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Old 09-08-2004, 11:27 PM
Irieguy Irieguy is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 340
Default Rhythm in the madness II: the $55\'s

Well, I recently moved up to the $55's at PP and just finished 200. That's not enough yet to know really where my ITM is goint to land at this level, but I do have some ideas about how beatable this level is and what significant differences there are relative to the lower limits. So, in case anybody is interested, here's what I think:

First off, the skill level jump is very small from the $33's to the $55's, but the differences caused by the larger starting chip counts is very significant. There are still plenty of players willing to call all-in in the first few levels, so optimal strategy should be able to keep you below 5% each for finishes 10th - 8th. This, I think, is where a large portion of a skilled player's ITM will come from. Again, it's just zero-sum game theory here: if other players are willing to go broke early, they will finish in the lower places more often and you will finish in the higher places more often.

But the game really changes at around level 3/4. At the lower limits, people really get impatient with their short stacks and move in too much. That keeps the games moving quickly and makes it relatively easy to keep your 5th-7th place finishes below 8%. But with more chips, that doesn't seem to happen as much. The bubble occurs at level 7 on average, instead of level 5, so even though you start with more chips, you tend to be a shorter stack relative to the blinds when the you get down to 5 players or so. This means that optimal strategy is going to be closer to "push/fold" than it is at the lower limits for bubble play and I think it is much more difficult to exert a significant advantage with skill during this portion of the SNG. My percentages for these places are all around 9%, and while i'm sure it's possible to do better, I'm not very sure it's possible to do a whole lot better.

But once you get down to 3 players, you still have a majority of your play in levels 7 and 8, and it still maxes out at level 9 (just like the smaller limits). But with more chips in play, the shorthanded matches are a little more interesting than they are at the smaller limits. I think that skilled shorthanded play can really result in a large differential between 3rd place and 2nd place, and it should be possible to gain some value here over the less skilled shorthanded players.

Because of the above factors, I don't believe that optimal strategy can acheive the same ITM% at the $55 level as at the $33 level. But I think this is more due to the structure change than a marked increase in opponents' skill level. The good news is that skillful shorthanded play should gain you a higher ROI (for a given ITM%) than would be possible at the lower limits.

In my first "rhythm" post, I suggested that the best you could do at the $11-33 level is an ITM% of around 45% with an ROI of 36% (representing an even distribution of 1st-3rd). I still think that is true. At the $55 limit I don't think you could do any better than around 42% ITM. But whereas an even distribution of 1sts-3rds would result in an ROI of 27%, I think you could do as well as 30-32%.

Just my preliminary thoughts at this level. I know some people claim to do better than this, but until I see it happen over more than 1000 SNgs, I don't believe it.

I will post my results once I have 500 SNGs logged at this level or when I decide to move to the $100's, whichever comes first.

Play the right way,
Irieguy
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