Limit SNGs

[GrekeHaus]

I am normally a limit ring-game player and not a SNG player, however I do play the occasional NL SNG.

I sat down tonight and was playing a few SNGs and I acidentally sat in a limit SNG. Being a limit player, you figure I'd be pretty good at these, but I got to thinking and started to wonder whether or not these are even beatable in the long run.

First off, limit is a game with a lower winrate and higher standard deviation. Thus, a winning player will generally still have a flatter bell curve that is more closely centered in the middle (in other words, a players finish in each of the 10 spots will generally be closer to 10%).

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.

My intuition would tell me that these things would make limit SNGs [i]very[/] hard to beat, if it's even possible. Has anybody here ever tried this or have any research on this?

[tjh]

I have accidently played large limit tourneys and also limit SNG's

I do not think the comparison to a limit ring game is valid. The ever increasing blinds make the limit tourneys feel like a no limit game pretty quickly.

Picture a Limit table that starts as 1-3 and then becomes 3-6, 10-20, 50-100. That is not at all like a limit game.

I do not have a reasonable sample size but I have done alright in these games.

I

[stigmata]

I'm also interested in this question. I have also seen the standard response that a decent player will have a greater advantage in NL than limit. This makes sense, although I feel that the somewhat weaker competition at the limit SNG's could at least partially compensate for this.

When I first started out at poker, I played around 30 limit at the 5+1 up to the 30+3. My ROI at each of these levels was from 0.8, 0.5, 0.3, 0.4 and 1.7. Obviously the sample is waaay too small, but it would seem like I was beating them at an acceptable rate.

After this initial foray, I switched to NL SNG on others advice.

However, I accidently played a Limit $109 the other day, and came 1st [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]. It did "feel" beatable (which is easy to say when you won....). Certainly, my limit skills are reasonably decent, and I felt like I had a good edge over the competition.

I play mainly short handed, and I felt this helped alot in the latter stages of the tournament. I am quite used to 2/3 handed pots where the flop may have missed everyone, and if you have a good feel for when a bluff/semi-bluff is going to work, I think you can pick up quite a few pots. In some ways it actually seemed easier to steal than in NL. Basically I was blasting away at it when it got down to less than 6-handed, and it seemed to work. I don't think many players make the right adaptations for when the games get short handed, and this is where you can get your edge at these games.

Anyway, with a sample size of 1, this is all complete speculation. I would like to hear from anyone who has played a significant number of these. If nobody has, then perhaps I will play 50 or 100 over the next month and report back.

[GrekeHaus]

This is all true. I ended up taking second in mine. I basically just sat around for a while and then went hyper-aggressive near the end. I felt like at the end I played quite skillfully and once I got a big stack, I was able to steal even more easily than I could in NL, without having to risk a chunk of my stack. With 4 people left, everybody just wanted in the money so I was able to steal a lot of small pots and stay out of anything too big.

The main problem in these seems to me that getting past the initial stages is much harder. For starters (at lower stakes anyway), you won't have a lot of people busting out very early, which is hugely +EV for you. Also, if you do manage to get a monster against one of those players, you can't increase your stack as much. This often means you'll have around an average stack in level 4 or 5 and nobody will have been eliminated. After just reading "Getting the Best of It" and "Gambling Theory and Other Topics" I can safely say that if there are 10,000 chips, you would much rather have 1,000 of these chips vs. 5 or 6 players than 10 players.

I do think that limit tournaments are beatable in general, I'm just not sure that the very brief nature of SNGs gives you enough hands to manifest your edge.

[stigmata]

I definately agree with what you say RE: low stakes. However, I do have problems with some of the NL $109's - sometimes it can be 7 or 8 TAGs, and once the blinds reach 50/100 it just switches to a crap shoot. Sure, you can get some equity using a good push strategy etc, but it still means a low ROI.

At the one high limit SNG I played, I felt there was actually much more oppurtunities to exploit a skill advantage against a bunch of essentially weak-tight players. I was actually short-stacked (t500) after value betting the hell out of someone and then getting rivered. I definately wouldn't have been able to fight back without some good cards. However, I did make quite a number of small pots from decent blind stealing/defense strategy, which is something that doesn't really happen at NL.

I agree with what you say about the early stages of the Limit tourney. It actually feels like the structure is slightly turned on its head. The early part is the tough bit to get through, whereas once your down to 4/5 it should actually be slightly easier. Getting delt AA at level 1 is pretty meaningless, unless your fortunate enough to get set-over-set or something. You probably need to win a decent pot or two once the blinds increase to have some chance.

However, with people quoting a "maximum" ROI for the 109's of 20%, I'm just not convinced that you couldn't achieve something similar at Limit.

Sample size of 1 is obviously too small, but unless someone can persuade me otherwise, I might try a few more.

[GrekeHaus]

I think you're getting at a good point here.

There are tons of good limit ring game players out there.
There are tons of good NL ring game players out there.
There are tons of good NL SNG players out there.

There are very few good limit SNG players out there.

This fact alone is probably the best reason for trying to play in these games. Given the same quality of players, you would almost certainly get more value out of NL, so I doubt these games will become terribly competetive any time in the near future. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Scuba Chuck]

I hate to say this, but limit is boring (yawn).

FWIW, I agree with your conclusions. If this fool places almost everytime he accidentally plays in a limit ring game (hell, I accidentally opened a game where they dealt me four cards ~ and I still got 2nd), then they must be soft.

Perhaps that's the real danger. When the NL sharks accidentally enter your games. That's where the real variance begins [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Scuba

[The Yugoslavian]

No, they should be fairly easy to beat.

It's just that they take too long compared to NL STTs. And one can't multitable them nearly as easily.

Players are still hemorraging chips and to kill the limit games I'd imagine you need a slightly different bag of tricks.

It plays very close to a NL STT once you've been waiting around for the high blinds anyway. You just have to shove all of your chips in a couple of increments...

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...

The other problem is that I wouldn't be surprised if the monkeys accidentally play the limit STTs 'better' than the NL ones. Sort of how the larger chip stacks allow poor players to accidentally play the higher buyin STTs better (not to mention that's where the best players are anyway).

Yugoslav

[Patriarch]

I play a lot of limit SnGs, with maybe 2/3 of my total SnG play coming from limit, and 1/3 from NL.
Personally I've found limit games much more profitable, with my ROI at 34% and ITM 43% on $11 limit SnGs, compared to 15% ROI and 37% ITM in NL. This is taken from a small sample size (just over 250) but it shows that limit is a better game for me at the moment.

My style of play is pretty similar in both games; play ultra-tight in the first few levels as many hands in levels 1-3 take 6+ players to the flop, and often 3 or 4 to the river. Many players bleed their chips off early in the opening levels, but its hard to actually bust anyone out - Getting to level 4 or even 5 with 9/10 players isn't rare.
Then you have to switch and become very aggressive, just as in NL. Stealing blinds can be harder and bluffs more difficult to pull off. Play on the bubble is quite similar to NL, since any raise more or less commits you to your hand.

However, from what I've seen people are happier to chase with draws and call down with mid pair in limit. The mentality of "It's just one more bet.." means more profit for me.
Limit is much more forgiving of mistakes as well, especially in situations where you are going to showdown no matter what, and you lose less when you are dominated. This is important as you still have a chance of finishing ITM when you get beat for half your stack early on, whereas in NL you're out.

[Patriarch]

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.