Advanced SNG Tactics - Calling Wide on the Bubble

Today I'd like to take some time to "give something back" to the poker community by explaining an exciting new strategy I have developed to exploit aggressive regs on the bubble of 6-max SNGs. Let me just preface it by saying that this is an advanced strategy and not for the faint of heart!

Let's look at an example from a SNG I played recently.

***** Hand History for Game 11705492463 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $109 USD Buy-in Trny: 69050498 Level: 5  Blinds(150/300)
Table Speed #2094209 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 3/6
Seat 5: Hero ( 5,400 )
Seat 3: Villain ( 6,000 )
Seat 2: Player 3 ( 600 )
Trny: 69050498 Level: 5
Blinds(150/300)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero[  Jc 8s ]
Player 3 folds
Villain is all-In  [5,850]
Hero calls [5,100]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jh, 2c, Th ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]
Villain shows [ Kc, Kd ]a pair of Kings.
Hero shows [ Jc, 8s ]two pairs, Jacks and Eights.
Villain wins 600 chips from the side pot 1 with a pair of Kings.
Hero wins 10,800 chips from the main pot with two pairs, Jacks and Eights.

Here we're on the bubble of a $109 6-max SNG. So far so good! After the cripple stack folds Villain is going to exploit his big stack by shoving into us super wide. Let's suppose for this example that he's shoving a range of 100% here. Now, conventional strategy would tell us to fold and wait for aces. The problem is that Villain is going to keep shoving and we're going to blind away, looking really stupid in the process.

But hold your hoses, what if we fight fire with fire? What would happen if we exploit Villain by calling 100% of the time? "That's it! David's finally lost it!" I hear you cry, metaphorically. But wait, before you lock me away and throw up the key let's just look at the maths.

Villain is shoving 100%. That means if I call with a range of 100% we will both have exactly the same range.

If we both have the same range then clearly we will both have 50% equity in the pot. 

If we win, we'll double up and be almost guaranteed to cash every single time.

Any good reg will tell you, an "in the money" percentage above 40% in 6-max turbos is excellent, and here we can expect an "in the money" percentage close to 50%! Obviously if we lose then we just chalk it up to a bad beat and move on - there's no point worrying when you lose a coinflip in poker.

When Villain shoved in the example above I put him on a range of something like J7s. That made J8 an even easier call because I have his range dominated (unless he makes a flush). I was actually very unlucky that Villain turned up with KK here, given his wide range. Fortunately the luck evened out on the board and I took it down.

An added bonus with this strategy is that it makes you extremely difficult to read. How can your opponents ever put you on a hand when you could be calling with literally any 2 cards?

Let me know any success stories you have in the comments, and happy hunting!

David

Beats, Brags, Variance and Goals

Well so far the storm I had planned for April / May has been more of a shower. My goal of unlocking all 60 cards in the VIP500 promotion earlier this month was doomed from the start. I started well, grinding close to the required 1500 points for the first couple of days. However, traffic on the party network has been declining this year and it soon became apparent that I wasn't able to get in enough volume during daytime hours, resulting in me changing my schedule to play mainly at peak times (between 4pm and midnight UK time). This was also doomed to failure as there are far too many distractions in the evening to lure me away from poker, resulting in me trying to make up the hours between 12 and 4am when the games are also dead. All round a pretty bad idea!

 

Beat

Unfortunately poker has also been taking a back seat to real life. In the last few weeks I had a friend's stag do, his wedding, a wedding shower (for my fiance), a couple of family birthdays, a meeting with our wedding planner, buying our wedding rings, the list goes on! Of course I could have made my apologies and skipped some of these events, but one of the best things about being a poker player is having the flexibility to make time for friends and family. Of course the flexibility of being a poker player is both a gift and a curse. It's easy to blame external events but really it's my responsibility to build a proper routine and find time to put the hours in.

Brag
On the plus side I finally hit 100,000 points which means I can unlock the $20k bonus from the WPT store. Until now most of the rakeback I have earned this year has been tied up in these points so it will be nice to finally see some of the cash monies. I was also lucky enough to win a free iPad 2 in the VIP500 promotion which should be delivered this week. I'm incredibly excited about this as I've always wanted a tablet but never really been able to justify the cost. Now that it's on it's way I've already made a list of about 30 that I want apps for it. Oops, another distraction from poker!

Variance
When I have been playing I've been enjoying some swings. In the last 4 weeks at the tables I quickly lost $1.5k, then had a nice $5.5k upswing followed swiftly by a $3.5k downswing. All pretty much par for the course when I'm playing so many (super) turbos with a high rake and plenty of regs for company. After rakeback and bonuses I'm still up about $4 or $5k so no complaints.

Goals
I find that I work best under pressure, when I have clear goals with tangible outcomes and rewards. In order to clear the $20k bonus I need to grind another 25,000 WPT points. So my aim is to do that by the 16th of June, grinding approx. 6000 points per week. This will be tough but definitely achievable. The only problem is that (you guessed it) I have a lot on in the next few weeks with my own stag do, my fiance's 21st birthday and, oh yeah, a wedding 6 weeks away! Still, as an incentive if I do manage it I'll be rewarding myself with a TV for the bedroom, which would be pretty sweet.

Here's hoping you run good (unless you're at my table).

David

The Eye of the Storm

So far April seems to have been the calm after the storm. I think I burned myself out more than I realised after putting so much volume in during March. The $4000 pot of gold at the end of the Gladiator rainbow was such a good incentive that I tricked myself into believing I had overcome the motivational issues that have plagued me this year. As it turns out... I haven't, and with the promotion over they are back with a vengeance. The good news is that another promotion is starting next Monday and I plan to get back to some major grinding. So maybe April is really the eye of the storm?

Interestingly, the new promotion is VIP only (Palladium+), and to get max value from it a truly epic grind will be required. Pushing myself hard last month worked really well, so I'm going to give it my best. I'll need to rake $15,000 in 21 days (about 1500 party points per day). I was raking 1200 points per day in March so it should be easy, right? The problem is that I have a friend's wedding and other commitments that will mean I can't play at all on probably 4 of the 21 days, meaning I'll have to rake closer to 1800 points per day, which will be really tough. As I'm typing this I read an interesting quote on the Party Poker thread on 2p2:

I was thinking about grinding those 60 cards but then i realized i don't hate myself that much.

 -OMGKaraScott

A fair point. I'm going to hit it hard for the first week and see how things go. On the plus side if I succeed I think all the bonuses will tally up to over $10,000 (depending how lucky I am with the random prizes). Not bad for 3 week's work!

Although I haven't been playing a lot of poker this month I've been using my time fairly productively getting on with wedding plans, home improvement and spending time with friends and family. I've also upgraded my setup with a new PC tower. I went for a fairly basic model and with the help of a friend installed a better graphics card and an SSD to run my OS and all my poker software. So far I'm loving the SSD: Windows 7 Ultimate loads completely in under 10 seconds and it should handle mass multi-tabling a lot better than my poor laptop. I'll post a few pictures of my setup in a future post.

So wish me luck for grinding my ass off for the next 3 weeks! Today I just feel like doing this...

Palladium Elite, Gladiator and Pussies

Well so much for more regular updates in 2012! Must try harder...

Poker Updates

At the start of the year my plan was to multi-site Pokerstars and Party Poker, with the aim of retaining my Supernova status on Stars whilst attaining Palladium Elite status on Party. I found it harder than I expected to juggle 2 sites, so I've focussed most of my attention on Party. As a result I sadly lost my Supernova status at the end of March. However, I was successful in attaining Palladium Elite on Party.

Turbo SNGs on Party have very short levels which leads to smaller edges and lower attainable ROIs. Therefore my income this year will be much more dependent on rakeback. Fortunately, in my experience so far, Party have been really good at providing regular bonuses and promotions.

In March Party Poker ran a huge promotion called Gladiator. This promotion was heavily dependent on volume of play, leading to a lot of grinder regs making the games extremely tough. A lot of the turbo games running were -EV to play pre-rakeback. However, with all the bonuses I accrued translating to a rakeback percentage of over 80% there was still a lot of money to be made.

Raking $15,000 in a month to reach my Gladiator goal meant some serious grinding, so in March I put in a lot more volume than I ever have in a single month. Pushing myself in that way has been a real eye-opener for me to realise what I'm capable of, and I plan to push myself to keep volume high throughout the year. So far including all rakeback and bonuses I'm up around $22k this year. I'm actually above EV (!) although I'm down a bit at the $109s and $210s. Fingers crossed for some run good in those in the months ahead. My EV line in Party turbos is worryingly low, although perhaps partly due to the toughness of the games in March. I think card distribution is also a massive factor in those games so it's hard to know how much to read into it.

Life Updates

In other news, my fiance and I bought 2 kittens at the end of 2011 which we've named Leia and Starbucks. I've never been a big animal lover, but these two have really won me over. They're playful, full of personality and good company. It's hard to be too annoyed by a downswing with a kitten purring on my lap.

I'm also very excited for the return of Game of Thrones this month. I started reading the books last summer and pretty much lived and breathed them for a few months. For anyone who hasn't checked out the books or the show I highly recommend both!

Good luck at the tables

David

Gone Fishing

Oops. I've become a fish.

When you're winning it's easy to convince yourself that you will be able to cope with the inevitable downswings and breakeven stretches. However, in the midst of one of them I'm discovering that it's not nearly as easy as I expected. It's surprisingly easy to fall into a pattern of negative self talk, and I'm disappointed to find myself repeating "I just can't win", "I'm so bad", "why do I even bother" and other similarly unhelpful mantras. Unfortunately I have been running slightly below breakeven since Black Friday, over 2 months ago. On the plus side I am now about $7k below all-in EV for the year. While this is not an accurate indicator of my true expected results, it does indicate that things have not gone terribly well for me when all the chips are in the middle. If I keep doing what I'm doing it's most likely a matter of time before things turn around.

I've ended up taking a lot of time off during June, first to go on a long weekend for a best friend's stag do. Secondly spending nearly a week in Ireland due to a family emergency. It's put me massively behind on my Supernova targets, but I have to say it was great to spend some time with friends and family, relaxing and clearing my head.

Now it's time to hit the tables with renewed vigor. Keep working on my game. Keep putting in the hours. The results will come!

Wish me luck.....

May profit: -$496

Yearly profit: +$16,258
Current VPPs: 69,198

Supernova Challenge

Poker-wise May has been something of an epic fail, and it looks almost certain that I shall end the month in deficit. Somewhat depressing, although not wholly unexpected in a game with so much short-term variance. I'll post a full May review, but for now I want to focus on staying positive and motivated for the month ahead. With that in mind I've decided to challenge myself to achieve Supernova status on Pokerstars in just over 6 weeks.

One of my goals at the start of the year was to reach Supernova by the end of June. Unfortunately so far I've only managed to accumulate a measly 63,500 VPPs, so I'll need to average over 5000 VPPs per week from now on to achieve my goal. There are many grinders out there who could manage that in their sleep, but for me it will be a challenge and will hopefully motivate me to put in more hours and focus less on monetary results at the tables.

Supernova Challenge:
1. Achieve Supernova status on or before 17th July 2011.
2. Keep a daily record of VPPs to aid motivation.
3. Review monetary results only at the end of each day (not during a session).
4. Update blog every Sunday with a running total.

Wasting Light

I treated myself to a few days off at the end of March, and it didn't take long for my motivation resurface. I'm naturally an ambitious person, and given that poker seems to be a viable way to earn a good living for the short-term future, I hope to make the most of the opportunity. A short break really helped me to re-focus on that and begin April with renewed vigor. Two weeks into the month I had already made over $3k from 350 games and was on schedule to have my best month yet. However, it wasn't meant to be as the announcements on April 15th led me to another short hiatus from the game and a disappointing end to the month.

The views on what poker players have dubbed "Black Friday" are numerous, diverse and almost entirely speculative. The general consensus is that it's only a matter of time until poker is legalised in the USA. But we have yet to see what legalisation will look like. Initially I was very disappointed by the news. However, so far the impact on me personally has been minimal. Traffic is down, but there are still plenty of 6 max STTs running and fewer regs to contend with. The main impact may be increased variance as I will now have to play more turbos.

On a brighter note, Pokerstars are scheduled to announce improvements to their SNG rake calculation and structure during May. This can only be a good thing. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

April profit: +$4153

Yearly profit: +$16,754
Yearly VPPs: 49,651