Well it took me roughly 3 or 4 months to complete, but I finally finished the 200 SnG challenge. I had plenty of ups and downs with some nice winning streaks (5 wins in a row at one point) and some terrible losing streaks (I’d rather not recall how many losses in a row).

My stats are not where I’d like them to be; I think this was the result of both variance, and tilt. Variance is expected, but tilt can be controlled, and at times I realized that my tilt was getting out of hand and that something needed to be done about it. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries, I’ve come a long way with controlling my emotions associated with poker and I can now manage my tilt much better than before. After a beat or poor call on my part, I would immediately go and find another game to play in an attempt to make up for my last loss. This of course led to worse play, and if I took another beat then I got exponentially worse until I found myself having busted out of 5 SnGs within the time it usually takes to win one. My terrible stats for the $35s I’ve entered are a result of exactly this.

Now, however, I find myself usually brushing off the loss and moving on to the next game with a focused mindstate. At worst I find myself having to take pushup or punching bag sessions in between games to let off the steam, but at least while I’m playing I’m not tilting anymore.

With that challenge out of the way, I looked back at my stats and realized how skewed they could be. I’ve played a range of SnG types from 5-seater Turbos to regular 10-seaters with buyins ranging from $1 to $35. The only way to keep my stats ‘clean’ is to limit my range to one type of game. I’ve decided that my next challenge, 100 SnGs this time, will be for 6-seaters with buyins ranging from $6 to $30s or above if I feel confident enough and my bankroll permits. I’ll be excluding turbo games, as I want to do another challenge after strictly with them so I can make a comparison and find out which is more profitable for me.

I’ve so far finished up 17 SnGs and so far I’m doing very well at Full Tilt, and terrible at Party Poker, where I recently made a tiny deposit. I never thought there was such a thing, but I think that Party Poker’s players may actually be too loose. They regularly call 5xBB and higher raises cold with rags. That doesn’t seem like a problem because really this is what you want when you’re holding a premium hand, but it makes it damn near impossible to steal blinds in the later stages. Maybe I just haven’t figured out the optimal strategy vs these types of opponents in SnGs, but I can’t seem to beat them. Before withdrawing the remains of my small deposit there, I entered one $20 SnG (I was trying $5 and $10s before) and noticed that the play was not quite as loose. I think if I make another deposit there, I’m going to stick strictly to the $20s and higher if I want to have any success, or at least smaller swings.

My goal for this challenge is to surpass my (dismal) stats from the last SnG, and if I have any sort of consistency at all this time around, it shouldn’t be too hard. I would like to see %15 ROI or higher, and I think it’s well within my reach. One thing that makes those figures way more easily attainable is actually placing 1st more instead of 2nd; something I have so far not achieved because of either bad luck or sub-par play on my part.

Another thing I though I’d mention is that I have ‘acquired’ the ability to multitable successfully now. I can only play two SnGs at a single time, timing them up right so that as one is in the early stages (and requires less attention), the other is in the later stages or HU (which requires alot more attention). This will both make my winrate, assuming I actually profit, rise aswell as make the challenge fly by a little faster than last time. I find that it also keeps me playing ‘ABC’ poker and not falling into the ‘fancy play syndrome’ habit I so often find myself falling victim to.

I’m also clearing a bonus (thank you, Cardschat) on Full Tilt Poker, and it’s a nice treat to finish up a SnG and find a popup window telling me that I’ve unlocked another $20 of it. As for my actual bankroll progress, I’ve now got $590 at FT, ~$282 at PS, ~$110 at Titan and ~$97 at Paradise. I still had $100 at Dream Poker from that freeroll eons ago, and requested a withdrawl. I have not recieved any emails or notifications about whether the funds have cleared, but I’m assuming they haven’t since Dream initially said that I needed to clear a certain amount of points before I could withdraw, which I haven’t done. Funny though, as I just checked the Dream client and it doesn’t show any funds in my account nor does it show any pending withdrawls. Neteller’s site is under maintenance right now, so I’ll have to check up on that later.