dwarfman's boring SnG blog

Hello,

Susprisingly, I'm back on FTR - hello. Inspired somewhat by OngaBonga's blog, which is really ambitious and potentially very interesting, I've decided to document here what I'm up to in the poker world. It will be somewhat of an antidote to OngaBonga's blog - in that it's not going to be tremendously interesting. But I think it's good practice to have somewhere to write down how things are going every so often, so that's the plan here.

Who am I?

I'm dwarfman - in the mid 2000's I was one of the bigger contributors to FTR. Back then I was young and an asshole, and I ended up leaving in 2009 ish after pissing off the entire community. I am now old and, I like to think, less of an asshole.

Much of my poker play back then centered around trying to make a quick buck. I practiced terrible bankroll management, was extremely liable to tilt and didn't pay nearly enough attention to studying and improving. The studying part I could get away with given how soft the games used to be, the bad bankroll management and tilt however made me effectively a losing player.

What am I doing now?

My interest in poker waned in 2010, and between 2010-2016 ish played very infrequently. An MTT here and there really on a quiet evening. The last couple of years, I have started taking an interest again. I'm perversely drawn to the more challenging games of the present day, and have got into studying and strategising methods to beat them.

My motivation is, currently, not about money. I am lucky enough to have a job I enjoy that affords me a good lifestyle. My motivation is to beat the games I am playing, and to become a good poker player who is capable of consistently winning.

Back in the day, everything was about money in poker, to the point that I sacrificed my enjoyment of the game to do so - this I think was why I lost interest. I used to 24-table cash games to maximise my winrate, I used to play 7-8 hours a day to maximise my winrate. Whilst these were not necessarily bad decisions, they were things that ultimately I didn't really want to do, but felt I had to in order to succeed. I don't subscribe to that philosophy anymore - I don't try to maximise my hourly rate with volume now. I play a type of and amount of poker that I am comfortable with, that keeps me interested in and enjoying the game.

Onto the specifics, for the last couple of months I've decided to make a go of single table 9-man turbo SnGs - I really enjoy the format and don't find it so much of a grind as I have done with cash games. I popped $75 in my account back in early November (50 buyins for $1.50 SnGs), and started out playing 2 tables at a time to see if I would enjoy it. I did and still am enjoying it, eventually moving up to 4-tabling which is what I am comfortable with now, so I now think it's worth starting a blog to document process.

What are my goals?

Beyond improving and enjoying myself, I do of course have some monetary targets. I will be moving up when I have 50 buyins for the next level, and (if I need to) moving back down if I lose 20 buyins after moving up.

So my path is like this:

3.50 SnGs: $175
7.00 SnGs: $350
15.00 SnGs: $750
30.00 SnGs: $1,500
60.00 SnGs: $3,000
100.00 SnGs: $5,000

Playing $100 SnGs is probably a bit pie in the sky, so realistically if I can get to beating $30 SnGs with regularity, I'll be a happy man.

I want to be beating these games long term at 5% ROI. So I expect to play on average circa 1,000 tournaments per level before being able to move up.

Given the time I am investing in the project and my progress so far, I expect to play an average of 8 tournaments per day (on a day by day basis this ranges from zero to 20), so that's about 240 tournaments per month. I did warn you it will be boring, slow progress in this blog!

How's it going so far?

Not bad! Here's my graph to date: https://i.imgur.com/aruKV19.png

I'm up 56 buyins thru 241 SnGs at the $1.50 level, which is a ROI of 23%. A small sample size, but I'm pleased with the progress to date. Aided by rakeback, I'm just 5 buyins short of being able to move up to $3.50.

January goal

Quite simply, I want to be able to start playing the $3.50 level this month. Needing 5 buyins and playing 240 tournaments, I only need to run at a ROI of around 2% to get there by month end. So that's the aim.