Playmoney SNGs

[Anosmic]

Okay, I know most of you guys don't like playmoney in general. But here goes...

I was doing okay at PacificPoker's playmoney tournaments, I have been playing their 600+60 tournaments and winning a fair amount. I've got my play money up to around 40000 and playing more 5000+500 SNGs.

Basically my aim is/was to get to the stage where I could play their 50000+5000 SNGs which, it would seem, would be the best quality practice you could get there.

I recently started playing a little playmoney SNGs at UltimateBet and there I'm struggling more. The play is the same old wild stuff, and now it's not always working out for me (most often I'm finishing 2/3rd at best, sometimes without really winning a hand and just watching everyone else self-destruct).

So the play is bad, but I'm not winning, shouldn't one be expect to be able to win at this level? I mean, surely it's not a waste of time playing these tournaments if I'm not winning them?

One thing that's been beating me a fair bit recently is losing going all-in pre-flop and losing. I can't make up my mind about how to handle this.
Take today for example, I got AQs, a nice group-2 hand on the FTR chart.

I'm OTB so when a few folds and one makes a small raise I decide to make a strong re-raise, the original raiser goes all-in, I call as do two others. (This is early, we all have pretty much the same stacks).

Now okay, maybe I played that badly given what the guy did. But I believed I had the best hand so I thought I should call.
The guy who went all-in had A8o, another had Q3s and the last had 53o!

I've got the best-hand. I've over-estimated a little the odds (I should win about 40% of the time here, if the 53o hadn't called it'd be more like 50%).

Of course I lost the hand, but should I play these hands. If I'm going to triple-up (or quadruple-up) 40% of the time it would seem the smart play... but of course if it's a tournament not ring. So if I lose it's game over, and if I win then all I've done is increased the CHANCE that I'll finish ITM. Okay having 40% of the chips at the table would be a good thing, but by no means an unassailable lead.
So I have a 50% chance of losing and a 40% chance of continuing with a 60% chance of winning... and my brain starts to bleed.

The alternative is folding even the very best starting hands and playing quietly until there is a reasonable number of players and you can pretty much expect to only have one or two opponents in all-in showdowns. THe problem then is you're up against one of the players who DID go all-in early, has 60% of the tables chips and you're left waiting to see if you're going to get any more good hands in time because you've already thrown a couple out.

Wow... that was a long, convoluted post. Hope that there is some semblence of a question in there.

[outphase]

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 42.3200 % 39.58% 02.74% { AQs }
Hand 2: 22.9446 % 20.76% 02.19% { A8o }
Hand 3: 14.9080 % 13.47% 01.44% { Q3s }
Hand 4: 19.8273 % 18.94% 00.89% { 53o }

Yes you are 40%, but your opponents combined are 60%

[Xanadu]

If people are going all-in on that crappy of hands all the time at the tables you play, then call it every time. 40% to quadruple up is an incredibly profitable (pretend profitable) situation. Who cares if you bust out. Getting the money in with an edge early in a tourney is great. Either you emerge the strong favorite to win, or you have a quick tourney and get to load another. Busting out early with the best of it is fine. Better than bubbling out 40 minutes later.

[swiggidy]

Getting the money in with an edge early in a tourney is great. Either you emerge the strong favorite to win, or you have a quick tourney and get to load another.

I have a feeling this isn't the answer you want. I'm also fairly new to SnGs and I hate hearing this. I'm trying to learn poker, so I want to maximize my ITM and ROI, not my $/hr. This is a learning process, not money making (which will come with learning).

Busting out early with the best of it is fine.

I would agree if it was one person with 53o, or A8o and you loose.

I fold in your situation. Let's assign value to your 40% win. Lets assume if you win that hand you have an equal chance of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and OTM. These pay {4.5, 2.7, 1.8, 0} buyins for a 9 person SnG ({5, 3, 2, 0} for a 10 person). So your expected return is 40% * (4.5 + 2.7 + 1.8) = 0.9 (for a 10 person 40% * (5 + 3 + 2) = 1.0). So from a ROI/ITM viewpoint you aren't really gaining or loosing anything.

I would say if you think you are better than the people at your table, play poker, and win later. If you want to GAMBOOL go all-in. I don't like <60-40 edge unless I'm huge stack, or <10BB. You will get another good hand, and at this level you will get paid for it.

BTW, if you're against one small pocket pair, instead of 53, your odds go down to 30%. I only call your situation with QQ+.

EDIT: I don't like how I said you don't gain anything (eV) by pushing. I know I am better than a break even poker player at low limit SnGs. Pushing here is a break even move, playing poker is +eV, so I think you're loosing something (eV).

[Les_Worm]

They have a rake in play money sngs? wtf?

[Buzz]

Yeah they do ... I used to play Stars 2000+110 SnG's ... weird huh.

[biondino]

If it's practice for reality, may as well make it as real as possible.

As for this specific situation - only A8 *might* have called the all-in had this been for real money (at anything over the $1 level), so our hero should really consider that as closer to "real". I mean, if 3 random hands are going to call EVERY all-in then it'd be very easy to learn the wrong kind of lesson from the experience.

[SuperDave9x19]

They have a rake in play money sngs? wtf?

2 reasons. One is stated above. as a taste of reality.

The other tho, is that the play money "economy" would be gradually ruined by inflation because you can get 1000 3x/hour (Pokerstars) for free. Therefore the "government of this economy" (Pokerstars) must remove money from the "economy".