Hi, I have been playing poker online in the play chip games for over a year now and have dabbled with a $20 dollar deposit at some point which I managed to lose every cent of. I am now taking the game much more seriously and have deposited $60 with the intent of implementing some proper BRM and learning to play a watertight game. I have always played with the intent of playing a winning strategy and being a winning player, I am a Mathematician, I have read “The Mathematics of Poker” by Bill Chen as well as Colin Moshman’s “Sit ‘N Go Strategy” and have dipped in and out of Sklansky’s “The Theory of Poker”, so I would like to consider myself a thinking man and not a “Donk” or a “Fish” but that aside a winning player should have a positive ROI.

My goal is to use my $60 deposit to learn to play the best poker that I can. Nine player NLHE SNGs are my favourite format so I have decided to play these exclusively for the time being. I am playing the $1.20 buy in games on Full Tilt, they are the lowest buy in and I started with 50 buy ins which is a fair number and should be enough to weather a downswing from what I have read. I aim to learn to “beat” these games and eventually move up the stakes as my BR allows. I have set a few rules for myself which are that I should only play games that I am bankrolled for (at least 50 buy ins) and that I have to have played at least 1000 games at each level before I can move up to the next ( this is to ensure that I have a statistically significant set of results in order to know whether or not I am a winning player at that level) and of course keeping in mind the usual rules that one should abide by such as not playing while on Tilt or playing to chase lost money etc...

I have played 25 games (yes I know that this is a very small sample size) and finished 30% ITM 20% on the bubble and the rest between 5th and 7th. Of those that I have finished ITM I have had one 1st, four 2nd and two 3rd place finishes. So, my ROI is pretty bad sitting around -37%. Okay, yes this is a small sample size and I am indeed still learning but I have already lost 15% of my bankroll so I thought I would fire out a post with all this info as well as my general strategy to see if there are any big leaks in my game.

I have found that the level of play at this buy in varies dramatically from game to game, you can never be sure whether three people will bust out on the first hand or whether the game will last over 150 hands before it gets 5 handed so some games are easier than others. From what I have read about micro stakes SNG strategy the essence of a winning game is to “play super tight until all of the ‘donks’ bust each other out and it is just a shove/fold game for first place”, this is what play money games are like but so far I have found few of the $1.20 games to be quite this easy. My strategy has been to play super tight in the early stages playing only QQ+ and AK then to loosen up slightly as I get an idea of how people are playing and then when I get to the point when I have less than 10BB start to play a shove/fold type game but I am beginning to wonder whether or not this is the best way to play.

From looking through my hand histories and analysing my push fold game with SNG wiz I think that the two main things that I need to work on are being more aggressive when I have a good hand and am in position (so that people don't draw out on me as much) and to push more hands when folded to on the SB and button when I have a stack <10BB.

I would love to hear any advice or tips that anyone has to offer.

Thanks in advance,
Fraser.