Too good for this level?

Greetings people, i'm new here and i just want to ask a question. It might seem silly and i in no way want to sound condescending or deluded as im well aware im just an average player at best but i can't really explain my predicament any other way.


I lost nearly all my bankroll, i started about a month ago from 10$ and worked my way up to ~400$ playing 90 or 180 player MTT's. It all went well for awhile and then it started to go downhill fast. I just kept on playing fairly abc poker, by the book, tight agressive just waiting for the right moment but sooner or later i always ran into some donk with the same stack size who would inevitably put a bad beat on me and i'd end up broke long before even coming close to the payoff bubble.

After awhile i became pretty tilted by the streak so i registered into a 9-player 20$buy-in SNG and ended up winning it pretty effortlessly. I dismissed it as pure chance and went back to playing 2$ / 3$ buyin MTT's so as not to blow my bankroll (wich i ended up doing anyway) and now here i am, broke.



I'm just curious, i have this strange feeling i'd be better off just depositing like 100$ or so and playing the 10$ or 20$ tournaments rather than grinding yet again at the lower level ones since i observed a drastic difference in playing styles.

Am i delusional or is it a lot easier to make money at the more expensive SNG's as long as you play decent enough, people tend to be more careful and less crazy about their game when they don't play for chicken feed?

I don't think you are delusional.

You are right, there is a great difference of skill at different levels of buy-in, but maybe not quite as large as you want to believe. In many ways the higher buy-in games will look like they are treating you better. It is probable that you being new might mean no one has any read on you.

However, before you go blowing your wad, make sure you understand the prevailing wisdom about BRM (bankroll management). Under the guidelines that wisdom preaches, $100 is no where near what will support $20 buy-ins, unless you get outrageously lucky your first few times out. It happens, but to count on it happening is the key to poorhouse. You can't, nobody can.

That said, I am not a brm nit. I am currently playing ring games way over the level anyone would suggest, let alone approve.

If you have a good income outside of poker, and can approach it from an entertainment point of view, ignore brm, and go for the gusto. If however, you are like most of us, you do not own the money tree, and for that reason alone you should understand BRM, then at least you will know who to blame if everything goes to hell.

Thanks for your reply. I know all about bankroll management, i follwed the rules religiously and i still lost all my cash buyin by buyin due to the chaos-type action i seem to come across. Every time after i bust out of a MTT i use a poker calculator to see exactly what my odds were and most of the times i was at least 60% favorite.

Everyone has a 'any-2-cards-can-win' mentality at the lowest levels and even though i know people who claim to play profitably within these limits i think it's way too crazy, variance rips you apart every time.


Either way, back to square 1 i guess

For me, I would never deposit more than once. You already have it in you. You said you went from $10 to $400 in a month. Then if you were anything like me, you yell at yourself for not making money faster and changed your way of playing. Get back to what was working that made you go from $10 to $400 in a month or so. Then try that plan of using $100 of that bankroll to enter 5 $20 tourneys and see the results. Just like dieting, you can ruin in a day what it took a week or two accomplish.

I completely agree with everything said here. I have studied BRM religiously and do believe that it can help you a lot, but like dj11, i play a little outside of my boundaries. I have around $75 and have been playing very successfully at .05/.10 tables.

Playing low level MTT on Full Tilt is your main problem.

You won 1 game pretty easily which is good but your not too good for any level unless you beat it. If you kept playing other players then they would get on to your game pretty fast be it through scouring HH using a HUD or just through solid poker reasoning.

So you went right from low level MTTs, which you couldn't beat, to a mid-level 9 player SNG? Because you won it, rather effortlessly as you put it, you think you've discovered the path to riches.

I guess you need only deposit $20, since you're clearly going to win every one of these you enter. Hmmm.

Or maybe you could get serious for a second. Perhaps STTs are better for you, because 1/3 of the participants get paid. But you can't realistically expect the kind of success that will let you ignore BRM.

Plus you don't seem to understand that MTTs are riddled with hands that will knock you out before you reach the bubble, unless you have more chips than the other guys. If you are all in as the favorite with 60/40 odds just twice, the odds are that you won't survive both of them. (3/5 x 3/5 = 36%)

I suggest you start with a small amount of money, hopefully won in freerolls rather than deposited. Play the low-limit 9 SNGs until you prove yourself capable of beating them. Then either go up in limits step by step or move back to MTTs with a better understanding of how to beat them.

Argee with ckingriches here maybe your play better suites 9player sng's instead of mtt's.If i were you if your going to redeposit anyway try the lower 9 man sng's for awile.

Thank you everyone for your replies i wasn't realistically going to get right into the 20$ stt's, i'm just thinking about alternatives, getting from 10 to 400 was made by first playing 1$ 45 player mtt's then 2$ 180 player MTT's and i won several of those and there i was. It didnt take long for me to go broke playing the exact same steaks though but now i'll try something different. Either way,thanks all for the advice

Lol a little outside BRM.

50nl hu might be a little outside itself ummm.But then hell i can;t talk about brm myself i think it's a good idea untill i get stuck,up,even,or bored.

You may have just had a hot streak on those tables. If you've only won a few you should try a larger sample size and play more to see if you can consistently beat it. A few wins at 180 is definitely a BR boost, but can you do it consistently? It's been said before, if you can't beat the lower stakes your going to get eaten at the higher ones. If you can't beat a donk why would you be able to beat a guy who knows what hes doing?

Going 1 for 1 at the $20 level is excellent, but there are times when all your hands hold up and you seem to hit. It sounds like you've had one of those times. If you play more I'm sure you'll find they're far more difficult. Best of luck it sounds like you've had some good success so far.

I agree with everything you said, I think you should play in 9 player SNG's from $1-$3.30. I've tried following BRM in the past but just can't stick to because I get bored or just had a few bad beats. Well GL with your new BR and hope you do better this time around.

DO NOT IGNORE BRM!!!

I cannot stress this enough. I used to be the same way until I became enlightened. If you find yourself getting bored, multi-tabling is the way to go. I know that it is hard to get used to at first but it is definitely worth it. Variance in your results will disappear. Also, it helps with tilt. It is very hard to go on tilt when you are concentrating on so many other things.

DO NOT IGNORE BRM!!!

the higher the stake the harder the game is. there is almost no such thing as people that play better at higher stakes, so yes you are delusional by your own words. very infrequently a higher staked game can play easier due to table dynamics but its possible.

Just because you scored one big win at the higher level does not mean you should be playing them. The players there are better, therefore harder to beat, simple as that.

Your thoughts are so grey skies , please tell us what you do next after they have info on you and know your game ? what next ..

You need to put in time and pay your dues before you start jumping up through the stakes. If you don't, you're setting yourself up for a big fall.

I would not suggest your martingale your losses when you redeposit because it will end in tragedy.

going from $10 to $400 down to nothing again in a month is one ridiculous wave. It sounds like you are playing wayyyyy out of where your bankroll allows you to play. If you are playing where you are supposed to be playing then it would take a hell of alot of bad beats to break you. Also MTTs have a huge variance so you wont even place most of the time.

Go Borg and adapt too their play.

Lets take as an example a person who has problems winning a 5$ heads up sng against a fairly poor opposition what do you think his edge is against players who have grinded their way through the levels and learning how to play and counteract styles of play? Gray skies or not this is very misguided, to advise somebody its ok to go from micro play to 50$ games because they one game is just very silly, and even if they go on a heater sooner or later the skill tells and these people who beleive that they are a poker god get stung.

It has happened so many times somebody comes in says man I am crushing such and such a game and then you either hear them a few weeks later in bustoville or you never hear from them again because they dont wanna admit they should have followed the advice. In contrast there are many players here that started from the micros and studied hard and have acheived a level of poker that sometimes makes me jelous lol with their reads and calls.

Some one has info on your game then you use that to your advantage but the skills to that come from beating the levels and learning new things not starting off in the lowest league and then trying the superbowl final.

I remember reading a story in a Gordon book when I first started about playing Hellmuth and getting a big hand in an important game and stopping before he makes a move and thinking hold on this is what he would expect me to do, instead I shall............. Off tanget a little but I think you understand.

If u win one game I wouldn't think too much into it. Therefor a hugediffetence in levels but it's a big risk withsuch a small bankroll which is my problem. U get sucked out 3 times and ur left with a couple more buyins

Follow BRM and stay within your limits.

One win at one level does mean you should move up to that level, unless you have the BR to sustain it.

I'm sure someone else can provide a more accurate number but IMO a 15-20% win ratio would be considered good in tourneys.

Go look up 'variance' to understand this better.

GL

same problem for me....i boost my bankroll and after a while i loose anything .. is frustrating..

BRM FTW 100 buyins minimum. This is key to ever beating this game. But also studying some game theory wouldn't hurt. IMO it's important to play a proven winning strategy. If your consistantly getting it in good then your not playing correctly. The correct way of playing is often shoving weaker hands than that which will call you and depending on a thing cal foldequity. The truth is a good player will have a higher roi in the lower stakes even though the rake% is higher at these stakes.

i wouldn't gp any higher than $5 because there is some truth that you dont want to play 1 or 2 dollar tournaments because the rake will crush you. But at those $10 dollar tournaments you have to be a solid player to win over a long sstretch. You should start with the $5 tournamentsw and then work up to the $10. A $100 BR isnt really enough to play $10 sit n gos. Try looking at a thread that talks about BR management.

That is so utterly irrelevant to the fact you are or not a winning player at this game that my guess is that you're a fish that got lucky early on. And BRM won't do you any good if you're -EV.

Thanks for your reply I have attained some good stuff from you from the 3rd paragraph on down ..

Thanks again

This is some awful advice. The only way to win at the low stakes games is to consistently get your money in good. This means your playing good solid hands and folding when you are beat. This is a good foundation to your poker skills. The reason that a good player will have better ROI at the lower games than the higher ones is because the skill level down there is much less than they are used to and they will be able to make more reads easier and play based on a more straight forward form of poker. Also fold equity is not something you "depend" on. You use it to determine how much your hand will improve added by the fact that your opponent will fold. 2 problems with this advice. 1. to determine fold equity accurately you have to have a somewhat reliable ability to read hands, which at the low levels, most people are not so great. 2. there is no folding alot of the time at the low levels so with a fold equity of 0 or 20% your hand is not going to improve very much.

Actually it's pretty good advice for STT's (which it seems OP is interested in, if this were ring the advice would be totally different). During the high blind phase of the tournament it's really really important to shove wide, which inevitably means we'll be getting in our money bad. ICM shows us that this is profitable, plus you also have to keep in mind that the blinds are constantly escalating so you have to keep on stealing the blinds by shoving just to stay alive. Add in the fact that a lot of players, especially at micro/low limits, will play tighter than they should at high blinds (and looser than they should at low blinds), then we can steal even wider and show a profit in the long run according to ICM.

Believe it or not this is actually where most of our profits come from. We won't usually gain much equity from doubling up early, as there are more players remaining and therefore the total tournament equity has to be shared among more players. In the late game there are more opportunities to gain equity by blind stealing, and as the game gets more short handed these gains become greater and greater. This is also usually the part of the tournament where our opponents play the worst, i.e. they have the most leaks here. So by taking advantage of the frequent +$EV opportunities along with the +$EV spots that our bad opponents provide us, shoving wide becomes the single most important part of our game.

So if there aren't times where we shove 65o from the SB into the BB and he wakes up with KK then yes, we're playing too tight, because the majority of the time we'll steal the blinds uncontested and really increase our equity in the long run. It's not about "getting it in good", it's about making +$EV plays. Ask Collin Moshman and he'd tell you the same thing.

I guess I ought to actually respond to OP, lol, basically in STT's (if that's gonna be your main game) you really need to use good BRM. It's really easy to go on a big downswing in STT's, and the reason is you have more showdowns in STT's than you do in cash, and just because you're the "favorite" to win the hand doesn't mean you're entitled to always win it. There will be stretches where you simply cannot win a 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 when you get it all-in pre-flop. It's not because you're the most unlucky player in the world or because online poker is rigged, it's because it's really not statistically improbable to lose many of the situations consecutively.

So to combat this you need to assure that you won't go broke, which is accomplished through strict bankroll management. If you want to play $10 or $20 SNG's (I don't recommend it, but if that's where you wanna start that's fine), you'd probably wanna deposit a significant amount of money, not just $100, because you can lose that in the blink of an eye. Rather, put down enough so you have 50-100 buy-ins for whichever game you choose to play.

sorry if it seems like I'm spamming this thread now (and derailing quite a bit tbh), but I'm back on my own computer now, so I wanted to elaborate a little on this with SNGWiz.

Let's assume we're 5-handed in a 9-man turbo, the blinds are t250/t500 and all players have t2700 stacks, which is roughly 20% equity here. We're in the SB and the action folds to us. We have 32o. Our opponent tells us that if we shove, he'll call with any pocket pair, any ace, and any two broadway cards. Should we shove? Absolutely, and in fact it's not really a close decision.

The reason is because we stand to gain t500 chips, which represents a substantial increase to our tournament equity, let's say it increases our equity by about 5%. Given the range he said he'll call with, we'll only get called about 25% of the time, so 75% of the time we're increasing our equity by a ton, uncontested. The 25% of the time he does call, we have ~30% equity:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 71.289% 70.79% 00.50% 5120061492 36095076.00 { 22+, A2s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, A2o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }
Hand 1: 28.711% 28.21% 00.50% 2040520452 36095076.00 { 32o }

(I'm rounding a little to make the math a little easier).

Obviously the 70% of the time he calls and we lose our equity drops to zero, but when we in our equity jumps probably near 35%. So doing some quick math:

x = .25*[.7*(0%-20%)+.3(35%-20%)] + .75*(25%-20%)
x = 1.375% gain in equity on average

I've attached a photo of SNGWiz showing the exact numbers in this spot (like I said, I rounded a lot to make some of the math easier). Obviously this spot was extremely simplified because we knew exactly what the villain's calling range was, in game we won't know for sure but if we have a HUD or have been paying attention we should be able to determine somewhat how wide/narrow he will be calling. If he's calling tighter, we shove wider. If he's calling wider, we shove tighter. At the end of the day when you start to add up all of the $EV's of these spots, you're burning money if you don't take advantage of these situations.

Attached Images

normal bvb spot.jpg (123.0 KB, 49 views)

what he said...seriously BRM is the most important thing you could ever stick to when playing online poker. sorry my post is not very full of information but its all been said, im just reassuring what the experts have already said. MTT have the most variance so if your not playing within your BR, your roll is going to quickly be affected (obviously). Im just speaking from someone who is on a slump, practicing strict BRM and still have not fallen below desperation time. haha, but dont listen to me...listen to the other people who know what there talking about

I absolutely disagree. From what OP has posted, we clearly should not assume that he is a +EV player, on the contrary. For players whose expectation is to lose money any time they sit down at a table, no amount of BRM will prevent them from going broke in the long term. I may make it slower, but that's budgeting the cost of your hobby, not BRM.

Well I guess there are two way of looking at this. On one hand a skilled player wouldn't even bother looking at this stat, knowing it to be meaningless, on the other hand a winning player can expect the majority of eliminations to be a result of getting money in with >50% equity.

Given that a skilled player also wouldn't entertain the notion of moving up to escape bad beats it's more likely you're right as regards OP being a losing player, I guess.

Look OP, SNGs are, broken down to their simplest form, a sequence of gambles for stacks. If you don't like that, don't play them. Even if, for example, you get your stack in twice as a 60% favourite, it's actually significantly more likely that you'll be eliminated than still in after the second hand, seeing as assuming you're playing for your entire stack in both cases you only need to lose one of the two hands in order for you to be eliminated. Add a third iteration and it becomes even more likely you'll be out, and so on. Yet if you just look at the final hand that you got knocked out on and your equity in that, you will fall victim to the incorrect notion that you were somehow "unlucky".