What does too many 4ths mean?

[dogsballs]

Maybe I'm imagining it, but tonight made me think about it again. Played 21; 3 1st, 4 2nd zero 3rds, but 7 times in 4th. Often it's the same kind of distribution, but other times it's a lot of thirds, some 2nd's and onle a few 1sts. The two most common general layouts.

I seem to see too many 4ths. Maybe it's because coming 4th sticks out in my mind more than the other places, but I think I see too many. ( I don't record exact placings, just 0 or 1, 2,3; 0 being out of the money).

Am I gambling too much when it's 5, 4 and 3-handed??

edit: I'm not talking just a couple dozen; maybe over 6-800 SNG's I've got this impression. I've just recently started keeping my exact finishes.

[lorinda]

With a 50-30-20 structure, 14 4-player SNGS are worth $25 each totalling $350

If you bust half of the time, you need to win ALL of the other half to get your money's worth.

Just a guideline, given the small sample, that you may wish to keep an eye on.

Lori

[reecelights]

I'm interested to hear the responses. I went through a streak, although I knew it was a really BAD one, last weekend where I finished ITM only 2/23 with 8 4ths. Man was I angry.

I asked a couple of people online and the quick answer they gave me was "you're not being patient enough." I think there was some truth to that. I believe I was making calls/plays on the bubble that I should have saved for ITM.

[dogsballs]

[ QUOTE ]
With a 50-30-20 structure, 14 4-player SNGS are worth $25 each totalling $350

If you bust half of the time, you need to win ALL of the other half to get your money's worth.

Just a guideline, given the small sample, that you may wish to keep an eye on.

Lori

[/ QUOTE ]


???

U drunk lori..? Or maybe it's me. I don't play 4-players.

[6471849653]

It would be interesting to see how the LAGs change the score distributions. My guess is that one gets more around 4th positions, and just maybe more top positions (when the LAGs lose their stacks to you).

[Mammux]

Maybe you are not changing your play sufficiently to account for the fact that most players really tighten up when you get close to the money. Bluffing becomes more powerful, but you also have to respect someone showing strength more than usual.

-Magnus

[sahaguje]

hi,

Funny you ask that, dogsballs, cause I just started playing SNGs, and I have exaclty the same problem. I make decent money, but I finsih 4th maybe 1/3 of the time. When I am not ITM, more than 75% I am 4th. Funny, but that is a problem ; I'd rather finish 10th each time.

Anyway, I think the problem is I push a little too far the idea than when you are in the bubble you have to make profit of your opponents' tightness. Most of the time, I finish 4th because of a failed steal. So I guess I should become very agressive when down to 4 only if I have a big stack. But I am not sure about this last statement.

Any help, SNGs pros ?

sahaguje

[A J Carisse]

By itself, finishing 4th a lot isn't necessarily a bad thing. By playing well, you're going to reach this spot more. It's the ding dongs that go out early too much, by taking unnecessary risks.

Now, this is all relative to your performance. If you're getting a lot of 4ths, and a lot of lower finishes too, then you've got a problem /images/graemlins/smile.gif It's not the 4ths I'd be looking at, it's the other placings. In other words, if I finished out of the money but below 4th, I'd be even more interested in kmowing what happpened.

On the other hand, you can just plain have too many 4ths. Each tournament I play that I don't finish 1st, I look for things that I may have done differently to improve my position. Sometimes it's nothing (bad beats with a significant favorite, for instance), sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes you have to give it some real thought.

In terms of a lot of 4ths, 3 things could be happening here:

1. The structure of the thing might not be right for you. I'm going to leave PP alone on this one in deference to all you PP fanatics /images/graemlins/smile.gif Anyone ever play a SNG on the Prima Network? Make the PP ones look slo-mo. Blinds double every round all the way to infinity.

2. You aren't playing aggressive enough. When I first started playing SNG's, at Pacific Poker 10+1 (10), it was like taking candy from babies. All I needed to do was hang around and play safe and the clowns would knock each other out time and again, and I'd get paid. On the bubble was fold fold fold and there goes another one. Then I moved up to the 30's (next level). Next thing you know I was going out 4th A LOT. Get to the bubble easy enough but they weren't quite as wild and crazy with the all-ins. My reactive strategy wasn't working so well now. They were now waiting for ME to go out on the bubble, and stealing to keep ahead of me. This is an extreme example, but you get the idea /images/graemlins/smile.gif

3. Being TOO aggressive on the bubble. Some people go all-in, or put in big raises with trash hands. You do that enough you're going to get burned. I love this stuff!!!

The nice thing though is that it's not hard at all to figure out which category you're in. #2 is a newbie mistake, and one you learn to overcome fast. Your opponents will give you all the lessons you need here if this is the prob /images/graemlins/smile.gif #1 is something you'll need to take a hard look at, and it doesn't hurt to experiment with different structures. #3 is easy to recognize but a little tougher to solve.

Some people over do it because they think it's the best thing, others let their natural aggression take over too much. Keep in mind that this is a NECESSARY EVIL. You're exposing yourself to more risk of course and this must be tempered. A good rule of thumb is that you don't want to get blinded out unless the cards are REALLY bad, but at the same time, getting blinded is just as bad as going out swinging, and in fact it's worse when you're swinging a flyswatter /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Good luck
A.J.

[UncleDuke]

[ QUOTE ]
U drunk lori..? Or maybe it's me. I don't play 4-players.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think what she's doing is taking the 14 times you finished in the top 4 in your example and saying the expected prize on each one is $25 if you assume each place is equally likely, i.e., (50+30+20+0)/4 = 25.

This makes sense as far as it goes, but there's an implicit assumption that you reach the bubble with an average number of chips (assuming equal skill levels among the last 4 players), which may not be true. You might be just barely surviving to 4th, which would make it likely that you finish 4th more than 25% of the time you reach the bubble.

I was thinking about why I had so many 3rds at one point, and I decided it was because I being conservative enough to reach the money pretty often, but because of that, I usually didn't get to the end game with a lot of chips. You might have something similar going on.

[lorinda]

U drunk lori..? Or maybe it's me. I don't play 4-players.

All 50-30-20 SNG's are 4-player, you just have some accidents before you get to the game sometimes.

Lori

[lorinda]

This makes sense as far as it goes, but there's an implicit assumption that you reach the bubble with an average number of chips (assuming equal skill levels among the last 4 players), which may not be true. You might be just barely surviving to 4th, which would make it likely that you finish 4th more than 25% of the time you reach the bubble.


There are of course, many factors that make my post a little silly.
However using that as a guideline, you can look at your play to see how you may alter these factors and try to get that number over $25, without lowering the number of times you get there.

I have this habit of posting silly ways of looking at things, but I always post it because sometimes it sets someone's train of thought down an unusual route and helps them out.
Sometimes they just write it off as silly, which is also fine, as it often is.

Lori

[dogsballs]

[ QUOTE ]
All 50-30-20 SNG's are 4-player, you just have some accidents before you get to the game sometimes.

Lori

[/ QUOTE ]


heh. ok, gotcha babe.

[ilya]

Well, it could be all the usual things.

Sometimes though I think a streak of 4ths can be due to loose-big-stack push-blockers. That is, if one of the other players has a big stack and keeps limping all the time, he either forces you to beat him in a showdown with a marginal hand, or pass up on a bunch of marginal all-in blind steal opportunities.
I have trouble dealing with these kinds of players on the bubble, anyway. If anyone has some good advice, I'm all ears.

[nathanielt]

Just thought I'd comment on this, because I had a problem with it before.

I think the major issue with too many 4ths, and even 3rds for that matter, is being too conservative before the bubble. When you get down to the last 4 and you only have 800 in chips, because you've played 5 hands and now blinds are 150/300, you're gonna have problems. Try getting aggressive a little bit earlier, when you can steal pots without worrying about damaging your stack significantly.