My SNG Any Advice

Iv been playing poker for about a year n half now on and off really but now my A levels have finished i decided was time to get down to business and play properly. I am only playing micro stakes but want to move up and wondered if i should now or have any advice on when to.
Im playin $2.50 +$0.25 6 seater SNG at betfair.
Last week i played 50 games and made a profit of $19.50 with an ITM of 41%, coming 1st only 6 times.
I was wondering if anybody has any advice on when to move up stakes and if i should or any others tips of what to do before i move up??

hi Jurn8, welcome to CC.
I too play micro stakes, just venturing into cash tables lately, at the 1c/2c or 5c/10c tables, but Im primarily a sng/mtt player.
You mind me asking what kind of bankroll you have?
I only ask, because someone had an excellent system for knowing when to move up in sngs. You need to have 20 times your current buy-in(including rake) plus a buy-in at the next level up before you can move up to that level. If you lose at the next level that extra buy-in you drop down again till you have enough for the next level.
For example: 20 times $2.50+$0.25 equals $55. Say your next level buy-in is $5+$0.50 then you need $60.50 before you move up. OK? It works for me
KD

i have around $90 i think, not a great deal but enough for what im playing at currently. Just been looking around the site and pretty impressed by all these graphs and stuff lol i dnt understand some of the technical chat but im researching alot currently (whilst meant to be doing part time work haha) and picking up more info and tips which is good. iv set my own goals for July as copied off some of the people on this site and i recorded a series of SNG and have results and stuff from that.

ah, stick around, bud, you'll love it.
I spent the first month here taking it all in, so much info, but everyone is so friendly here, and there are some excellent players here also.
GL

yeh i will do mate!! do you play full time or just evenings or?what site do you play at bud ?im off to Uni in september so alot of time to play then

nah, i work nights, so play whenever.
I play at pokerstars/fulltilt/absolute/virgin/vcpoker etc.
where you from? if you are none usa theres $10 free at vcpoker, click the banner on cardschat homepage

Im from England live in a place called Hereford spect uv never heard of it lol !! ah ryt thats cool which u find the best ? $10 free money on VC ???
How come u decided to start a blog up m8 ?

KerouacsDog said:

hi Jurn8, welcome to CC.
I too play micro stakes, just venturing into cash tables lately, at the 1c/2c or 5c/10c tables, but Im primarily a sng/mtt player.
You mind me asking what kind of bankroll you have?
I only ask, because someone had an excellent system for knowing when to move up in sngs. You need to have 20 times your current buy-in(including rake) plus a buy-in at the next level up before you can move up to that level. If you lose at the next level that extra buy-in you drop down again till you have enough for the next level.
For example: 20 times $2.50+$0.25 equals $55. Say your next level buy-in is $5+$0.50 then you need $60.50 before you move up. OK? It works for me
KD

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Well to be honest I kind of disagree with this system being the safest, for somebody who is just starting at poker and for even someone with experience I suggest 50 buy ins, This is what I used for a challenge I did 2 months ago and I was never even close to being broke, And as you get experienced you may want to adjust it to like 40 buy ins or w/e you feel comfortable with.

Jurn8 said:

Im from England live in a place called Hereford spect uv never heard of it lol !! ah ryt thats cool which u find the best ? $10 free money on VC ???
How come u decided to start a blog up m8 ?

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mate, Im from devon, england, so of course Ive heard of hereford, I grew up in swindon/shrewsbury, went to uni in cardiff, and worked in pwellheli, north wales, at the butlins camp, which i guess are all near you.
at the moment, PokerStars is the best, but Ive just taken 5 euros at virgin(they gave me it) up to 95 euros in 3 days so Im loving that site right now.
yeah, free money at vc, click the banner on the cardschat homepage
as for the blog, most guys are doing it here, but they're mostly experts, i wanna give a super-microstakes view of the poker world.
Its my 3rd blog(first one on poker), so I'm kinda familiar with it all.
GL at the tables

Jurn8 said:

Iv been playing poker for about a year n half now on and off really but now my A levels have finished i decided was time to get down to business and play properly. I am only playing micro stakes but want to move up and wondered if i should now or have any advice on when to.
Im playin $2.50 +$0.25 6 seater SNG at betfair.
Last week i played 50 games and made a profit of $19.50 with an ITM of 41%, coming 1st only 6 times.
I was wondering if anybody has any advice on when to move up stakes and if i should or any others tips of what to do before i move up??

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this is decent, but imo ITM don't matter as much as ROI (return of investment) also you say you are first 6 times out of 50 which is obviously not large enough data/info w/e you want to call it, but you may want to figure out what are you doing wrong hu since you may have leaks in heads up. just analyze couple of your games, are you aggresive enough heads up? are you to loose? are you playing to scared, just ask yourself some questions and answer them and you will see how much easier it will be. Obviously if you are not playing aggesive enough then you need to work on that if your are playing to loose, your calling range is to wide then you need to work on tightening up and being more patient.

bob_tiger said:

this is decent, but imo ITM don't matter as much as ROI (return of investment) also you say you are first 6 times out of 50 which is obviously not large enough data/info w/e you want to call it, but you may want to figure out what are you doing wrong hu since you may have leaks in heads up. just analyze couple of your games, are you aggresive enough heads up? are you to loose? are you playing to scared, just ask yourself some questions and answer them and you will see how much easier it will be. Obviously if you are not playing aggesive enough then you need to work on that if your are playing to loose, your calling range is to wide then you need to work on tightening up and being more patient.

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Yeh for July im going to stick to $2.50 and set myself some goals to achieve when playing so looking forward to taking my poker abit more seriously tbh!whats the ROI mean ? im not really with it in terms of all the techy vocab lol thanks for your advice and help though. As far as heads up is concerned and 3s up lol im not really the best and not sure of what sort of card ranges to play as i find myself finishing 2nd alot and 3rd even more. 11 times i finished 3rd and 8 in 2nd out of the 50 times on a 6 seater.

KerouacsDog said:

mate, Im from devon, england, so of course Ive heard of hereford, I grew up in swindon/shrewsbury, went to uni in cardiff, and worked in pwellheli, north wales, at the butlins camp, which i guess are all near you.
at the moment, PokerStars is the best, but Ive just taken 5 euros at virgin(they gave me it) up to 95 euros in 3 days so Im loving that site right now.
yeah, free money at vc, click the banner on the cardschat homepage
as for the blog, most guys are doing it here, but they're mostly experts, i wanna give a super-microstakes view of the poker world.
Its my 3rd blog(first one on poker), so I'm kinda familiar with it all.
GL at the tables

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Hahah thats awesome u know where hereford is you must be abotu the only person i know who does haha ! ill take advantage of that offer when i get home then on VC haha good going on Virgin thats class m8! Yeh thats a good idea, iv never done any blogs so will probs just keep recording my own stats and stuff like that for the time.

I'm about to play a lot of sngs, so I will explain once I'm done with them, kind of hard to do 9 sngs and explain this so brb.

bob_tiger said:

Well to be honest I kind of disagree with this system being the safest, for somebody who is just starting at poker and for even someone with experience I suggest 50 buy ins, This is what I used for a challenge I did 2 months ago and I was never even close to being broke, And as you get experienced you may want to adjust it to like 40 buy ins or w/e you feel comfortable with.

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well, ok, each to their own. i used my 20 buy-in system, and it worked well for me, and i only had a years experience then, so i cant complain.
but for a micro BR, finding 50 times minimum buy-in is sometimes hard, as it was for me, thats why i started with 20 times 55 cent buy-in, by the end I was playing the $5.50 buy-in before I cashed out and started again.

bob_tiger said:

I'm about to play a lot of sngs, so I will explain once I'm done with them, kind of hard to do 9 sngs and explain this so brb.

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Ok good luck hope u win a shed load !

Jurn8 said:

Ok good luck hope u win a shed load !

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ty, I did pretty decent, won 3, and took 3rd in 3. so I'm up almost 130$, 129.8 to be exact, but ok back to the subject. First here is what roi means and how you can calculate it (return on investment)
how much you won subtract the buy in for the tourney/sng divided by the buy in multiplied by 100 and it is represented as a percent
so say it is a 2$ tourney/sng, u won 9$ your ROI would be 350% as 9-2= 7 and 7/2 * 100 = 350%.
Ok and now let me explain why I said roi matter more than % itm. Lets say as an example we are doing four 2$ sngs. 1st $9 2nd $5 and 3rd 3$ ( these are just numbers i came up with so I can explain) Lets say you take 2nd,3rd and 3rd. your itm is 3/4 or 75% (this is obviously a very small sample but anyways) and lets say you get 1st and 1st, that means your itm is only 50% obviously not as high as first time but lets look at the return of investment. all together we invested 2$x4sngs=$8 in first example we get back 11$ yes we do make profit and our itm % is high but roi isn't and in 2nd example you get back 18$, in this case itm % is lower but roi is higher, so the higher the roi the better it is. Do you see where I'm getting at now?

Also there is a site that offers 5 free searches a day its called sharkscope.com and if you search your name and then click on your name you will see 3 graphs, 1st one is graph of your progess and profit, 2nd one is your roi for certain games (sharkscope has to have a good amount of sngs on you in order to figure it out) so more sngs you play the more accurate is the info. and last graph is the graph of the games you played and how many. I think it's a pretty cool site and you can subscribe to get even more extra detailed info on your self and other players. Also there are some poker programs such as sngwiz can help you analyze your game and some others, just look around and ask for help if needed.

first of all well done on your SNG what limits were they at??
Secondly i understand now its more about $$$$ you return rather than just finishing in the money because of the variance in the money for finishing positions i shall work out my ROI afterwards.
Thats great i shall have a look at those graphs when i next play maybe tomorrow night.
Ill keep reading about bein HU and 3s up because thats the weakest part of my game by far at present.
thanks for your help

ROI = 19.50 (profit) - 2.50 (buy in ) divided by 2.50 x 100

So 17.50 divided by 2.50 = 6.8
X 100 = 680%

Is this correct ?

OR

ROI = 19.50 - 2.50 (single buy in ) divided by 125 (total amount of buy ins 50 x 2.50)
=0.14 x 100 = 14%

Jurn8 said:

first of all well done on your SNG what limits were they at??
Secondly i understand now its more about $$$$ you return rather than just finishing in the money because of the variance in the money for finishing positions i shall work out my ROI afterwards.
Thats great i shall have a look at those graphs when i next play maybe tomorrow night.
Ill keep reading about bein HU and 3s up because thats the weakest part of my game by far at present.
thanks for your help

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Thanks I was doing 12 tables at 22+2, yea just keep grinding at em and basically you just have to be aggresive heads up, occasionally you will lose few 60/40 or maybe lose yr pp vs higher pp but in long run you will make more $ rather than if you play scared money, but also be patient, know when to fold junk hands. A lot of times in my sngs I will end up 3rd or 1st just basically because of my aggresive style.

Jurn8 said:

ROI = 19.50 (profit) - 2.50 (buy in ) divided by 2.50 x 100

So 17.50 divided by 2.50 = 6.8
X 100 = 680%

Is this correct ?

OR

ROI = 19.50 - 2.50 (single buy in ) divided by 125 (total amount of buy ins 50 x 2.50)
=0.14 x 100 = 14%

Click to expand...

are you doing this for the example i provided or what? if you are trying to calculate roi for many games then you have to add up all of the buy ins
and subtract from the profit and then multiply by the w/e u added up and divide by 100 and thats your roi for many games.
if you are doing just one its just like in the example i provided. please be more specific, not sure what you are talking about with your examples.

bob_tiger said:

Thanks I was doing 12 tables at 22+2, yea just keep grinding at em and basically you just have to be aggresive heads up, occasionally you will lose few 60/40 or maybe lose yr pp vs higher pp but in long run you will make more $ rather than if you play scared money, but also be patient, know when to fold junk hands. A lot of times in my sngs I will end up 3rd or 1st just basically because of my aggresive style.

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yeh i think im going to adopt a more aggro style when 3s or 2s up and play Ax and Kx but not raising pre flop unless on the button!ill have to adopt a new tactic because i cant keep doing the hard work of getting to 3 and getting knocked out and not converting chip stacks into money! do you play full time then ??

bob_tiger said:

are you doing this for the example i provided or what? if you are trying to calculate roi for many games then you have to add up all of the buy ins
and subtract from the profit and then multiply by the w/e u added up and divide by 100 and thats your roi for many games.
if you are doing just one its just like in the example i provided. please be more specific, not sure what you are talking about with your examples.

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sorry that was in reference to my earlier post of my 50 games at 2.50 and making $19.50 profit or do i include the money i got back which i am counting as break even money if u get me. EG if i come 2nd i get $5 but am only counting $2.50 as profit. sorry about that

Jurn8 said:

yeh i think im going to adopt a more aggro style when 3s or 2s up and play Ax and Kx but not raising pre flop unless on the button!ill have to adopt a new tactic because i cant keep doing the hard work of getting to 3 and getting knocked out and not converting chip stacks into money! do you play full time then ??

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no I don't have the nerves to...lol, also if you are interested check out this
https://www.cardschat.com/forum/general-poker-13/bob_tiger-coaching-mtts-116953/?highlight=coaching
I'm about done with that but you can be one of my last students, just need to set up a day and time, let me know if you are interested.

Jurn8 said:

sorry that was in reference to my earlier post of my 50 games at 2.50 and making $19.50 profit or do i include the money i got back which i am counting as break even money if u get me. EG if i come 2nd i get $5 but am only counting $2.50 as profit. sorry about that

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for profit you include all of the money you got back thats why you subrtract w/e you invested. so you invested 50x2.75 and got back w/e that equals plus 19.50. do you get it now? ok I'm going to do 12 more sngs, how about you just im me on aim, bobtigerm

bob_tiger said:

for profit you include all of the money you got back thats why you subrtract w/e you invested. so you invested 50x2.75 and got back w/e that equals plus 19.50. do you get it now? ok I'm going to do 12 more sngs, how about you just im me on aim, bobtigerm

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Ok that would be great i may even video a game or 2 over the weekend n send them you when i get heads up or 3s up if thats easier for you because i know your busy with your SNG's and its some offer on stars iv read so that maybe easier for you.
Thanks for your help much appreciated.

Also just to check if this is correct lol

137.50 (total invested 50 x 2.75) - 2.75 (Buy in of 1) divided by 154 (total received back buy ins plus profit) = 0.858 x 100 = 85%

Is this correct??