Limit SNGs

[The Yugoslavian]

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I'm curious as to why you say they're harder to multitable. I usually play 2-3 at once, but 4 isn't much of a problem for me.
Personally, I've found NL harder to multitable, because I find that getting reads on opponents is more important (and harder to do with more tables) in NL.

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Not harder in terms of playing. Harder in terms of finding. Although probably quite possible.

Good luck keeping 8 running continuously, [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

Yugoslav

[Phil Van Sexton]

I believe in efficient markets. If Limit SnGs were very profitable, more people would be playing them and discussing them here.

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Furthermore, in any tournament situation, you will often find yourself short-stacked on a regular basis. In a NL situation, you are at least able to double up your chips with some sort of advantage or at least make it a mistake for the blinds to call you. In limit however, you don't have this edge.

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This isn't really true. The big advantage in NL tournaments the ability to win money by blind stealing. If you have 500 left with a BB of 100, you just move allin and often people will fold. You can do this with any 2 cards.

It's actually harder to double up with a good hand. If you raise with a good hand, people are likely to fold in NL (which is fine too).

In limit, people will call your small raise and you can often double or triple up if they stay until the river. Of course, this is the problem: you actually have to win at showdown. Even good hands don't win more than 60-80% of the time. If against multiple opponents, your chances of winning are usually under 50%.

It doesn't matter how good you are. Once the blinds get high, you will need to win hands at showdown in limit. You don't get anything for free.

Here is another post on limit SnGs Limit post.

[Patriarch]

I wondered about the lack of discussion on limit, too. Thanks for the link to the old post.

[Blarg]

I think limit tourneys are probably the least natural thing to go play.

The poker you see on t.v. is tournament, and it's no limit.

People coming to online sites and starting to learn poker often try to get a handle on it by playing ring limit games, which is probably what they're more used to from home games, most of which are limit.

So you've got your tourney players and your ring players, and the thing they seem to have in commmon is that some of them are no limit players. But limit ring players probably don't gravitate to limit tourneys. If they go to tourneys, they mostly probably gravitate to what everyone else is always talking about and is on t.v., and even what's offered more at sites like Party -- no limit tourneys.

You have to almost perversely seek out limit hold'em tourneys, it seems to me. They're not quite as fun or as quick or as frequently offered etc etc. I think that's why they're not talked about much. Because there's not a natural play progression leading up to them.

[GrekeHaus]

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If there is bad (sub-optimal) play, then it's trivial to show how the game is beatable. One just has to find the right adjustments to take full advantage. Unfortunately, I doubt it's really worth anyone's time to really devote a significant amount of time to figuring out what these adjustments are...

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I don't think this statement is true. Just because there's suboptimal play doesn't mean the game is beatable. The reason for this, of course, is that even though you might have an edge, the edge you get might not be enough to compensate for the entry fees you have to pay. For instance, if you put a bunch of world class pros at a $5/10 table, my guess is that none of them would be able to show a profit because I doubt any of them would be able to gain more than a 5% advantage over the competition. I'm not saying that it is the case with limit SNGs, but it's something to consider.

I also mentioned that a higher standard deviation in limit would lead to a lower overall winrate due to the nature of SNGs and the fact that this would more or less flatten your results. However, after reading this post and contemplating this idea further, I'm not sure this is the case. It might be true that your placement is more or less a function of the percentage edge you have on the competition and be completely (or mostly) independent of SD. You will have to win more at showdown, which could decrease the percentage of times you win, but you are also getting 3:1 or 4:1 on a lot of these bets, which could lead to a higher ITM.

I'm not sure how to go about proving this in either direction, and I'm not sure which one is correct. Does anybody have any ideas on this? Might be a good question for the Probability forum...

[The Yugoslavian]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If there is bad (sub-optimal) play, then it's trivial to show how the game is beatable. One just has to find the right adjustments to take full advantage. Unfortunately, I doubt it's really worth anyone's time to really devote a significant amount of time to figuring out what these adjustments are...

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think this statement is true. Just because there's suboptimal play doesn't mean the game is beatable. The reason for this, of course, is that even though you might have an edge, the edge you get might not be enough to compensate for the entry fees you have to pay. For instance, if you put a bunch of world class pros at a $5/10 table, my guess is that none of them would be able to show a profit because I doubt any of them would be able to gain more than a 5% advantage over the competition. I'm not saying that it is the case with limit SNGs, but it's something to consider.

I also mentioned that a higher standard deviation in limit would lead to a lower overall winrate due to the nature of SNGs and the fact that this would more or less flatten your results. However, after reading this post and contemplating this idea further, I'm not sure this is the case. It might be true that your placement is more or less a function of the percentage edge you have on the competition and be completely (or mostly) independent of SD. You will have to win more at showdown, which could decrease the percentage of times you win, but you are also getting 3:1 or 4:1 on a lot of these bets, which could lead to a higher ITM.

I'm not sure how to go about proving this in either direction, and I'm not sure which one is correct. Does anybody have any ideas on this? Might be a good question for the Probability forum...

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Dude, if you've played *any* limit STTs and think there isn't enough bad play to make playing them and beating the rake profitable....then you should quit poker....I'm surprised you even made this argument knowing that I already know it....(if you want me to admit that I needed to mention rake there to be completely accurate...then fine, I admit it - I was *assuming* that much was self-evident).

As for SD, comparing limit ring and nl ring to STT limit and STT NL is most likely flawed. The SD for limit HE STTs and NL STTs (or ther other STT variants) will be very close. This is due to the payout structure of STTs more than how correct or incorrect strategy applies to them (and is taken advantage of). Yes, there will most likely be SD differences between NLHE STTs and LHE STTs, but I'd guess it will be negligible in the scheme of things...

Yes, where you're going with your ideas about ITM and ROI in limit make sense....I wouldn't be surprised if a higher ITM is acheivable in the limit STTs.

Yugoslav

[Patriarch]

I definitely feel that a higher ITM is possible in limit STTs.

[GrekeHaus]

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Dude, if you've played *any* limit STTs and think there isn't enough bad play to make playing them and beating the rake profitable....then you should quit poker

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This is a lie and you know it. I've played about 20-30 in my life and (I think) I'm up. Of course as you know, 20-30 ain't [censored]. My original arguement had to do with the fact that you'd rarely be able to gain any substantial advantage early because you'd generally have a *very* short stack compared to the blinds and I have no reason to assume that said situation is +EV. When I play ring games, I makes sure to always have enough money to cover a capped round of betting at each betting round. Here, we're talking about frequently only having enough to call a capped pre-flop. Maybe it seems more intuitively obvious to somebody with a lot of SNG experience, since you're put in this situation more frequently than I am. The reason I posted this here was because I wanted the opinions of people who were more experienced in this area than me.

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As for SD, comparing limit ring and nl ring to STT limit and STT NL is most likely flawed. The SD for limit HE STTs and NL STTs (or ther other STT variants) will be very close. This is due to the payout structure of STTs more than how correct or incorrect strategy applies to them (and is taken advantage of). Yes, there will most likely be SD differences between NLHE STTs and LHE STTs, but I'd guess it will be negligible in the scheme of things...

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This is probably correct. I remember having a conversation with you once where you told me the SD of a SNG player is 1.7 Buy-ins, regardless of win rate or playing style. This leads me to believe that your win rate is more highly correlated with how many chips you can accumulate, rather than style. You could consider limit a "style" where every player only bets a predetermined ammount. In this case, you'd expect the SD to be 1.7 for most players at limit as well.

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Yes, where you're going with your ideas about ITM and ROI in limit make sense....I wouldn't be surprised if a higher ITM is acheivable in the limit STTs.

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If the above is right, then this is probably wrong unless you feel that you can gain a bigger advantage playing limit than NL.

One school of thought for early round limit SNG strategy is that you should play looser than normal in order to attempt to gain a chip advantage early. This would involve making plays that are -chipEV in order to make your placement distribution more lopsided by distributing more of your finishes near the top and the bottom. Your potential gain against a big field here is pretty big, while there's no real risk of getting a huge dent put in your stack with a hand like 96s, especially when compared to the size of later bets. If this theory is correct, then it probably is possible to get a higher ITM than in NL. On the other hand, going with the standard super-tight early strategy would likely give you no bigger ITM than in a NL SNG unless you can gain a bigger chip advantage against the field.

--GH

[adanthar]

To clear some things up:

Limit SNG's at Party are softer and easier *by far* than NL SNG's. If I had BR problems and had to play SNG's to rebuild, given unlimited time I would start with the limit 10's. The reason for that is because the monkeys that cold call J2s still donate just as much money in limit as they do in NL, only there's more of them per table because they bust slower. With Party's high, crapshoot blinds, you'll be shortstacked more but your edges will be greater, and when you are a big stack you will often nearly automatically win.

The problem is that they take so long and are so hard to multitable that the $/hour is just not there. But they're very easy to beat all the way up and your ITM/ROI should definitely be higher in limit than NL. The fish just stay fishy far longer (not to mention the 1/table 'I thought this was NL' maniac who then raises every hand. That rules.)

[GrekeHaus]

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The fish just stay fishy far longer (not to mention the 1/table 'I thought this was NL' maniac who then raises every hand. That rules.)

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LOL...those guys do rule.