I have an hour left at work until I can escape for 16 hours, at least in a relative sense. I just over-heard my boss have a conversation with a co-worker next to me that sort-of annoyed me so what better time to throw in a post?
Saturday I decided to cram in a few hours of online poker before my party. I didn’t have much time so I jumped into 5 sit-and-go tournaments total around 3:30 p.m. 4 of the tournaments were $12 120-man SNGs, and 1 tournament was an $11 120 man regular SNG. Not sure why I decided to make one of them non-turbo, sort of random there.
Had a great payout as I placed first in one of the $12 turbos. This email confirmation was pretty incredible:
"You finished the tournament in 1st place. A USD 594.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account."
This may not be a lot of money for most, but this is a huge win for me online. I only a $2450 bankroll on PokerStars. When I logged out for the day I had profited over $500 net with the first place win, putting my bankroll at $3,053. I played well, but I’m not going to pretend there isn’t a massive amount of luck involved with any turbo SNG, and that I’m so incredible that my skill made any concept of luck irrelevant. Hell I consider myself lucky if my AA all in preflop holds against 44. I mean you have to be LUCKY NOT to get sucked out during these tournaments, even if you are a huge favorite every-time you get all of your chips in.
What I can say is that overall I was very pleased with my play; especially once it was down to the final 15. I was not scared money, I was playing to win, not bubble out. I also felt I would not have placed 1st in the event without my heads-up research and SNG sessions played during the past few months. I started steam-rolling once it got down to the final 4 players.
I also vividly remember an interaction with my final opponent that was a short tale of greed in my book. Keep in mind that placing first is worth about $200 more than finishing second. At one point there were just 2 players left in the tournament (including myself). With a 2 to 1 chip lead I asked my opponent:
“Hey, would you like me to call an admin? I would be willing to make a 60-40 deal”
He replied:
“NO”
The next hand I pushed his blind all-in with A-10. He snap called with A-5. The A-10 held up and I won. I couldn’t help but type:
“Your loss”
So he lost himself about $80 by not making a deal. Once I get to a certain point in a tournament I think it is wise to make a deal. Considering I only put $12 into this thing and there was an enormous difference between 1st and 2nd place. I would be happy eliminating luck as much as possible at this point and taking away about $510. That’s 42 times my entry fee, not a bad day. Meanwhile, a first place finish with no deal made would win 49 times the entry fee (not much more). If I played it out and finished 2nd I would have received only 33 times the entry fee.
Furthermore, the 16X difference for finishing 2nd is enormous compared to a mere 7X difference if I made a 60/40 deal. I thought my opponent would also be getting great value here considering he only had about a THIRD of the remaining chips, but he must have had a drastically different take on this.
At my bullshit corporate job it would take me about 40 hours to clear just over $500 (considering taxes), and here I am pulling in a $582 profit at the conclusion of a 2-hour tournament. The draws of poker are nearly impossible for me to ignore.
I don’t have the sample size to determine if it is feasible to play mostly SNG turbos and make a profit consistently enough. The variance is ridiculous, but then again the players are far worse. I have a feeling there are people out there who have made a steady income stream on a month-to-month basis playing turbos, but I think you might be living a pretty stressful existence if your livelihood depends on winning SNG turbos.
If anyone has any feedback here please comment?
However, if you play online poker I think it is important to mix it up and take chances in moderation. I really don’t see a problem with taking a small percentage of your cash game winnings to play some turbos (if you are in fact winning your cash games and a solid tournament player). The turbo SNG sessions were not a huge financial risk on my part, but I normally wouldn’t invest much money into turbo SNG tournaments due to the variance and luck involved. I was just pressed for time and wanted to get in some good poker. I figured even if I busted all the tournaments I would have only been down -$59, and I could live with that.
I didn’t place in the other 3 $12 turbos. In the $11 180-man regular I finished 16th, but it was a very small profit margin.
I’m going to cut this post off now. I was going to discuss the party I had and moving home, but that will be broken up into a separate posts at a later time.
Starting Bankroll: $2,507
Ending Bankroll: $3,053
Net Profit: +$546
Man maybe I should consider playing another session with 5 $12 180-man SNG turbos. Strike while I’m hot right?
Cheers,
-bag