Help I want to cry!

[primate]

Having played many SnG's I decided to start recording the data and purchased Poker Office. After 53 $10 buy ins and a ITM% of 43% I had built up my bankroll and decided to move up to the $20 buy ins. Now I have read that the difference between the two in terms of quality of player isnt great and thought I should do ok. After 53 games I have a ITM% of 32% however a good number of these have been 3rd place and my bankroll has suffered. I have lately suffered a poor run with pocket Aces losing 3 times in a row to ridiculous hands including A10o picking up the straight. My pair K recently lost to 85o...all these where at stages of all in near or on the bubble.
I feel like crying, any advice? (I've moved back down to the $10 games and will try to buld a bigger bank roll). /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Jman28]

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I feel like crying, any advice?

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Get used to it and take your time moving up to higher buyins. Good luck.

-Jman28

[syka16]

You've only had 50 SNGs. It could be bad luck but if you're negative ROI after 80 SNGs you're better off at $10 until you improve your game. Play 100 at $10 and build your confidence. There is a slight jump in skill level between 10 and 20.

[primate]

Overall I have positive ROI but the recent bad run has reduced my bank roll to such an extent that I'd feel more comfortable building it back in the 10's

[Sidekick]

I'm surprised it hasn't been pointed out yet, but here goes...

Your sample size is too small to draw any conclusions. There are some excellent players on these boards (25%+ ROI) that have posted 150+ tournament stretches where they have negative or just break even ROI.

This isn't saying you aren't a winning player, but you just don't have enough tournaments to draw any real conclusions as yet. It's possible that you have been lucky and that you are in fact a losing player (I believe you are not since you are reading these boards).

You ARE going to have stretches where you make little to no money or even lose money over a 100+ tournament stretch. Make sure you have a large enough bank roll so that the losing stretches don't affect your play as much as if you are under bank rolled.

(If this next paragraph covers stuff you already know, then please ignore it.) What I mean is that if you have only 20 buy ins for say the $20+$2 tournaments and you go on a 30 tournament stretch where you are down 10 buy ins, it will affect most people's play since they are now worried about losing their bank roll. The general recommendation is to have at least 30 buy ins for the level at which you intend to play. Quite a few players (myself included) seem to be leaning these days towards having an even larger bank roll to weather the bad stretches.

The only other advice I can think to give, is to get used to busting out near the bubble with the best hand. It is going to happen frequently. All you can do is get your chips in with the best hand and hope your hand holds up.

[Mr_J]

You answered your own question. If it's your BR size that makes you feel uncomfortable then definately jump back down. You don't want it affecting your play.

[ilya]

It's true that, as someone pointed out, your sample sizes are too small and your results at the $20s could simply be due to bad luck - or perhaps a psychological issue, e.g. though you technically have enough buy-ins to play the $20s, each entry fee is still large enough relative to your bankroll that you are playing a bit scared.

However, I would say....work on your bubble play. The conventional wisdom on this forum is that there is very little difference between the $10s and $20s in terms of player quality; however, having played about 600 $10s and 1.5K $20s, I don't think that's quite accurate. I think that $20s players are better on the bubble. They limp less, go after your blinds a bit more agressively, are more able to lay down a weak stealing hand to a re-raise, and make fewer bad calls.

[goldseraph]

My ROI is actually 10% higher on 20's than 10's at party. At 20's people generally play somewhat sane... raises are respected more, there is less overall craziness. On the 10's you usually have at least 3-4 poor to maniac players and this causes too much confusion for me as it is so hard to put such players on a hand. Like everyone else said though, that is way too small a sample size to really draw conclusions, but until you have at least 500 dollars or so I would stick to 10's.

[primate]

Thanks for the many replies. I think my problem is definately needing to build a bigger bank roll before moving up. Just too keen it seems after appearing to do so well in the 10's. I also fully appreciate the statistical requirement of 100's of games before being able to get a true reading of your game but when your staring at a ITM% of over 40 in the 10's I got carried away it seems. Bring on the 10's and game on! Cheers /images/graemlins/grin.gif