Someone Help me or shoot me!!

I have played a decent amount of $13 6 Player SNG's - I have bubled in 3rd so many times im about to blow up - here are my stats

Played 34
1st's - 5
2nds - 8
3rds -12
4ths - 3
5ths - 4
6ths - 2

I think that i play pretty well in them but i need to stop finishing 3rd so often - ive thought that it may be due to me TRYING to finish in the top 2 every time i change my style of play when 3 players are left.

Has anyone else gone through a phase like this or know what i should do to prevent bubbling??

Thanks in advance for anyone who posts trying to help.

I have definatley had this problem many times. I'm not sure if my odds at placing that crappy third place are as bad as yours but it has happened. However, I was usually a fan of 10 person sit and goes and I placed 4th. No different though.

When it gets down to the last three or four players do you try and sit out hands you would usually play just waiting for your opponents to drop out? Just wondering if that could have anything to do with it.

Try not changing your playing style and see how that works out for you

$13 SnGs, I assume that you are talking Stars. With my recent experience, I would suggest a backwards approach. Push all in with junk hands like 95s or A7o. You are bound to catch a hand. Immediately toss all top ten hands. The only way you can win at Stars with a top 10 hand is if the other guy has a better top 10 (which happens quite regularly). Example if you have KK and the other guy has AA, you will almost always catch a king. Sorry about the sarcasm but Stars hasn't been treating me evenly for a bit now.

First things first - sample size is too small. It's possible you're playing fine and just on a bad run.

That said, it's usually better to try and identify any leaks sooner rather than later, and bubble play is so crucially important in SNGs it's worth investigating.

Just from those stats alone it's pretty difficult to establish what's wrong. When you bubble, how do you usually bubble? Pushing when shortstacked and losing a race or running into a monster? Nothing wrong with that. Calling a push with a sub-optimal hand and finding yourself crushed or losing a race? Might be a problem. Overplaying marginal hands when decently stacked against an aggressive big stack? Definitely a problem. Folding with your short stack to the point where you have no fold equity and are relying on catching very good cards before the blinds hit you again? Probably the biggest leak in low-mid limit SNG players games.

The thing is, late game SNG play is so stack size-oriented (I remember saying to Tammy a couple of nights ago that it's something like 45% stack size based, 45% card based and 10% psychology based, and I was probably underestimating the importance of stack sizes then) it's impossible to give a general answer to a question like this. Your best bet is to post some bubble hands where you're unsure of your play (or failing this invent a bubble situation where you feel the decision is close) and let us dissect them.

It seems to me you play to get in the money. You have to play to win! That probably means you playing tighter than you should. Do you realize that the remaining players play REALLY tight when it's on the bubble? That's the perfect time to play loose/aggressive unless you're shortstacked.

Not necessarily. I had trouble with this for a while, but SNG bubbles are very different from MTT bubbles.

MTT bubbles can be generalised in that you can say 'playing very aggressively is usually correct'. This is because of the huge difference between payouts - first out after the bubble will pay many hundreds tines less then first place in a decent-sized MTT, therefore (a) we shouldn't be so fearful of bubbling and (b) we want to build a stack when we're ITM so we have a greater chance at making a run for the big final table payouts.

SNGs are different. Let's assume the 6-seaters GKB is referring to have a 70/30 payout (I don't know what they actually pay out 'cos I never play them but it can't be far off this). First place now only pays out just over twice the amount of second place. Therefore the difference between finishing just ITM (second) and finishing first is nowhere near as pronounced. The difference between finishing second and third, however, is huge.

This is why I say stack sizes should play such a huge part in your thinking. If you have a big stack on the bubble and your two opponents have small stacks and are obviously fearful of busting in third, you can play it almost just as you would play an MTT bubble - raising on the button with two cards because you're very unlikely to get played back at, and even if you do get played back at and end up putting a shorty allin, you can either win the showdown and bust him, or if the worst case scenario happens and you lose (the combined probabilities of someone playing back at you and you losing a showdown is tiny in these situations though), you're still in the game.

If you're in the same situation and one of the shortstacks, you have to be more defensive though. You can't raise/push so liberally into the bigstack unless the blinds/stacks dictate that you have to simply because he can bust you but you can't bust him, and he is likely to have a wider calling range. You have to play reasonable hands as you get them though, and you have to apply pressure to the other small stack.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while MTT bubbles are often more about completely untamed aggression, especially at the right tables, SNG bubbles require more selective and more controlled aggression. Bubbling in an MTT is not nearly as much of a disaster as bubbling an SNG is.

You aren't doing quite as bad as I first thought, the Pokerstars 6 player games are 65/35 (better than Titan's 70/30) and you've won $435 from $442 outlay. Take out the $1 fee and you're slightly up.

Re your stats, as per previous posts quite hard to tell, but the fact that you've bust out more times in 3rd (13) than 4th 5th and 6th combined (9) implies that you're playing tight early. The 6 player games aren't suited for tight players really, i imagine a lot of the time you're sitting tight whilst opponents are taking each other on and knocking each other out, and are in final 3 hardly having played a hand in anger with 1,300 chips versus 2 opponents with 3,000 and more each. Sometimes this will be unavoidable and games will just get away from you, but i'd suggest maybe taking a few more risks early, getting a few more 5ths and 6ths, but hopefuily move some 2nds and 3rds to 1sts - once you're in position you can use your ability to outplay opponents. If you dont think this idea is for you, play the 9 players instead. Of course, could always be that you're just not very good!

...I'd looked at a 6 player table that was filling up to get the payout figures. Just logging off, and saw that after 15 mins it was already down to last 2!

That is some EXCELLENT advice Dorkus. Well done.

I too think the stack size is by far the most important aspect of bubble play and you simply must be selectivly aggressive when on the Button.

The biggest advantage you have is what Harrington calls first in vig- that is, you are first to voluntarily enter the pot. If the stacks are around 3000/3000 and 6000 or even if you have 2500 and the others are 3500 and 6000, you CAN"T afford to wait for premium when on the Button. You just have to gambool sometimes knowing that you can do major damage to both first and second stack.

If you let you chips fall below 1500, most times you can be picked off because the range of hands that they will call with will increase exponentially.

Pau

I personally think that the key to bubble situations is SNGs is to understand pre-flop odds in the context of fold equity. This basically involves figuring out the stack sizes and the approximate tight/looseness of the players, what hands you think they would fold to a big bet from you (all in if the blinds are high enough), and acting accordingly.

Super simple example:

If there are 3 players left with 5k, 4k, and 1k chips, and you have 3k chips. The short stack folds to you, you're in the SB for 500 chips, and the BB is in for 1k chips. If you go all in, what do you think he'd call with? How does your hand do against those hands? If you figure all the hands he'd fold, you win 1.5k in chips, you can go all-in with a surprising number of hands here if you have the correct calling range of the big stack, which is so critical. Even if you'd be an underdog if he actually did call you, all-in can still be a +EV move because there is some probability that he folds and you win significant chips.

There is software that can help you figure this stuff out, but personally I find you just have to play as many SNGs as possible to figure this stuff out.