Riverboat's next step - please advise

Ok I would really like some good advice in this regard.

This is partly a BRM question and general advice.

Firstly, I a DO NOT play ring games but prefer to grind sng's

I play about 6 - 7 hours a day, more on the weekends

I have a full time job.

I would seriously like to go pro or at least semi before I am 40
( I am 36 this year )

I've been playing seriously for over 3 years and initially I know I sucked really bad, especially at BRM and playing tournaments out of my league and beyond my BR.

I did get lucky a couple of times and cashing in some large Mtt's as well as a good win. But I suffered a downward spiral which saw my BR dwindle.

The last 18 months or so, I made a descision to do things properely and withdraw a large sum from Full tilt and started over with $40 on Full tilt.

I started grinding it out playing $3 90 player sng's
I managed to get my roll up to around $400 before a massive down swing then another good upswing which saw my roll pass the $500 mark.

I then moved up to playing the $10 90 player sngs and started crushing those. I then started playing $24 and then cashed in a number of $24 mtt's and boosted my BR somewhat. I have withdrawn from my roll a few times probably a total of about $1000 and my roll is currently over the $2k mark.
I'm tempted to stay at the $24 level until I am alot more confortable but those higher buyins look sooo goooood....

my question is this :

Does ring brm apply the same mind set as tournet / sng brm ?
whats my next step here ?
Do I stay grinding the $24 level ?
based on the strategy of only buying in for a max of 5% of my BR, that should be allowing me to be playing up to $100
What should I be focussing on?
Where do I go from here?
At what level should I consider moving up from $24 to beyond ?
The $24 level is about 1.2% of my BR, am I doing myself a disfavour my staying at this level ?

My BR would currently allow me to buy into at least 90 $24 games. Is this sufficent?

I have heard 2 oppossing statements - one being that one should have over 100 buyins for the level youre playing at
another is that you should not buy in for MORE than 5% of your BR.

So which is it?

Any serious input would be seriously appreciated.

If you are playing MTSNGs then 100 buy ins sounds good. Playing 90 man or whatever with 20 buy ins is just asking to go broke.

BR managment rules are completely up to you. There is nothing wrong with stopping at the 24s if that is what you want to do (some pro sngs just grind 20 tables of 20$ turbo games). Anyways, the 5% rule is far too little for sngs imo anyways, since it is pretty bloody easy to drop close to that number of buys ins (above micro levels) within normal variance. So i'd probably shoot for at least 100 buy ins, especially if you aren't playing STTs. Probably best to aim for a certain buy in that you want to reach in the end (say $60, or whatever - ultimately you have to stop somewhere) and slowly grind your roll up to that point, then you can keep it constant at like 120 buy ins or whatever and withdraw the excess.

Thanks :-)

anyone else with something to offer?

i cant offer you anything, ive been keeping a watch on you playing and you seem to be doing very well without any help, i always feel that poker is a gut instinct game, so thats the best i can give u is go with your gut. honeslty, i think your good enough to play whatever you want.

See here:

brm.jpg (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=16392&d=1231623212)



Also some articles regarding going pro here that you might find helpful/interesting.

thanks for that but what do they mean by protected/unprotected ?

Does anyone else have anything to offer? I'm eating up this advice and reading everything in sight

anyone else with any insight on this?

Well protected would mean that over a longish, but not extremely long sample you are unlikely to go broke by following those rules. Pro would have more buy ins because they would play longer and could encounter some really nasty downswings, which the average player will never play enough to be likely to encounter (or also possibly because it is your source of income, you need more just to make sure you don't go broke). And unprotected would mean that you are playing quite risky.

Anyways 25 buy ins being protected is nonsense IMO since 10-15 downswings are hardly impossible and there have been extremely good players who have gone through >25 buy in downswings. In the same way i don't think 45 is near enough buy ins for sngs.

How many tables do you play? If you are serious about being a sng pro, you are probably going to have to learn to like 20 table and be able to play almost on autopilot during the early parts of the games. Either that or you are going to have to play higher stakes.

You might want to look at 9 man turbos, since i'm pretty sure that is what most of the low/mid stakes sng grinders focus their attention. Just try different stuff to see what is more profitable for you. Find good AHK scripts to help you do everything more efficiently, etc. Other than that just study up about ICM and push/fold situations and you should be able to crush the 24 level while multitabling heavily, since frankly you can robo through turbo sngs and do quite well if you understand push fold crap.

Either that or learn cash so you can make some real money

You can make good money playing SnG's... (but who would want to?)

Cash games are probably something you should give a look at. The deeper stacked play leads to a bigger edge than playing SnG's with a stack of 10bb's or so. However, that said, there are plenty of people who grind SnG's and make good money. But as you can see from the buy-in chart AG posted, cash games offer less variance.

And if you want to stick with the MTT route, I'd consider trying out formats that help you push your edge. Supposedly rebuy & 6-max formats allow you to push a larger skill edge against your competition.

ahk scripts?

the max I can multi table is 9 tables then each table is too small to see shit.

what is ICM ?

I have much less success at 6 max than full tables - no idea why though and I have a thing about rebuys. maybe just a mind set but I tend to loathe them.

Independent Chip Model (or something like that). Its a mathematical model that is used to evaluate push/fold decisions on the bubble or near the money of a SnG. You should have probably heard of it by now if you're considering going pro. Couldn't hurt to investigate Nash Equilibrium either. I've never really read up on much SnG strategy, but if you want to go pro, you should probably know more than I do about it :P.


That's kinda the idea I think. In either of those situations, the strategy for a conventional tournament doesn't work as well, and the better players adapt & profit.

Rebuys tend to allow you to play with a deeper stack for longer into the tourney. Of course, if you're not good at playing with more than 20bb's, that could be bad for you.

And 6-max tournies should put you in situations to isolate fish, and steal more from late position. However, you can't wait for hands as long & just shove premiums against fish who call with a huge range.

Keep in mind, I'm not a MTT player. But you should be looking for ways to increase your hourly profit & your edge. Make your game better, and try out different games to see if your edge is larger.

Auto hotkey scripts. Just hotkeys that allow for efficient multitabling and i think there are some that help you register for open sngs automatically (maybe i am delusional).

As for MTTs, rebuys are excellent at smaller buy in levels. You have AWFUL players who have 0 idea how to play rebuys, tons and tons of dead money from guys rebuying all the time who have no chance of going deep, and the most important imo is that you pay small fees so they are more easily beaten. A $20R game acts similar to a $60 buy in or so freezeout, but will only have a $2 fee.

I like to cascade the windows instead of tile. I can see it better and it's easier (automatic) to find the table that needs attention.

Looking at your OPR, I'd say your stats are all over the place without enough history in any one kind of game to really figure out what your expected value is. Maybe multi-tabling $11 SnGs would give you a better read on your EV over the long term, while protecting your BR. That said, I really believe that large field MTTs are the best way to make money in tournaments if you can withstand the long periods of losses. Make sure your BR can handle it. I like the chart that was included earlier in this thread -- 250 buy-ins for pros makes sense to me.

I've heard rumors of people making money in 9-player SnGs, but I've rarely seen it in OPR.

The advice about re-buys was really interesting. I never thought about all the dead money before and playing larger stacks. Maybe I should give that a try. The one time I played in one of those, I did well.

funny you should mention that because I landed up HU in the last rebuy I played