Posts Tagged ‘SNG’s’

Finding your Comfort Zone in Poker

Friday, August 17th, 2012

One of the biggest debates in regard to poker strategy is whether to adopt a tight or aggressive style. Now successful players always advocate adopting what works best in the situation; for instance, on a table full of maniacs, playing tight and waiting for good hands works well.

However, each individual player tends to lean one way or another before observations tell them otherwise. This being said, it can be a little difficult as a beginner player when it comes to knowing what way to go.

No Easy Solution

Unfortunately, the answer is not an easy one, and it will require some experience on your part. The reason why is because some poker players are naturally more comfortable with playing tight while others like to force action because they don’t enjoy waiting around. Both playing styles can be effective, provided one has a strong knowledge of poker strategy.

Long story short, the style you typically employ mainly depends upon what you’re most comfortable with. Of course, when you do find a comfort zone, it’s not like you’re going to say, “I am a tight player and will always be this way.” As mentioned before, good players make changes based on their observations from individual players and the overall table dynamic.

Keep improving

Taking this point into account, your standard style of play won’t have as much overall effect on your online poker profits as does having a deep knowledge of strategy. The more time you spend on continually improving in poker, the more likely you are to be successful. And sure this is easier said than done, but it’s what the best players do to improve and make money.

So to rehash this discussion, use the playing style that you’re most comfortable with in online poker, keep trying to get better away from the tables, and adapt to what the table dynamic presents.

Can Martin Balaz play 40,000 SNG’s in 30 Days?

Friday, May 25th, 2012

A few days ago, Czech online poker pro Martin Balaz announced that he’d be undergoing the insane task of playing 40,000 sit and go’s in 30 days. Getting into the specifics, the 22-year-old will be playing hyperturbo 6-max SNG’s, which makes the seemingly impossible task a little more realistic. But we emphasize the word “little” here.

Doing the math, Balaz will have to play 1,333 SNG’s per day in order to complete the challenge. In addition to this, he’ll also be grinding at $30-plus stakes and have to show a profit at the end. Balaz discussed this by saying, “I need to be profitable pre-rakeback and I have to play only $30-plus stakes. It will probably take about 400-plus hours – the edge in these is significantly lower, many regs are claiming that the games are already deader then dead.”

Judging from the Czech’s comments, even he realizes how difficult it will be to show a profit at the end of this challenge. After all, he’s not only going to be multi-tabling like crazy, but also hoping to beat out skilled pros. But this comes down to a matter of pride as Balaz said, “I want to prove to myself that I can make really insane prop bets and be profitable in any game I want.”

In regards to the prop betting, he’s offering 1-to-2.5 odds on completing this challenge, and he is willing to bet as much as $50,000. And just so nobody accuses him of cheating, Martin Balaz will set up a webcam that’ll be on him the whole time. The poker pro expanded on this by saying, “I need to prove to bettors that I am playing by myself the whole time, that is the main reason I am allowing railbirds to watch me. Also, I can’t get bored while I am chatting with railbirds, it keeps me busy.”

The challenge gets underway on June 15th, and we’ll soon see if Balaz can truly play 40,000 SNG’s in 30 days.

Calculating ROI for Poker Tournaments

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

One very useful tool for measuring your success in poker tournaments is return on investment (ROI). The basic definition of ROI is how much money you’re earning back from your buy-ins. Unsuccessful players will have a negative ROI, while really good poker players will have positive ROI numbers, meaning that they’re profitable.

So obviously it’s good to know what your poker ROI is, but the only problem is that many beginning players aren’t exactly sure how to calculate their return on investment. That said, let’s take a look at the formula for measuring ROI in SNG’s and MTT’s:

(tournament winnings – tournament buy-ins) / tournament buy-ins x 100 = ROI %

Now that we’ve covered the ROI formula, it’s worth looking at an example. To set this up, let’s say that you play 200 SNG’s with a $5 + $0.50 buy-in ($1,100 total buy-ins), and make $1,250 in total profit. This would make your formula and answer look like the following:

($1,250 – $1,100) / $1,100 x 100 = 13.6% ROI

This is actually a really good ROI no matter what stakes you play. To put this into number form, you would theoretically earn about $0.75 in profit for every $5.50 SNG you played.

However, it is worth mentioning that 200 tournaments isn’t nearly a big enough sample size for determining whether you’re a truly successful player. After all, online poker is full of swings, and sometimes these swings last for hundreds of tourneys.

But this doesn’t mean you should neglect to keep track of your poker ROI because it can be a very useful tool along the way. Just don’t obsess over it with a small sample size because you can’t really tell much from this. More importantly, don’t become lax and stop studying poker strategy just because you initially start off with a really good ROI.