (IMO) replayer on www.tightpoker.com
3. Keep everything else you said the same.

Can breeze through whole HH much quicker this way IMO.

Bazuul · #16 01-20-2006, 07:55 PM

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I was stuck with -ROI at the $33s for what seemed like forever.

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Like 3 weeks? Seriously I am impressed though. It's one thing to say "I have a 22% ROI over my last 213 SNGs from last Thursday until noon yesterday." and another to say "My BR went from A to B to C" and moving up so rapidly w/o losing your shirt.

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3 weeks doesn't seem like a terribly long time when you put it that way. However, when I say I'm playing/studying poker full-time, I mean 12-16 hours per day from five to seven days per week. Over the last 10 weeks I've played over three thousand SNGs.

The key to not losing your shirt is bankroll management. Always have at least 30 buyins for the level you are it. If you are new to poker, or not that strong a poker player, bump it up to 50 buyins. Myself, I find that I need 100 buyins to feel comfortable.

Picture this scenario... you have a BR of $440 and start playing the $22s. You finish OTM over 12 consecutive SNGs (which over the course of the last 3000 SNGs has happened many times for me), and suddenly over half your BR dissapeared. You start playing much tighter, and you start folding strong drawing hands to cbets. You're timid on the bubble, because you need to make it in the money. And of course we all know that being timid on the bubble is the surest way to bust out.

Now take the same scenario, and apply it to a $2.2k bankroll. Losing 12 SNGs in a row, you are barely below $2k. You don't wig out when you see your balance, even though it is depressing to lose that many in a row.

I think my background has prepared me well for becoming a full-time student of poker. I'm in my early 30s, other than a mortgage I'm debt free, and I don't depend on poker income. Few people can quit working and play poker for three months straight without ever dipping into their BR.

Also, since my networth is much higher than say a typical college student twelve years younger than me, I don't stress out about the money much. I could easily afford to BR myself for the $215s if I thought I was good enough to play them. I feel that my BR is a barometer of my skill, and while it fluctuates with variance, it is an indicator of where I'm at.

Since I already know I'm profitable at the $11s, it would be very difficult for me to go broke since if my bankroll dropped below $1k I'd go back to the $11s.

What I lack in poker skill, I try to make up for with discipline.

AnthonyV · #17 01-20-2006, 07:59 PM

great post man. congrats and good luck for continued success at the 109s.

cheers.

Bazuul · #18 01-20-2006, 08:09 PM

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I just wanted to add here that the process Bazuul has outlined can be quite time consuming. Often times when I am running badly I will play a set of 8, and then review in a fashion similar to what Bazuul has outlined. The main difference, however, is that I don't review every hand that I play. Rather I will usually just analyze the big hands that I have won and lost.

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You are what I would consider to be an experienced and accomplished SNGer. I think you are a better player than I am but I have a feeling that I might be better at bankroll management. And being that I wanted to hire you as my coach last year, (unfortunately you were unavailable at the time), I would also suspect that a lot of the mistakes this study method is designed to spot are simply not mistakes you make.

FWIW, I no longer review every HH. I'm 8-tabling the $55s and generally limit my hand review to SNGPT on tough bubbles and when I feel lost post-flop.

This guide was written with the beginning 2+2er in mind. Also, a beginning player might be playing the hands with big wins/losses well (only so many ways you can play QQ+/AK), I think a lot of newcomers bleed 50-100 chips here and there enough to warrant taking a microscope to their play. You'll know when reviewing every HH is a waste of time when you go hundreds of hands without finding obvious mistakes.

I think using this step-by-step method would definitely be a waste of your time, johnnybeef. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Bazuul · #19 01-20-2006, 08:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I just tried this and it is kind of time consuming.

What I do for the set up which suits me better.

1. Get HH mailed to me after I bust out.
2. Review HH using the better (IMO) replayer on www.tightpoker.com
3. Keep everything else you said the same.

Can breeze through whole HH much quicker this way IMO.

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I never had much luck getting that replayer to work on my system. It's much prettier to look at than the one on PokerTracker, and is a great way to flip through tourneys while you're eating a bowl of cereal, but I find that the inability to quickly scroll back and forth within a specific hand makes it unsuitable for my purposes. A lot of times I'll see someone make a wierd bet on the turn and I want to go back and see what they bet PF or on the flop.

But anything that helps you study and saves you time is a good thing, I'm sure your method works as well for others too.

XraySpeX · #20 01-20-2006, 08:20 PM

This really is an amazing post. I admire your discipline. I wish that discipline was an innate characteristic of my personality. As it is now I don't really have much to make up for my lack of skill..... other than my addictive personality and not liking to lose. I wish that I had the motivation to review every hand the way you have done.

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