SnG, 9max, two tables...

[killing_random]

Recently I enjoy to play S'n'G for 18 players but I have a problem (yeah I know..."problem") - I keep getting 2nd place.

I play well, get to a final table with a big stack, maintain it until ITM. In ITM I win small pots, rarely call preflop repushes and just wait until others bust each other.
As you may have already guessed I left in HU with a luckiest guy. But his dirty job didn't come in wain and now his stack size is triples mine.

I bassicly don't know how to play at that situation, even through my opponents usually playing completely honest. Just go for a luck abuse with any2?

 

[KRANKES]

When you are ITM, go for it. Don't wait for another one to bust. The difference in prize is so small for 2d and 3rd place that you have to go for 1st place every time.

 

[killing_random]

When you are ITM, go for it. Don't wait for another one to bust. The difference in prize is so small for 2d and 3rd place that you have to go for 1st place every time.

Actually it's big enough I would say... :s:
That what usually happend when I "go for it" in ITM :hmpf:
https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/924SM2Jaq

 

[Luvepoker]

Recently I enjoy to play S'n'G for 18 players but I have a problem (yeah I know..."problem") - I keep getting 2nd place.

I play well, get to a final table with a big stack, maintain it until ITM. In ITM I win small pots, rarely call preflop repushes and just wait until others bust each other.
As you may have already guessed I left in HU with a luckiest guy. But his dirty job didn't come in wain and now his stack size is triples mine.

I basically don't know how to play at that situation, even through my opponents usually playing completely honest. Just go for a luck abuse with any2?

Without more information its hard to say what exactly you should do. I will say this, from what I have seen with myself and other's there is likely 1 or2 issues here.

Number 1 maybe the the money bubble. While it is impotant to cash, this is a spot where trying to cash maybe costing you cash. I have seen people just fold hand after hand knowing they have the cash. With 2 or 3 players left and 15BB they just fold and when the bubble is over, 2 levels have past and the have about 3 or 4 BB left. Being so short and trying to hold on to move up a spot is not always the best idea. You need ti take calculated risk. I bubble a lot more that some but when I cash I go deeper on average. When i get heads up i have chips to play with and not looking for a few double ups, Don't take crazy risk but calculated ones.

The 2nd issue may just be you heads up play skill. I could write for an hour on what would help but I will do one better. I used to win 2 or 3 times in ten when I went heads up. Closer to 2 to be honest when I went to fix this part of my game. I found a book by Collin Moshman " yes the expert who post to help us here" called Heads-up no limit holdem. I spent a few months reading and rereading and applying what I leaned from this book. I have read many books and learned a lot over the years but this book was probably the most inportant one I ever read. This book will help you develop the skill you need and want to be better at heads up play. As for me, now when I get heads up I feel i have a better than 50% chance to win every time i get there. I would not be surprised if i win about 60% of the time when there now.



Good luck mate.

 

[fundiver199]

Heads-up is a very special game, and I am by no means a specialist in it. However to know, if its even a weakness for you, you need a way larger sample that those 95 games, you have previously played on PokerStars according to sharkscope. Over such a small sample it will be very random, how many first vs. second places, you have scored.

Moreover in the 18 man SnGs specifically the payouts are not particularly top-heavy, so it might actually be a good strategy to sacrifice some wins for more second places. After all the runner up takes down 75% of the first price money, so winning is not as big a deal, as it is in some other formats, where the difference is much larger.

 

[killing_random]

Heads-up is a very special game, and I am by no means a specialist in it. However to know, if its even a weakness for you, you need a way larger sample that those 95 games, you have previously played on PokerStars according to Sharkscope. Over such a small sample it will be very random, how many first vs. second places, you have scored.

Moreover in the 18 man SnGs specifically the payouts are not particularly top-heavy, so it might actually be a good strategy to sacrifice some wins for more second places. After all the runner up takes down 75% of the first price money, so winning is not as big a deal, as it is in some other formats, where the difference is much larger.

You saying it like I should bush my head against a wall at least 100k times to be sure it is solid :banghead:

If you do the same thing twice with the same outcome, and you kind of understand why, I assume you can make for yourself a tentative conclusion.

 

[JimTheBadger]

You saying it like I should bush my head against a wall at least 100k times to be sure it is solid :banghead:

If you do the same thing twice with the same outcome, and you kind of understand why, I assume you can make for yourself a tentative conclusion.

Not like that all. A brick wall and your skull are consistent variables that never change. The result will always be the same. It's more like smashing your skull against a wall with the materials of both your skull and wall changing randomly with each hit giving you a different result based on the same action.

I think you have a flawed view of the game and until you fix that you will not understand the actual progression it takes to move up and improve.

 

[fundiver199]

Not like that all. A brick wall and your skull are consistent variables that never change. The result will always be the same. It's more like smashing your skull against a wall with the materials of both your skull and wall changing randomly with each hit giving you a different result based on the same action.

Exactly. Nearly everyone, who is new to poker, tend to underestimate the importance of variance. So did I to be honest, and it was a real revelation for me, when I came across the free variance calculators at Pokerdope:

https://www.primedope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/

It might feel like, a sample of 100 18 man SnGs is very large, and for sure by now we should have a good idea, if we are beating the games or not. After all if we are single tabeling, it might have taken us a month or more to play those 100 events.

However if we plug in the numbers in the variance calculator, it will tell us, that the standard deviation after 100 games is around 20%. This mean, that 30% of the time our experienced ROI will be at least 20% higher or lower than our true ROI. For this kind of events we are realistically hoping for a high single digit ROI, so clearly after 100 of them we still have no clue, if we are winning or not.

Now the cruel thing about this is, that whenever we win, we tend to attribute it to our superior skills. Its really rare to find a poker player, who will admit, that he was probably experiencing a sunshine run. If of the other hand we lose, we tend to look for external explanations. The most sober one is, that we probably just ran bad, which of course will sometimes be true.

So when we lose, we will tend to keep on playing, until - in our mind - our luck finally turns around. Whereas if we are winning, we will get overly confident and move up, even though we might not actually be beating our current limit, had it not been for our sunshine run.

 

[mina271]

First of all I wanted to say congratulations to the 2nd place that is not the best place but definitely not the worst either. But I understand that you absolutely want to have the first place. But I also believe that it is much more important that you try to improve your poker. When playing hu there are so many things that play a role on the one hand you should be able to assess your opponent well so that you know whether you can bluff and on the other hand luck also plays a very important role. In order to simply play with no matter which cards, it also depends on the size of your stack and how well you can assess your opponent. If you can't really judge him then you should stick to the solid game and hope that you can beat him. In many cases what you saw with the opponent doesn't count anymore because in heads-up many people radically change their game. you have made it to heads-up so you have already achieved something and if you have managed this more often then you will soon see how you can play heads-up ma best in order to win it. I know you sometimes want an answer that tells you how to do something better immediately, but sometimes there is no such answer because it is mainly about experience and knowledge. All the best in your next sngs or tournaments or whatever else you play in poker and wish you soon win your hu