Running bad - Full Tilt SNG advice please!

Not meant to be a whinge thread, bear with me:

Played like a fish at Titan and Party last year, took a break, read some books and forums, practiced on my game, and came back playing a much stronger game on FT.

Started off great, played TAG and slowly but steadily at 10, 20 and 30 SNGs moved up to $700 profit in 4 week period.

Usual bad beats, occasional lucky hits, but generally TAG play with right loose calls at right times actually lead to steady success, about a 1 in 2.5 placement ratio which gave me a ROI of about 12% - woot!

Then last Sunday, all hell broke loose. Played 20 SNG's in 72 hour period, placed in 2 and lost 18. Of the 18 that I lost, 2 of them I lost with races, 2 of them I lost to a better hand - but FOURTEEN of them I had the chips in with the absolute best hand. Not just 5% or marginal favourite. Massive favourite - 70% or more to win. And in all cases lost.

I don't know what the stats are, but in fourteen times almost consecutively to lose with 70% favourite? We're talking flopping the nut Ace high flush and villain catching running cards to a full house on turn and river. Flopping a set of Kings, being re-raised all-in with AJ who catches running TQ for a straight. So not just TPTK getting run over.

In so far as the monsters go, with K's, I have won 2 out of 9, and Qs and Js are almost as bad. Looking at hand history, I think I've had A's 4 times in about the last 950 hands - not sure if that is above or below average - but have a 50% success rate on them holding up, so not too bad there.

We all run bad at times - but the guys on the SNG leaderboards - their sharkscope graphs don't show them nosediving like this. Hence why I post this!

I'm not one of those that believe that online sites are 'rigged' - although there was some interesting discussion on the PE forums about how FT's RNG system is very different to Stars and Party. (EDIT - I mention this because there is an argument that FT's system can create a short term anomaly/variance due to some kind of averaging and statistical adjustments that has been discussed on other forums).

Is this just one of those short term runs that happen to others out there? I'm actually now zero'd out in bankroll. I could have dropped down to micro SNG's and still had some bankroll left, and in hindsight I think this is definitely what I should have done - but I figured that because although frustrated, I wasn't on tilt, and was still getting the chips in with the better hands, my luck had to change after 9, 10, 11 times etc so I stayed at $10/$20 etc games.

Has this happened to you - and if so, how often? What is your strategy to survive and recover? Does it really make any difference to 'take a week off' and come back at it - the cards are random so why does a week make a difference?

Sorry if this sounds like a whine-a-thon, it's not meant to be a bitch session, I'm truly interested to hear others thoughts and experiences and how you made out.

Cheers,

SD

Short term variance and completely standard.

It seems that you may have not been properly rolled for the games you were playing in. Large downswings will happen in sngs so you need to be prepared for that. On pokerstars my ROI is 17% over 500 games of single table sngs, which is pretty decent, and that includes a 17 game losing streak, 14,11,7, with 14 2 and 3 game losing streaks. On full tilt I also played roughly 500 games with a negative 3% roi. I'm not exactly sure why that is but ftp software kind of tilts me and thier blind structures seem to be different. Anyways its a swingy luckbox game at times, kinda the reason why I switched to cash.

I swing like hell in my sngs at one time I was winning or coming in second alot of the time, now I am really struggling lost my bankroll and had to put some more in but im just playing 1 dollar ones so I have only put £50 pound in and thats given mr near six months of learning to play something I enjoy. I lost my last 20 dollars witha sod it ill play the 3 dollar ones tilt style, not good.

Personally im still a newbie at this game so ill try stick to the micros and if I get good enough I shall move up, even though im winning less money or no money lol I know im playing better poker then when i got my BR up past the 100 dollar mark,

I think the key is not trying to get rich through poker but to try to win instead <------ makes sense huh :P. What I mean is continue to learn but play at the right levels start small and learn another great lesson bankroll management.

Gl fella.

Thanks for the replies.

What are your thoughts on bankroll? I had 700 and was playing 20/30 SNG's but do you think this is too low a BR for this level?

Is there a ratio you use to calculate - e.g. $33 x 20/30/40 etc?

This is for 6 and 9 player SNGs, realise it's different for cash and MTTs.

Cheers

Bankroll management is always tough. As far as SNG's I like to have 20x the buy in before i will play. That may be a tad conservative for some people, but it works for me and keeps me out of trouble.

50 buy ins is best brm for sngs imo since even if you lose 20 in a row like you did you can drop down a level and rebuild.

50 buy-ins is the minimum I would ever recommend for anyone. 20+ buy-in swings are fairly common and 30+ downswings arent out of the question. If you're playing above the $20 level, I'd recommend 100 buy-ins.