This past week didn’t go so well. The variance of the SNG games just gets to me on some primal level that makes me insane.
I worked all week just to finish up with less money in my bankroll than I started with. Not because I was playing bad, but because there’s just too much random crap that can happen in the middle of an SNG that will end the game without you getting paid. I only came out a few dollars down, but what bugs me is just the sheer amount of time and brain work that went into losing those few dollars.
I’ve gone over things in my head a hundred times, and I keep coming up the same. I wasn’t tilted, I wasn’t making bad calls, or bad pushes, I was just getting crushed by apparently every idiot on the site that would call any kind of raise with any two cards. I had pocket aces beat by some idiot who called my pre-flop all-in reraise with 4 6 offsuit and freakin sucked out on me with two-pair. That’s pretty much how my entire week went. 6 times in a row I pushed all-in pre-flop with pocket kings only to have the player on my immediate left turn over aces. 6 times in a row! I suppose I’ll be ready for stuff like that in the future, but I’d never seen anything like it. It was brutal.
Another part of Sit N Go games that I really don’t like is the lack of any real table selection, and the complete disrespect of many amateur regular SNG players for other regular players in the SNG games. I think just about any idiot can figure out that if he plays against fish, he makes more money than if he plays against other serious players. But somehow, time after time, If I set up 4 or 6 games at a time, I’ll have 2 or 3 regular players join every single game. Then, of course, we clear the fish off the table, and we sit there like a bunch of morons for an extra half hour because everyone is too tight, basically in push/fold mode, and the payout turns into a crapshoot. I think the direct competition of the tournament games gets the egos all fired up, and more people, especially at the lower stakes, are more interested in trying to “school the fish” than trying to actually win money. It’s just pathetic how many people there are in the $5 games and below who think they’re freakin world champion caliber players. (I’ll be writing another post about that eventually. That’s been on my mind for a while now.)
But anyway, after the week I had, I hit a very low low point on Friday. I came to 2 conclusions basically. The first was that I can not yet rely on this for income. I need to practice and play more, and do things in a more natural way. I’m trying to force too many things at one time. The second conclusion was that Sit N Go games have the power to piss me off to no end. I get far too emotionally involved in the competition of the tournament and it’s not healthy for me. I am capable of extreme rage at the drop of a hat, and on a day where I’m not feeling particularly uppity, a few bad beats in a few SNG games can really get me fuming. I think what really gets to me the most is that if some donk does something stupid and happens to suck out on me, I get screwed with no chance for revenge. I get knocked out of the game, he continues playing, and I have to go find another game to play. I can’t remain at the table, knowing what I know about him, and get the chance to take my money (plus more) back from him. That drives me nuts. And that brings me to where I’m going with all this…
Cash Games.
I’m going to try my hand at cash games. I think the skills I’ve learned from the SNG’s such as positional play, hand reading, and other things, will work well to my advantage against the fish in cash games who really have no clue what they’re doing, especially with the added bonus of being able to select exactly who I want to sit with at a table. I’ve talked to a few regular players who say they’ve switched to cash games for mainly the same reasons that I started thinking about moving to cash. So I think that’s where I’m gonna go.
I’m actually sitting at two .02/.05 tables on PokerStars as I’m writing this. So far things are going pretty good. I’m about even over a few hundred hands, but the level of play is super soft compared to what I’m used to in the SNG games. I really love it that I don’t have to think about who’s stack is what size, how many people are left, how close I am to the money, my tournament equity and all that extra math that comes with an SNG game. All I have to think about is the cards in front of me, and the opponents in the pot. There’s no ICM or equity calcualations. And most importantly, I can get out of the game whenever I feel like it. I don’t have to wait for the tournament to end before I can leave.
I guess that’s about it for today. Hopefully I’ll have some good things ro report after a few days of cash play.
May the fish be with you…