I have small sample size 68 SNGs this month for $76 profit at Ignition. I like you just started SNGs, and the first few days were enough to let me know I was a bit over my head. I'd been putting lots of time into studying cash game stuff.
So basically, as other people mentioned, time studying pays off a lot.
Studying is difficult without direction though, there's so so much material online and 90% of it is great, but none of it is complete, usually, and it typically leads to jumping around here to there...and all free content is usually selling something. You should pick one of those somethings and purchase it.
I'm sure a person can get great with free material, but I recommend paying for a site with a course or better yet something with interactive learning. **or create your own interactive learning as I mention at end**
The site advancedpokertraining.com has a SNG trainer, it's been helping me a lot (because they have an option to alert you when you make a choice other than
the suggested one). I also have been playing around with ICMizer, but ICMizer is really only going to help with endgame push/fold stuff and it sounds like that's not what you need at this moment.
A trick to get something close to professional training for free is basically, you take some of those videos you watch on YouTube, pick a pro player you respect who analyzes 1 hand at a time (not 6 tables at once), and before every single point of action pause the video. Alt-Tab out of the video, jump into Flopzilla or grab some paper and figure out the next best move, figure out the reason why you would make the next move, then go back and hit play.
It turns 15-minute videos into 2hour videos but it helps.
Last bits of advice I found in Ignition SNGs (probably all SNGs) -- I am an amateur, I make many mistakes and I catch myself making them each day, I try to improve every day as well.. none of these rules below are absolute, definitely not going to make anyone a pro, but they are good place to start:
- don't limp as much as many players do on Ignition (There are some
hands that might be good to limp very early in the game because there are good implied
odds, but be ready to get rid of it on the flop, and if every hand starts looking like it has great implied odds then it is better to default to a tight range and only open-raise or fold). I probably have a hand that I over limp with every other game or so.
- don't fall into the trap of defending your SB hands b/c there's already .5BB there.
- don't call pre-flop raises too much. Say you have a great hand for open-raising and someone raises before you, it's okay to fold hands like AJo in the CO to a open raise, stack sizes and position matter of course too
- If you want to c-bet ~70% of the time, try not to put yourself in many situations where you're out of position or it's not going to be a happy 70%
- If you cbet and get re-raised, it's usually okay to fold. Most players at these low levels are re-raising from a place of strength... yes, some of them are full of poop, but it's not your job to find out who is who, (I guess technically it is, but losing all your chips isn't always the best place to start).
- Double barrelling wins a lot of hands, it's an awesome move until it becomes the default move and then it can become a leak (at least I found this to be true). I try to reserve my double barrels for good draws, I find this works really well, but it also probably isn't an optimal long-term strategy, but no ones collecting stats on you anyways on Ignition so that makes it a good place to figure this stuff out I guess.
- If the board pairs and someone raises huge out of position and you think they are full of shit.. you might not want to test that theory
- don't be passive, you want to not call peoples raises as much as they call yours... find your spot and then be the aggressor
- when you get down to 10bb.. don't feel bad to 2.25x into a pot with position and a good flopping hand.. even so short stacked. I know 10bb is the push line, but it can also be the push you out of the tournament line. Use flopzilla, note some hands will lose
equity on the turn and river, so if you think you can open raise and see a flop then go for it. If you get pushed all in (and you very well might), then you can either call or fold, 8bb behind isn't the end of the tournament. Again, this isn't a default move, just don't go out pushing the bottom of your range when you could have probably tried to see a flop.
- definitely, don't call all those nutty early game pre-flop and post-flop all-in calls unless you have the actual nuts... even if you have 45% equity in Flopzilla, you probably don't, and even if you did, putting your tournament on the line for 45% equity is crazy (unless your very short stacked).
- You know when that player goes all in on the river and you know he's full of shizzle and your mid pair is good? Well it might be, but you'll never find out, just fold.
- don't play more than 1 table at a time until things become automatic. 1 table can be boring I guess, but when things heat up you want to be cool headed.
- don't play $1 SNGs. From limited personal experience, I would say $1 SNGs are harder to profit from than $5, $7, $15, because there are going to be more people in $1 SNGs that are going to suck out on you more often.
I started at $1, quickly moved up (not because I was beating $1, I just felt the players would take the game more seriously, and for the most part they do).
Here's a chart to show I probably am not full of too too much shit. I'm just a guy like you who started SNGs on Ignition 1 month ago, maybe next month the chart goes the other way (but I hope not).
https://ibb.co/nh641x
I played a couple big MTTs and so ~$7 of the winnings here came from those, it's not all SNG
