What should (SnG) noobie's do to get max benefit from FTR?

Dad's in the house.

My dad (just call larry on ftr) has started posting HH's. He plays SnG's and 90-man SnG MTT's. He's got 4 posts, now. I got HEM and the HUD working for him, so he's learning about vpip and pfr and AF. He's a level one player who's starting to learn to put other players on reasonably accurate ranges.

Since I'm trying to help him get the most out of FTR, I thought a thread might be good here. What advice should we give to FTR noobie's about leveraging FTR for their benefit?

Here's my advice so far:

1. Pick one SnG or MTT per session, mark several hands, review in HEM and post a couple in appropriate forum. (Review comments, ask questions, learn.)

2. Read recent threads in BC and appropriate strategy forum, asking questions politely when you don't understand something.

What other advice would you give a noobie? Should he post in the BC, too? What are good BC threads for SnG players? Beginner's Digest - I'd be curious what the best articles over there are from someone like Nakamura's point of view. Any good HUD stat threads for SnG's? MTTs? I just have never played SnG's or MTT's, so I've got no real clue what strategy advice to give, what solid BRM looks like, or what HUD stats folks think are best.

I know HEM can help analyze your game, but I don't know anything about SnG analyses. Is leak buster worth it? If so, after how many hands? What's good session review look like for SnG's? What stats/hands should he be reviewing? How many SnG's do you need to make accurate assessments of trends, win rates, leaks? What's a decent sample? What's a decent win rate in terms of ROI? Is 5% ROI crushing your stakes, or 10%? I just can't offer advice on that. What's good BRM for SnG's? How many BI's? When should a noobie consider moving up or taking a shot?

Post your thoughts below, either about noobies in general or SnG noobies particularly, and I'll make Dad read 'em tonight. I will TRY to make him follow the advice, but that's harder. What activities on FTR inspire/teach you the most? Op threads? HH's? Strategy discussions? Videos? IRC? Posting yourself or commenting on others? Starting your own OP thread?

Hi Robb,

I recently built myself a roll from 50 up to being comfortably rolled for 25NL through SnGs at the suggestion of Bikes. I used aggressive BRM so my numbers are probably a bit thin, especially for someone who is just starting out. Still, I think that you and your dad will find that the level of play at these low level tournaments is just atrocious. I primarily played the 27 and 45 man SnGs on FTP so the 90s also probably add some extra variance. In general though I used a 30ish buy-in rule for moving up and maintained an ROI of around 14% despite having cashless streaks of 15-20 tournaments regularly.

It took me a total of ~700 SnGs to turn 50 into 500 but I was playing 12-16 at a time. Overall, I found the games didn't really differ between 1.20s and 11s except for maybe one or two more players who would folding everything except for the top 5% of their range. Honestly, between the 27s and 45s that's all you really needed to play to final table a very high % of the tournaments.

Still as I played more games you can get the feel of those people who are raising a lot in late position and start to exploit that. I found that I still learned quite a bit about how to read ranges and estimate accurate widening of said ranges based on the increasing blinds.

I also found this chart HoldemResources.net: HeadsUp Nash Equilibrium very helpful for stages past the 25/50 blind level and though I didn't follow the chart exactly because it is made for HU it was still very helpful as my stack got smaller and smaller and people get tighter and tighter trying to avoid bubbling.

All in all, the SnGs were an easier way for me to quickly build a roll and also taught me a lot about the power of fold equity as well as learning to accept variance and continue sticking your stack in when the spot calls for it.

Hi Robb,

There is a lot of very good material in the stickies of the SnG and MTT subforums and also in the aricles section of ftr. I'd say the first things to learn about to improve are blind stealing, ICM and the push/fold game when the blinds are high (some pretty counterintuitive things to learn in there, such as shoving any 2 cards in some situations). And yes, as DC said, fold equity plays a major part in this game.

Definitely get yourself the free "SNG wizard" software. Import and review your tournaments in there, and train with their quiz. You learn a lot about the push/fold game and ICM effect just using this software.

Finally, for one table SnG's, I would recommend the book "sit'n go strategy" by Colin Moshman and for MTT's def. read the Harrington on hold'em series. Some also recommend the "Kill'em all" book but I haven't read it myself.

And for hand reviews I think it is better to post in the SnG and MTT subforums.

Agree with sngwiz and I think the best way to use it is mostly quiz mode and review every hand (option in quiz setup) to see how ev the specific hand is and what hands are +ev to shove. Also change opponents opening / calling / shoving ranges to get a feel for how that changes things.

Leak Buster is an awesome tool but doesn't work for tournaments. If you ever switch to NL or Limit Holdem cash games I recommend it. You should also have at least 30k hands for it to be accurate.