how much can you survive bad cards/luck?

in the SHORT-TERM, how much can you weather bad cards in a single SNG?

i'm assuming cold cards pre-flop and/or poor flops for you (either you didn't hit or your high pocket pair is now precarious). pretty much nothing we can about being rivered (except having built up chips before that moment).

my thought is that in long-run, we want to crush SNG with good cards, have excellent chance to place top 2/3 with mediocre cards and have chance to try to squeak into 3rd place with poor cards. i suppose you'll bust out early up to about 20% of the time too..... do people think that's too optimistic??? or unrealistic???

just trying to reconcile my experience with that of others.

[Scuba Chuck]

Play your good cards strong. When you don't have good cards, play the situation and/or position.

[ QUOTE ]
Play your good cards strong. When you don't have good cards, play the situation and/or position.

[/ QUOTE ]

sure, that's basically what i'm asking.... but i'm asking how well does working the situation/position work when you don't have the cards.....

although i guess i've had experiences all over the map. have to figure out who will hold on to that "winning" second pair to the death and who'll give it up easily.

but really wondering how people actually do when the cards are not nice (like i said, turn/river excluded as that's often death)

[Scuba Chuck]

I think you're asking a poker question, not an SNG question.

[runner4life7]

i dont know if your question is answerable. Are you looking for 37% of the time it works with position and no cards? Just learn what are the "right" moves/+EV moves and that should be whats important.

guys, i'm just asking for how successful people have been when the cards didn't run well...... i'm not asking for +EV advice.. i'm not looking for exact %'s, just people's general experiences.

have you had decent success at SNG's with poor cards pre-flop and on the flop??? if you don't want to answer or you think it's too vague, that's fine.

i appreciate the responses nonetheless.

[runner4life7]

to answer that, good players definitely take down swings. 30 buy in down swings happen so thats why its good to have 50+ buy ins for the level you play. hope that helped better.

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to answer that, good players definitely take down swings. 30 buy in down swings happen so thats why its good to have 50+ buy ins for the level you play. hope that helped better.

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that did help... thank you very much!!!

trying to figure out if my expectations are too high for your worst 25% (just general level) card days on SNG (as i said pre-flop, flop - nothing will save you if you get rivered twice in a row)

thanks again!!

[EnderFFX]

From what I've noticed, it's not my cards that matter it's the cards of the SB and BB that matter. If late in a tournament they aren't catching when i'm on the button/SB I'm fine. If they are catching I'm in trouble.

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From what I've noticed, it's not my cards that matter it's the cards of the SB and BB that matter. If late in a tournament they aren't catching when i'm on the button/SB I'm fine. If they are catching I'm in trouble.

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good reply.... but can you get in that position without decent cards?... i do find that i probably get killed fairly early about 20%-25% of the time and then i'm near the bubble at worst the rest of the time (although alot of times on survival mode near the bubble)

[Scuba Chuck]

You are not going to find an answer to your question, I don't think. In poker, the real good players, know how to play without good cards. That's end of story.

In a single SNG, I don't think there's much you can do to overcome bad luck. I recently played a SNG where I got mostly terrible cards. It seemed whenever I got something I might be able to play with, someone in EP would open with a raise. 32 hands later I found myself with fewer than 10xBB and AQ in middle position. I pushed and one of the blinds called with A7s and outdrew me. SNG over. I don't think there's anything I could have done to overcome this bad luck.

Bad luck doesn't just mean not getting card or being outdrawn. We all remember being dealt AA in the big blind and having everyone fold. And, there are times when we push with JJ and get called by QQ, instead of pushing with QQ and getting called by JJ.

[tewall]

One of Irieguy's posts said the best you could hope for against 9 monkeys as an ITM percentage is 44.44%