Super Turbos = Super Variance & LOL Donkaments

Lately I’ve been straying away from my standard mix of 22/33/55 Turbo SNGs on FTP and doing a bit of experimenting in the Super Turbos and some MTTs/Multi-Table SNGs. Obviously the Supers will have a lower ROI but take less time, while the bigger tournaments will have a higher achievable ROI but they take longer. I’m looking for the best hourly rate, as for a poker player that should be more important than any other stat. I want to see if either will be more profitable than my standard 9man turbos. Eventually when I have large samples in all 3 variations, I’ll multiply my avg ROI by avg stake for each game type and divide by avg game length (will have to be an estimate) to find best hourly rate. That might be flawed since multi-table games take longer if you cash, and can be quick when you don’t, but unless someone has a better method this is what I’m stuck with.

I am pleased to report that I scooped $576 for taking down a $24+$2 90man KO, so with $4 KO bounties I made close to $600. I’ve played 8 90man KOs and final tabled 2 so far, so I’d say I’m off to a good start. I found it very helpful once the game I won was down to 2 tables to only focus on that game, and to have both tables open running HUD stats and taking notes on all the remaining players. I exploited a lot of tendencies that I observed during the last 3 tables of the tourney, and once we got to the final table, SNGs are my forte. Being chip-leader didn’t hurt much either.

The Super Turbos are a whole other story. The idea behind playing them is that they take less time than regular turbos, the play in them by most participants if far from optimal (and we know we make $ in poker when others make mistakes) and the rake is lower relative to the buy-in (helping to bolster your ROI) all the while still making you more in rakeback because again you can play twice as many tournaments. On paper it seems like the nuts. Further investigation reveals it may just drive you nuts…

3% ROI over 774 games, AVG stake = $15, Total Profit = $265

Seems reasonable I guess. What the stats don’t tell you is that I made $450 in 3.5 hours the first day I played them, then another $450 in about 5 hours the next day, and then lost over $900 the third day I played in about 7 hours. That’s a see-saw swing of 1K in 3 days! Obviously it didn’t help that I played a mix on $14/$28/$42/$70 games. I hate that feeling when you just start out at a new buy-in and you’re ROI is like 40% and you just know you’re fucked b/c that # is going to normalize and that some of the $ in you’re bankroll is almost not really yours because you are totally due to lose.

After this wild swing (my Super Turbo SharkScope Graph looks like a half-eaten abortion thrown against a brick wall) I started looking at the SS graphs of the winning ST players I encountered to get an idea of what to expect and what was achievable. I was remiss to find one of the top FTP leaderboard players with a 3% ROI over 15,000 games but only $700 in profits! That sounds like a huge waste of time to me! Then I scoped a few others and what I’m seeing for the most part is that people who have steady constant profits over 5K+ samples are only playing the $3.5/$7/$14 stakes, with favoritism toward the $7s and $14s. I actually only found one player so far who shows constant profits while playing stakes $28 and above. I’m sure it must be possible, but as the stakes go up the quality of play increases overall (i mean there are still donks stacking off 10 BBs pre with KQ or limp-folding, but just less.) Therefore, sustainable ROIs should decrease as the buy-ins rise, and with the high variance structure of STs, it stands to reason that the attainable ROI may approach 0 and become less worthwhile for SNG grinders. I’m not ready to give up on the higher buy-in levels just yet. My roll can certainly afford them, and I’m running decent. Here is the breakdown by level so far:

$70+$5 = -40% ROI over 7 games, -$210.00
$42+$3 = 3.25% ROI over 48 games, +$70.20
$28+$2 = 5% ROI over 164 games, +$246.00
$14+1 = 5.23% ROI over 182 games, +$142.80
$7+$.5 = -1.35% ROI over 195 games, -$19.80
$3.5+$.25 = 5.25% ROI over 178 games, +$35.50

Obviously the biggest thing effecting my profits and overall success is having a 7 game sample of the largest buy-in where I didn’t run well. All my samples are pretty small, and the more different stakes you table-select across, the longer it takes for your stats to normalize. Essentially I should just play whatever stakes I can afford that have the softest games and not be results oriented or worried if I do well overall but run like shit in the highest buy-ins. That’s easier said than done though, because we all check our roll each day and hope it goes up, but maybe I need to stop caring about that.

So after spending most of the month in England, I’ve managed to play quite a lot this week since I’ve been back. I’m up $566 pre-rakeback for April having only played 8 days out of the month, so that’s not bad. If I can muster 1K this month pre-rakeback that would be pretty sweet. Again, b/c of the inevitability of variance, I’m less concerned about my monthly goals, and much more concerned with my long term goal of 20K by August 15th. We’re hovering just shy of $7500 as of today, so I have a fair bit of work to do!

As always please leave comment if you took the time to read this crap