As you may or may not have read in the forums, I have decided to start a Sit ‘n’ Go challenge. Not quite sure how many of them I will play, as I haven’t yet gauged how long it will take to finish, say 100 of them. I’ll be playing $20 as much as I can, but their availability isn’t great at Titan, so $10 will probably end up being the majority of my games played.

I decided to do the challenge for several reasons: for one, be it from the variance in the ring games, or my own mistakes, I have not had a consistent profit in them since I moved up to playing between 0.50/1.00 and 2/4. Another reason is because in MTTs (which I will still play from time to time) the cashings are few and far between for me, as they are for most. My last cashing, a little over $300, was still only enough to cover the costs of the MTTs I had joined for the past week. I think SnGs are a happy medium - I started off building my bankroll with them, and have for whatever reason stopped playing them lately. They are probably the most consistent way of building your bankroll - frequent cashings, and little risk.

I’ve never been serious enough about my game to actually record and analyze it, but as of late, I’ve decided to get pretty serious about my poker because I really do plan on reaching my goal. As I said in one of my posts about my SnG challenge, I have started to record my results in a booklet I keep by my desk. I record the tourney entered with the buyin, what place I made, my profits, and a notes section. In the notes section I just make point-form notes about what I did wrong, right, and what happened during the key hands. Hopefully by the end of this, I can look back and see what are the most common notes (ie Played too tight early) and adjust my play based on them.

One thing that I’ve done to keep me on track is that I’ve written in GIANT letters on the inside cover, is my “SnG Challenge Rules” which apply to more than just SnGs, but are helpful nonetheless. Most are generalized, and are conditional to the situation (like for example, I probably would call an all in with AQ if I knew that my table was full of hyper-aggressive megalomaniacs who will push with garbage)

They go a little something like this:
#1) DON’T call all ins with anything other than AA–>TT, or AK early on
#2) DON’T overvalue AQ, KQ, 99 type hands; play cautiously and/or FOLD from EP
#3) NEVER EVER call out of curiosity (:p this one was written down as a result of me being extremely distracted and calling all in with AK and no help on the flop vs. a hyper-aggressive player. Needless to say, he won the hand)
#4) ALWAYS stop to analyze where you’re at in a hand - try not to make a single decision without thinking about it
#5) DON’T play when you’re tired, hungry, tilting or distracted
#6) Take notes as often as you can
#7) Pound on the small stacks late with marginal hands (K9, QT, A7 etc.)
#8) DON’T play turbos

etc etc. The list goes on, and I add to it as often as I can; these are the rules I try to refer to and play by every time I play a SnG.

So - on to my actual progress:
To date, I’ve played 13 SnGs since I started the challenge, and so far ITM (in the money) is at %46 and ROI (return of investment) is at %64 .
I seem to be doing much better in the shorthanded games for whatever reason, maybe it’s impatience with a full table game. Whatever the reason, I’ve decided if possible to stick to them instead of the full 10-handed ones.
6-handed placings: 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1
10-handed placings: 5, 3, 9, 0, 6, 4, 4, 8. yuck.
(0 place was because their server crashed…and i was in the chiplead too! :()

So the ol’ bankroll stands at $1,653 at titan, and soon I’ll centralize all my other small bits of funds from other sites to Neteller, which now includes a $100 6th place finish from today’s DreamPoker freeroll.

On a side note: Don’t forget tomorrow is Father’s Day!!!!
I’m going to bring my old man a 6-pack of Stella and probably play some pool with him tomorrow