Full Ring vs. Short Handed SNGs

[Asgrow13]

Quick background: Right now I play the 9-handed $33+3 turbos on full tilt. I've had reasonable success... haven't played enough to know for sure, but my ROI is probably in the 10-12% range.

Anyway, recently I was talking to a good friend who is convinced that short handed (6 handed) SNGs are the way to go. He claimed the players were worse, there were more opportunities to force people to try to play poker and let them make mistakes, less luck involved, less variance etc. Basically he said that its possible to sustain a MUCH higher ROI, somewhere in like the 20-25% range, and the tourneys tend to be short leading to a big increase in hourly rate.

Does anyone out there play the 6-handed SNGs? If so, do you agree that a decent player will have a much higher ROI than at a 9 or 10 handed SNG with the same buyin? Also, I tend to play really really tight in the first few levels of the 9-handed SNGs... so those of you who play short-handed SNGs, does that strategy still apply, or do you use closer to 6max cash game starting hand requirements? I'm hesitant to switch games since I've spent a decent amount of time learning full ring SNG strategy, but if its true that the 6-handed SNGs are so crushable it seems like they might make more sense.
-Asgrow13

[AMT]

6 man strategy has many different angles to it right now because they have yet to be "figured out" in the way that 9 man sngs have, so its kind of difficult to answer your questions. ICM and tight early play does still play, different though because of the nature of short handed games and the 3 man bubble...its not necessarily easier to make money though, its basically a SNG strategy adjustment for the nature of the shorthanded games. if you ask a specific question someone may give you a better answer than the [censored] response i have just provided you with. gl.



edit: also, ROI ranges are difficult to determine because of how little we have to go on in the way of sample size of winning 6 man players.

[LordMushroom2]

Shorthanded STTs are harder to multi-table, thus they must be more profitable per table-hour to be equally attractive to multi-tablers.

I believe this is the case, and that shorthanded STTs have an ROI that is roughly 30% (not percentage-points) better than the longhanded STTs.

I am far away from having played enough STTs to back this up, though.

I think the correct way to play is the same as in longhanded ones, but you must loosen up your hand-requirements of course because you are fewer around the table.