citanul
05-12-2005, 02:21 AM
Here's a draft, lemme know what you guys think.
If you are new to the site, before you read this post, it is highly recommended that you read this post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1282525&page=0&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1), which is lorinda's FAQ in the internet gambling forum.
What is a FAQ and why is it here?
FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. The goal of this document is to answer such questions. Consequently, this document does NOT seek to teach basically anything about play or strategy of one table tournaments. While there will be some basic strategy linked to, it will be nothing close to comprehensive. A player seeking to learn will have to put in a significant amount of work, not be given all the answers up front in one link.
Definitions of common terms
Link (http://www.twoplustwo.com/abbrevs.html) to the official 2+2 abbreviation list.
$EV: Dollar Expected Value – the expected profit or loss in dollars associated with a decision.
Aggressive: Adjective used to describe a player who plays in the opposite manner to the weak player. This player bets and raises often, while calling and checking infrequently. The exception would be checkraising.
B&M: Brick and Mortar: describes games played anywhere but online, usually in a casino.
BB: Big Blind
Brick: A card that seems like it should help no one.
Bubble: The point in any tournament when players begin to play extra tight in order to attempt to assure themselves a finish in the money. Usually, this occurs when there is one player more than there are paid finishing positions
Button: The player who acts last on every round of betting except preflop. The blinds are seated to the left of this player.
C&R: Ciaffone and Reuben
cEV: Chip Expected Value – the expected profit or loss in chips associated with a decision.
CO: Cutoff – The player to the right of the button
Coordinated Board: A board that is likely to have hit someone hard if they hit it or given someone a strong draw.
CR: Check Raise – When a player checks the first time it their turn to act on a given round of betting, and then raises after another player bets acting after them.
EV: Expected Value – the expected profit or loss associated with a decision.
Folding Equity: (Percentage of times all remaining opponents will fold to your bet)x(total chips you stand to gain when they do all fold)
The Gap: The varying amount by which a hand needs to be better to call a bet than would be needed to make the same bet.
The Gap Concept: The concept that it takes a better hand to call a bet than to make the same bet.
HE: Hold ‘em
HOH: Harrington on Hold ’em
Hourly Rate: The amount of money a player earns in an hour of play. (Total Prizes Won – Total Buyins)/(Hours Played)
HU: Heads Up – playing poker 1 on 1.
ICM: Independent Chip Model – a mathematical model used to help determine prize share equity based on chip stacks.
ITM: In the Money percentage – the percentage of games played that a player finishes in the money. (# money finshes)/(total games)
LAG: Loose Aggressive
Loose: Adjective used to describe a style of play where many hands are played.
MHIG: My Hand is Good – At showdown, you won.
MTT: Multi-table tournament – a tournament with many tables.
NL: No Limit – a form of poker where at any point in the hand, a player can wager any amount of their chips, greater than the blind, unless a smaller bet would put the player all in.
OESD: Open-ended Straight Draw: a draw to a straight with 8 outs, assuming no dead cards.
OOP: Out of Position – being in a position where you will be likely to be amongst the first to act for the entire hand.
OP: Original Post(er) – refers to the top post in a thread.
Overlay: When a pot or prize pool offers greater payouts, and consequently odds, than those that would be created by just the active players in the hand or game. Examples of things that create overlays are dead money or guaranteed prize funds.
PF: Preflop – All action between the deal of hole cards and the deal of the flop.
PFR: Preflop Raiser, or Preflop Raise percentage – Either describes the player who took the lead of action by raising preflop, or the percentage of the time that a given player raises preflop.
PL: Pot Limit – a form of poker where at any point in the hand, a player can wager any amount up to the amount that is in the pot after their call of any bet to them.
PLO8: Pot Limit Omaha 8 or Better
Pot Odds: come in two varieties, implied or immediate, and are used to evaluate the mathematical “price” a player is receiving to play their hand. Immediate odds take into account only the chips that are in the pot at the moment, while implied odds take into account the future chips that may or may not go into the pot.
PP: Party Poker
PP: Pocket Pair – In Hold ‘em, when a player is dealt a pair as their two hole cards.
PS: Poker Stars
Push: To bet all of your chips, or as much of them as anyone who can call you can call.
Rainbow: When no two cards on the board are the same suit.
Raise the Pot: a call of any bet to a player plus a raise of the total amount in the pot already. Example: if there are $2 in the pot, and an opponent bets $2, a player raising the pot would have to put in $8 – the call of $2, plus the amount that would then be in the pot, $2 from before, $2 from the opponent, and $2 from the player.
ROI: Return on Investment – the average return a player earns on an investment of $1. (Total Prizes Won-Total Buyins paid)/(Total Buyins) Note: Total buyins includes the rake paid to the card room.
SB: Small Blind
SNG: Sit-and-Go – the type of game discussed in this forum. Generally a tournament with one table, but more generally, any tournament where players simply take seats, and begin when all seats are filled, instead of being assigned seats.
Stop and Go: Instead of going all in from the blinds against a preflop raiser who would be pot committed to calling a reraise, calling the raise, and going all in on any flop.
STT: Single Table Tournament – any tournament where all the players start the game at one table.
t(any number): denotes tournament chips.
TAG: Tight Aggressive
Texture: Describes the characteristics of the board. For instance, the texture of a board could be three to a straight, or to a flush, rainbow, scattered, or the often used “scary,” “dangerous,” “non-dangerous.”
Tight: Adjective used to describe a style of play where very few hands are played.
TOP: Theory of Poker
TPFAP: Tournament Poker for Advanced Players
TPxK: Top pair x Kicker. If x is “T” it means “top.” If x is a number, such as 2, it means “Top pair, 2nd Kicker,” etc.
UB: Ultimate Bet
UTG: Under the Gun – The player who acts first in a hand. This player is seated immediately to the left of the big blind.
VPIP: Voluntarily put in pot – percentage of the time a player puts money into the pot.
Weak: Adjective used to describe a style of play where a player plays too passively. Typically this player will check, call, and fold too much, while betting and raising too little.
Should I fold AA preflop here?
Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2148744&page=&view=&sb=5& o=&fpart=1&vc=1) is an example of a thread where folding AA preflop is discussed. Note the general tone of the thread.
When should you fold AA preflop? When it's likely that folding will assure you of a greater expected value than not folding will. The general form of this occurrences is spelled out in the linked thread. Other examples are elsewhere, including in TPFAP. The general rule of thumb to consider before asking a folding AA preflop question would be to either look at an ICM calculation, or sit down with a pen and paper and try to figure out the EV of folding relative to your other options.
What are attainable stats at the different levels?
In this (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2302700&page=&view=&sb=5& o=&vc=1) thread, one poster comments on many things, including attainable stats for the various buyins. More than that, there is quite a bit of posting later in that thread about what are attainable and realistic ROI’s for the higher stakes Party SNGs. A summary of what very good stats for the various stakes would be probably looks very much like this:
10+1s-30+3s, ITM ~42%, ROI ~30%
55s-215s, ITM ~40%, ROI ~20%
Basically, as you move up your ITM shouldn’t decrease very much, but your ROI will. If you’re making money though, you’re making money. Just don’t get overconfident with a small sample size. See the “what do you think of my stats?” section.
Should I move up? What to expect when I do? Should I play more tables?
Should you move up? Should you play more tables? Answer: sure, why not. Only you are actually going to be able to tell when you’re ready for either of those things. Whatever you post isn’t going to make it so that someone else will be able to tell you these things. The only real advice I can give is that you shouldn’t think that you’re losing at low stakes because of the bad players and so you should move up to play with people who “know what they’re doing.” That’s a fallacy.
What should you expect to happen when you do these things? The play of the average opponent is going to get stronger as you move up stakes. When you play more tables at once, it’s likely your ROI is going to drop slightly, but the goal is to have your hourly rate improved anyway, by having added the additional tables. It is likely that adding more tables will hurt your ability to follow the action at each table, and hurt your reads. It is often suggested that because of this a player who is interested in improving his game to its maximum potential not attempt to get the most tables possible, but instead concentrate the tables they do play.
Variance and Downswings
A Small FAQ on Variance (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=singletable&Number=2372560 &PHPSESSID=&fpart=1#Post2372560). In short, variance is great, and stinks, all at the same time. Whatever your most recent downswing is, it’s very likely that another 2+2er has had worse. We commiserate, I promise. But we usually don’t want to hear about it.
To answer the other standard question: What is a really long out of the money streak for a winning player? The math is pretty easy to figure out what the chances of any given run are with a given ITM, but any random number in the teens is the standard stinky run number.
How big a bankroll do I need?
This is totally a preference thing. How willing or able are you to reload your bankroll if you bust it? How low of a risk of ruin do you like to have to feel comfortable? You should always have enough money in your bankroll that you are not playing with “scared money” at whatever stakes you are playing.
Many numbers are thrown around for how many buyins for a given level actually constitutes a bankroll. However, there are some factors that are clearly true, including that you need to have a larger in terms of buyins bankroll to play the higher stakes games. While many agree that to play the lower stakes games, 20-30 buyins is probably enough, many also say that to feel comfortable playing the highest limit games, they like to have 50-100 buyins in their bankroll. 100 being the most conservative number offered for high stakes play.
Additionally it is important to remember that the more willing a player is to move down limits when they lose, practicing a form of bankroll management, the fewer buyins for the next highest level the player needs to take a shot at moving up.
Why play at one site instead of another?
This depends really on why you are playing the games, amongst other things. If you are playing for fun, you might not care about maximizing your hourly rate. If you are playing purely for money, you might not care about anything else at all. The two largest SNG sites are Partypoker and Pokerstars at the moment. Partypoker’s benefits include that they have the largest player pools, the most frequently starting games, and the games have a fixed number of hands per blind level, assuring a quick game. Pokerstars’ benefits include a widely preferred interface, timed levels, nine player tables, as well as the offering of turbo SNGs. Most SNG players wind up choosing Partypoker, as the games are the softest, and the fastest.
What do you think of my stats? Short term/long term/sample sizes
The short answer is that most likely no one cares about your stats. But if you’re thinking about posting them, there’s probably a reason. Before you do so, you should know that to come to any sort of idea about what your “actual” stats are, you’re going to have to play about 500 games at a level before anyone takes your numbers seriously. Smaller sample sizes are just plain old too small to be worthwhile. Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1941324&page=3&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1) is a very good thread about confidence intervals and SNGs. Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=singletable&Number=1937516 &PHPSESSID=&fpart=1#Post1937516) is another.
Software/Websites
There are some very useful websites and pieces of software, and some that have debatable value. Here’s a few:
pokertracker (http://www.pokertracker.com) is the “standard” piece of hold’em evaluating software. Amongst the things it does for SNG players is store tournament summaries and all the hands in a tournament, separating them by a variety of filters on command.
twodimes.net (http://www.twodimes.net/poker/) is a web based utility to evaluate hand match-up equities in various poker games.
pokerstove (http://www.pokerstove.com) is a downloadable utility that allows the user to run range based equity match-ups for hold’em.
sng tracker (http://sng.pokercomment.com/) is a utility by Hood that calculates a variety of statistics for the user about their SNG play.
Sit n Go Power Tools (http://sitngo-analyzer.com/) is a downloadable utility by eastbay that allows the user to run an EV calculation that takes into account the ICM, folding equity, and more.
bisonbison’s hand converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi) makes hand histories from various online poker rooms all pretty so that you can post them on your favorite poker forums without getting flamed for bad formatting.
the replayer (http://teamfu.freeshell.org/replayer.html) allows you to cut and paste Partypoker hand histories and watch them on a graphical interface as if you were watching them at the table.
tables like this one (http://gocee.com/poker/he_ev_hand.html) that gives the pot equity with any hand against a random hand, are available all over online.
ICM calculator (http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~sharnett/ICM/ICM.html) is pretty necessary when you’re doing all those ICM calculations by hand.
The aleomagus spreadsheet is always being revised, and the best way to find it is to run a search for the most recent mentions of “spreadsheet” in this forum, or something like that. The spreadsheet helps keep track of SNG results, and some more detailed statistics.
Posting a hand in the 1-table tournament forum
In this post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1861331&page=&view=&sb=5& o=&vc=1) Scuba Chuck helps give some guidelines to what information you should try to give when you post a hand in this forum. Much of it will be included when you take your hand over to bisonbison’s hand converter automatically. Also, always remember to copyedit your posts, as sometimes there’s cut and paste or other errors that make the hand totally unintelligible. Basically, try to concisely include any piece of information that you had access to while at the table before asking for help on what your decision would have been. Sometimes you just flat out didn’t have some of the information, but try your best.
Rakeback
Rakeback refers to having an arrangement whereby you receive a percentage of your rake that you play to the poker sites. At the moment, this practice is not commonly supported by most of the major online poker rooms, and is strictly against the terms and conditions of their user agreements. That said… at most of the sites, the house take of the entrance fees for SNG tournaments counts as rake, and thus contributes to your rakeback payments. How to get rakeback and who to get it from is more than will be covered in this document. Use the search function, use google, and use the classifieds section of this website.
How to use ICM
Dethgrind gives a clinic. (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=&Number=1122239&page=&view =&sb=5&o=&fpart=)
Who are the best players at the Party...?
This question is asked all the time about basically every buyin level of the Partypoker SNGs. For most of the buyins, the question is somewhat ridiculous, as the player pools are incredibly large, sample sizes are hard to get to, and good players often move up from the lower levels, so don’t spend enough time to be recognized as a “great” player at those levels.
At the higher buyin levels, the question is made difficult sometimes by players changing their names, having multiple screen names, and other factors. The main difficulty is that the people who have large enough data sets to take a good shot at answering this sort of question for high stakes games have very little to compel them to share their information.
If you’re somewhat curious about the answers to the question, search the archive. If you’re more curious than that, I’d recommend datamining the games.
Why play SNGs?
Different people have different reasons. Some people like the “it’s a science”-ishness of them. Some people like the fact that they take a pretty standard amount of time. Some people like the variety of going from full table all the way to heads up. Some people just got burned out on whatever their last game was and think SNGs are fun. Others like the fact that the variance is lower in SNGs than other forms of poker. It’s all good.
If you are new to the site, before you read this post, it is highly recommended that you read this post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1282525&page=0&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1), which is lorinda's FAQ in the internet gambling forum.
What is a FAQ and why is it here?
FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. The goal of this document is to answer such questions. Consequently, this document does NOT seek to teach basically anything about play or strategy of one table tournaments. While there will be some basic strategy linked to, it will be nothing close to comprehensive. A player seeking to learn will have to put in a significant amount of work, not be given all the answers up front in one link.
Definitions of common terms
Link (http://www.twoplustwo.com/abbrevs.html) to the official 2+2 abbreviation list.
$EV: Dollar Expected Value – the expected profit or loss in dollars associated with a decision.
Aggressive: Adjective used to describe a player who plays in the opposite manner to the weak player. This player bets and raises often, while calling and checking infrequently. The exception would be checkraising.
B&M: Brick and Mortar: describes games played anywhere but online, usually in a casino.
BB: Big Blind
Brick: A card that seems like it should help no one.
Bubble: The point in any tournament when players begin to play extra tight in order to attempt to assure themselves a finish in the money. Usually, this occurs when there is one player more than there are paid finishing positions
Button: The player who acts last on every round of betting except preflop. The blinds are seated to the left of this player.
C&R: Ciaffone and Reuben
cEV: Chip Expected Value – the expected profit or loss in chips associated with a decision.
CO: Cutoff – The player to the right of the button
Coordinated Board: A board that is likely to have hit someone hard if they hit it or given someone a strong draw.
CR: Check Raise – When a player checks the first time it their turn to act on a given round of betting, and then raises after another player bets acting after them.
EV: Expected Value – the expected profit or loss associated with a decision.
Folding Equity: (Percentage of times all remaining opponents will fold to your bet)x(total chips you stand to gain when they do all fold)
The Gap: The varying amount by which a hand needs to be better to call a bet than would be needed to make the same bet.
The Gap Concept: The concept that it takes a better hand to call a bet than to make the same bet.
HE: Hold ‘em
HOH: Harrington on Hold ’em
Hourly Rate: The amount of money a player earns in an hour of play. (Total Prizes Won – Total Buyins)/(Hours Played)
HU: Heads Up – playing poker 1 on 1.
ICM: Independent Chip Model – a mathematical model used to help determine prize share equity based on chip stacks.
ITM: In the Money percentage – the percentage of games played that a player finishes in the money. (# money finshes)/(total games)
LAG: Loose Aggressive
Loose: Adjective used to describe a style of play where many hands are played.
MHIG: My Hand is Good – At showdown, you won.
MTT: Multi-table tournament – a tournament with many tables.
NL: No Limit – a form of poker where at any point in the hand, a player can wager any amount of their chips, greater than the blind, unless a smaller bet would put the player all in.
OESD: Open-ended Straight Draw: a draw to a straight with 8 outs, assuming no dead cards.
OOP: Out of Position – being in a position where you will be likely to be amongst the first to act for the entire hand.
OP: Original Post(er) – refers to the top post in a thread.
Overlay: When a pot or prize pool offers greater payouts, and consequently odds, than those that would be created by just the active players in the hand or game. Examples of things that create overlays are dead money or guaranteed prize funds.
PF: Preflop – All action between the deal of hole cards and the deal of the flop.
PFR: Preflop Raiser, or Preflop Raise percentage – Either describes the player who took the lead of action by raising preflop, or the percentage of the time that a given player raises preflop.
PL: Pot Limit – a form of poker where at any point in the hand, a player can wager any amount up to the amount that is in the pot after their call of any bet to them.
PLO8: Pot Limit Omaha 8 or Better
Pot Odds: come in two varieties, implied or immediate, and are used to evaluate the mathematical “price” a player is receiving to play their hand. Immediate odds take into account only the chips that are in the pot at the moment, while implied odds take into account the future chips that may or may not go into the pot.
PP: Party Poker
PP: Pocket Pair – In Hold ‘em, when a player is dealt a pair as their two hole cards.
PS: Poker Stars
Push: To bet all of your chips, or as much of them as anyone who can call you can call.
Rainbow: When no two cards on the board are the same suit.
Raise the Pot: a call of any bet to a player plus a raise of the total amount in the pot already. Example: if there are $2 in the pot, and an opponent bets $2, a player raising the pot would have to put in $8 – the call of $2, plus the amount that would then be in the pot, $2 from before, $2 from the opponent, and $2 from the player.
ROI: Return on Investment – the average return a player earns on an investment of $1. (Total Prizes Won-Total Buyins paid)/(Total Buyins) Note: Total buyins includes the rake paid to the card room.
SB: Small Blind
SNG: Sit-and-Go – the type of game discussed in this forum. Generally a tournament with one table, but more generally, any tournament where players simply take seats, and begin when all seats are filled, instead of being assigned seats.
Stop and Go: Instead of going all in from the blinds against a preflop raiser who would be pot committed to calling a reraise, calling the raise, and going all in on any flop.
STT: Single Table Tournament – any tournament where all the players start the game at one table.
t(any number): denotes tournament chips.
TAG: Tight Aggressive
Texture: Describes the characteristics of the board. For instance, the texture of a board could be three to a straight, or to a flush, rainbow, scattered, or the often used “scary,” “dangerous,” “non-dangerous.”
Tight: Adjective used to describe a style of play where very few hands are played.
TOP: Theory of Poker
TPFAP: Tournament Poker for Advanced Players
TPxK: Top pair x Kicker. If x is “T” it means “top.” If x is a number, such as 2, it means “Top pair, 2nd Kicker,” etc.
UB: Ultimate Bet
UTG: Under the Gun – The player who acts first in a hand. This player is seated immediately to the left of the big blind.
VPIP: Voluntarily put in pot – percentage of the time a player puts money into the pot.
Weak: Adjective used to describe a style of play where a player plays too passively. Typically this player will check, call, and fold too much, while betting and raising too little.
Should I fold AA preflop here?
Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2148744&page=&view=&sb=5& o=&fpart=1&vc=1) is an example of a thread where folding AA preflop is discussed. Note the general tone of the thread.
When should you fold AA preflop? When it's likely that folding will assure you of a greater expected value than not folding will. The general form of this occurrences is spelled out in the linked thread. Other examples are elsewhere, including in TPFAP. The general rule of thumb to consider before asking a folding AA preflop question would be to either look at an ICM calculation, or sit down with a pen and paper and try to figure out the EV of folding relative to your other options.
What are attainable stats at the different levels?
In this (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2302700&page=&view=&sb=5& o=&vc=1) thread, one poster comments on many things, including attainable stats for the various buyins. More than that, there is quite a bit of posting later in that thread about what are attainable and realistic ROI’s for the higher stakes Party SNGs. A summary of what very good stats for the various stakes would be probably looks very much like this:
10+1s-30+3s, ITM ~42%, ROI ~30%
55s-215s, ITM ~40%, ROI ~20%
Basically, as you move up your ITM shouldn’t decrease very much, but your ROI will. If you’re making money though, you’re making money. Just don’t get overconfident with a small sample size. See the “what do you think of my stats?” section.
Should I move up? What to expect when I do? Should I play more tables?
Should you move up? Should you play more tables? Answer: sure, why not. Only you are actually going to be able to tell when you’re ready for either of those things. Whatever you post isn’t going to make it so that someone else will be able to tell you these things. The only real advice I can give is that you shouldn’t think that you’re losing at low stakes because of the bad players and so you should move up to play with people who “know what they’re doing.” That’s a fallacy.
What should you expect to happen when you do these things? The play of the average opponent is going to get stronger as you move up stakes. When you play more tables at once, it’s likely your ROI is going to drop slightly, but the goal is to have your hourly rate improved anyway, by having added the additional tables. It is likely that adding more tables will hurt your ability to follow the action at each table, and hurt your reads. It is often suggested that because of this a player who is interested in improving his game to its maximum potential not attempt to get the most tables possible, but instead concentrate the tables they do play.
Variance and Downswings
A Small FAQ on Variance (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=singletable&Number=2372560 &PHPSESSID=&fpart=1#Post2372560). In short, variance is great, and stinks, all at the same time. Whatever your most recent downswing is, it’s very likely that another 2+2er has had worse. We commiserate, I promise. But we usually don’t want to hear about it.
To answer the other standard question: What is a really long out of the money streak for a winning player? The math is pretty easy to figure out what the chances of any given run are with a given ITM, but any random number in the teens is the standard stinky run number.
How big a bankroll do I need?
This is totally a preference thing. How willing or able are you to reload your bankroll if you bust it? How low of a risk of ruin do you like to have to feel comfortable? You should always have enough money in your bankroll that you are not playing with “scared money” at whatever stakes you are playing.
Many numbers are thrown around for how many buyins for a given level actually constitutes a bankroll. However, there are some factors that are clearly true, including that you need to have a larger in terms of buyins bankroll to play the higher stakes games. While many agree that to play the lower stakes games, 20-30 buyins is probably enough, many also say that to feel comfortable playing the highest limit games, they like to have 50-100 buyins in their bankroll. 100 being the most conservative number offered for high stakes play.
Additionally it is important to remember that the more willing a player is to move down limits when they lose, practicing a form of bankroll management, the fewer buyins for the next highest level the player needs to take a shot at moving up.
Why play at one site instead of another?
This depends really on why you are playing the games, amongst other things. If you are playing for fun, you might not care about maximizing your hourly rate. If you are playing purely for money, you might not care about anything else at all. The two largest SNG sites are Partypoker and Pokerstars at the moment. Partypoker’s benefits include that they have the largest player pools, the most frequently starting games, and the games have a fixed number of hands per blind level, assuring a quick game. Pokerstars’ benefits include a widely preferred interface, timed levels, nine player tables, as well as the offering of turbo SNGs. Most SNG players wind up choosing Partypoker, as the games are the softest, and the fastest.
What do you think of my stats? Short term/long term/sample sizes
The short answer is that most likely no one cares about your stats. But if you’re thinking about posting them, there’s probably a reason. Before you do so, you should know that to come to any sort of idea about what your “actual” stats are, you’re going to have to play about 500 games at a level before anyone takes your numbers seriously. Smaller sample sizes are just plain old too small to be worthwhile. Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1941324&page=3&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1) is a very good thread about confidence intervals and SNGs. Here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=singletable&Number=1937516 &PHPSESSID=&fpart=1#Post1937516) is another.
Software/Websites
There are some very useful websites and pieces of software, and some that have debatable value. Here’s a few:
pokertracker (http://www.pokertracker.com) is the “standard” piece of hold’em evaluating software. Amongst the things it does for SNG players is store tournament summaries and all the hands in a tournament, separating them by a variety of filters on command.
twodimes.net (http://www.twodimes.net/poker/) is a web based utility to evaluate hand match-up equities in various poker games.
pokerstove (http://www.pokerstove.com) is a downloadable utility that allows the user to run range based equity match-ups for hold’em.
sng tracker (http://sng.pokercomment.com/) is a utility by Hood that calculates a variety of statistics for the user about their SNG play.
Sit n Go Power Tools (http://sitngo-analyzer.com/) is a downloadable utility by eastbay that allows the user to run an EV calculation that takes into account the ICM, folding equity, and more.
bisonbison’s hand converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi) makes hand histories from various online poker rooms all pretty so that you can post them on your favorite poker forums without getting flamed for bad formatting.
the replayer (http://teamfu.freeshell.org/replayer.html) allows you to cut and paste Partypoker hand histories and watch them on a graphical interface as if you were watching them at the table.
tables like this one (http://gocee.com/poker/he_ev_hand.html) that gives the pot equity with any hand against a random hand, are available all over online.
ICM calculator (http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~sharnett/ICM/ICM.html) is pretty necessary when you’re doing all those ICM calculations by hand.
The aleomagus spreadsheet is always being revised, and the best way to find it is to run a search for the most recent mentions of “spreadsheet” in this forum, or something like that. The spreadsheet helps keep track of SNG results, and some more detailed statistics.
Posting a hand in the 1-table tournament forum
In this post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1861331&page=&view=&sb=5& o=&vc=1) Scuba Chuck helps give some guidelines to what information you should try to give when you post a hand in this forum. Much of it will be included when you take your hand over to bisonbison’s hand converter automatically. Also, always remember to copyedit your posts, as sometimes there’s cut and paste or other errors that make the hand totally unintelligible. Basically, try to concisely include any piece of information that you had access to while at the table before asking for help on what your decision would have been. Sometimes you just flat out didn’t have some of the information, but try your best.
Rakeback
Rakeback refers to having an arrangement whereby you receive a percentage of your rake that you play to the poker sites. At the moment, this practice is not commonly supported by most of the major online poker rooms, and is strictly against the terms and conditions of their user agreements. That said… at most of the sites, the house take of the entrance fees for SNG tournaments counts as rake, and thus contributes to your rakeback payments. How to get rakeback and who to get it from is more than will be covered in this document. Use the search function, use google, and use the classifieds section of this website.
How to use ICM
Dethgrind gives a clinic. (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=&Number=1122239&page=&view =&sb=5&o=&fpart=)
Who are the best players at the Party...?
This question is asked all the time about basically every buyin level of the Partypoker SNGs. For most of the buyins, the question is somewhat ridiculous, as the player pools are incredibly large, sample sizes are hard to get to, and good players often move up from the lower levels, so don’t spend enough time to be recognized as a “great” player at those levels.
At the higher buyin levels, the question is made difficult sometimes by players changing their names, having multiple screen names, and other factors. The main difficulty is that the people who have large enough data sets to take a good shot at answering this sort of question for high stakes games have very little to compel them to share their information.
If you’re somewhat curious about the answers to the question, search the archive. If you’re more curious than that, I’d recommend datamining the games.
Why play SNGs?
Different people have different reasons. Some people like the “it’s a science”-ishness of them. Some people like the fact that they take a pretty standard amount of time. Some people like the variety of going from full table all the way to heads up. Some people just got burned out on whatever their last game was and think SNGs are fun. Others like the fact that the variance is lower in SNGs than other forms of poker. It’s all good.