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What Can Avatars and Aliases Tell Us 4l205x LOL Donkaments

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 15:11:16 +0000

By Matthew "Yorkshire Pudding" Pitt

One of the first acts we perform as an online poker player is choosing the screen name that we will be known as for the rest of our careers; on some sites you can choose an alias, too. For some this is a simple task that requires no thought at all, but your alias and avatar can give off information to your opponents so you should choose yours wisely.

Games such as Texas Hold’em are played with incomplete information in that we do not get to see our opponents’ cards unless they are obliged to reveal them to us at show down. In order to win a hand we have to piece together snippets of information that become available to us. In the live arena we can also look at how the player bet, what the player looks like and what their posture is like and build a more accurate picture of their possible hand strength, but online we don’t have those kind of visual clues available to us.

Instead of being able to look at the 55-year old man shaking like a dog taking a crap in the cold winter air after he three-bet us, we have to rely on bet sizing, timing tells and other such aspects of the hand. Or do we? Because avatars and screen names can give away a wealth of information and can actually be used to put your opponents on tilt, too.

Think about when you created your alias, what were your initial thoughts? Common ones are your actual name, your nickname, your favourite sports team etc. You try to “Smithy” but it is obviously taken, so what do you do? You add a number to it, and what number do you add? Your birthday or when you started playing poker – that is unless you are one of the morons who ends up with something like PhilIvey17 as their alias because PhilIvey 1-16 have been taken; these guys are complete fish!

Which leads us to our first point: Pay attention to numbers in aliases. A name such as Bob2 may not give away much information but Bob1953 suggests that our opponent is a middle aged gentlemen. Likewise, Dave2012 could mean that Dave has been playing poker since 2012 and is relatively inexperienced. As a general and sweeping statement, the older an opponent is the less likely they are to be playing a loose-aggressive style (more likely to be loose-ive or tight-ive) where the younger generation who have been fed a diet of Gus Hansen triple barrel bluffs with eight-high may be a little more inclined to try and push you from pots.

Other aliases to look out for are ones that are a mixture of numbers and letters like K3v1Nrule5 because these guys are trying to be tricky with their name creation and that is a trait that often follows them to the tables in their style of play.

Be observant and look for players sporting an alias that is a current or a past trend of something that did the rounds on popular forums. Names with BingBlangBlaow, with 350 in their title or a name such as TripleRangeMerger generally point towards a player being knowledgeable about the game of poker so you can approach them accordingly.

Likewise, names written in uppercase – shouting in the online world – can be aggressive players, although names such as AggroSpewMonkey or SuperNit generally play the complete opposite as their alias suggests.

On sites where you can choose your own avatar you should choose very carefully. Displaying the logo of a poker club you are part of can give away a ton of information about you and your playing style. Also, having images of things like a Ferrari when you play $2 sit & go tournaments shows you are a complete dreamer or a total liar!

Common images are of pets (why?) or of babies and both can be used against the player as long as you don’t mind stooping to new moral depths! By asking a player who is proudly displaying a baby avatar “what sort of dog is that?” you stand the chance of sending the now irate father into a spiral of hate and despair and that is great for you, but maybe not so much for your karma!

If you are to have an avatar, make sure it is not one that really stands out because people will you. You’ll sit down and opponents will be like “that’s that CheckRa15eBluff1ng with the picture of a lactating goat” and they will notice more of your plays than you would like to think.

Why did you choose your alias and avatar and what do you think they say about you? Let us know in the comments box over at Facebook.

Matt

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LOL Donkaments 3n1c50 Taking on the Maniacs

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:44:25 +0000

By Matthew "Yorkshire Pudding" Pitt

Here at Sit and Go Planet, we are fans of aggressive poker. By aggressive poker we mean we love betting and raising our way to victory, we don’t mean shouting and screaming in the faces of our opponents – although that does happen from time to time.

You see, aggressive poker is cool. Aggressive poker is profitable and aggressive poker is what you should be aiming to play whenever you log onto your favourite online poker site. Being aggressive gives you more chances to win – playing ively means you have to have the best hand in order to win – but some players take matters too far and become overly aggressive, which is actually counterproductive at the end of the day.

These hyper-aggressive players, often lovingly referred to as Maniacs, can be an absolute pain in the backside to play against, yet can be extremely profitable to take on if you handle them correctly. the film Gremlins? You know, the one where the tiny, cute little Mogwai turns into a horrible Gremlin if you feed it after midnight and multiplies if you get it wet? Well taking on maniacs is similar except they’re already Gremlins and you want to turn them into cuddly Mogwais. OK, we’ve gone off on a slight tangent here, but you get where I am coming from, no?

Within five minutes of being on a maniac’s table you will know they are a manic. While they do not have a flashing blue light above their avatar to warn you of their presence, they will make it abundantly clear to you and your table mates that they are seated with you and are ready to go nuts!

Maniacs play fast, they play loose and usually with complete disregard for position. They’ll raise from anywhere at the table whenever they feel like it just because they can. Don’t get these guys – and sometimes gals – confused with loose-aggressive players because they are a whole different kettle of fish. Loose-aggressive (LAG) players have a game plan and you will often find that good LAGs have the goods when the money goes into the middle. A maniac will put his head on the line simply because he can.

Signs you are up against a maniac are constant raising, three-betting and four-betting preflop and continued aggression on later streets, aggression that seems relentless and uncontrolled.

When you first come up against a maniac, it is common to allow them to win the first few pots relatively uncontested as you attempt to get a feel for how they are playing. You may have let a strong hand go before realising shortly after that you probably made a mistake in folding to them because they have continued to go crazy against you and other players at your table. Don’t let this tilt you. Instead think of it as Maniac Tax, chips you have paid to the crazy lunatic that you are going to get back soon in the form of a nice rebate!

What a maniac perceives as its strength can actually be its biggest weakness; its over-reliance on aggression can be turned against it. Maniacs are the perfect candidates for slowplaying big hands against because they do all of the betting for you. Flop a set and check call your way to the river as they fire multiple barrels with whatever rubbish they have in their hand.

You don’t even need a hand as strong as a set in order to call down a maniac, a single pair is often the best hand. Sometimes ace-high will be more than enough to make a hero call with on the river. When you do have a set, you essentially have the nuts as a cash game hand I played recently shows. I opened the betting to $1.25 on the button with my pocket tens and the small blind, a complete aggro-monkey, three-bet to $3.50. The big blind folded and I opted to call. The flop came down 7h-3s-2d, which is pretty damn good for pocket tens against a mad man so when he bet $6.00 it was an easy call. I could probably have raised here to be fair but glad I didn’t as the turn was the Th, which essentially gave me the nuts in this situation. Villain now checked, I bet $11 and he instantly jammed all in for around $60 in total. I obviously called and guess what villain held? Ks-Jh for complete air and 0% equity! Well played, sir. Well played. Had I been sat there with 66 or AK then maybe he’d have won a big pot, but this time his own aggression worked against him.

If faced with a maniac, loosen your starting hand requirements when you are in position against him and start to three-bet him lighter. Sometimes, you have to take them on at their own game and start being slightly maniacal yourself and fight fire with fire. that you don’t need holdings to take them on. Just not to get them wet or feed them after midnight.

Matt

PS: Loose ive fish are everybodies favorite money maker - you can find the fishiest poker sites for your bankroll, geo and game preference via the infamous Fish-o-Meter Widget here!

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Quality Over Quantity 132c3s ROI vs Hourly Rate - LOL Donkaments

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 12:00:39 +0000

By Matthew "Yorkshire Pudding' Pitt

As a tournament poker player you have two ways that you can measure your results and success in. You can either look at your Return On Investment (ROI) or your hourly earn rate ($/hr). Both are perfectly acceptable yardsticks – in fact a lot of players use a mixture of the two – but aiming to increase one will almost always see the other fall.

All too often I read posts on forums where a member is questioning how Player X can be rated so highly for say 180-man turbos when his ROI is only 10% and the person creating the dumb post has a 35% ROI. The person with the 35% ROI seems to think that because they earn more per tournament than the grinder in question, they must be a better player than them. Wrong! What the 35% dumbass fails to realise is our 15% ROI grinder almost certainly has a ridiculous hourly rate compare to the seemingly better player.

Let’s make an overly simple example and see who you would rather be. The 35% ROI player is now known by the ultra-imaginative title of Player A, while the 10% ROI player is going to be called, wait for it, Bob. Why not?

Both players play tournaments that cost exactly $10 to enter. Player A has, as we keep being told, a 35% ROI. This means that, on average, Player A wins $3.50 every time he plays a tournament. But what Player A fails to tell you is that he can only play four tables at once. With a little imagination, we estimate that Player A manages to play an average of six tournaments per hour, which the mathematicians among you will have calculated that Player A earns around $21 per hour ($3.50 per tournament multiplied by six tournament per hour.)

Now, Bob has a much lower 15% ROI in the exact same $10 tournaments, meaning he earns $1.50 each time he completes a game. However, Bob is a mass multi-tabling grinder who has mastered the art of playing 20 tables at once. This means Bob gets through around 30 tournaments per hour, taking his hourly rate up to a most impressive $45 despite the fact Player A has an ROI that is more than twice as good. Throw into the mix the various loyalty benefits that Bob almost certainly receives and he’s probably earning something around $50-60 an hour. Not bad for someone who sucks according to our 35% ROI hero.

Of course, playing so many tables does have its disadvantages and not many players can play more than four tables simultaneously. Some of the downsides to mass multi-tabling include larger swings in your bankroll (due to having a lower ROI) and the game feeling not an actual grind rather than you playing poker, putting you at a higher risk of burning out and quitting the game!

Ideally, you want to find a happy medium, a balance, a Ying to your Yang, one that sees you maximising your earnings. Experiment with the number of tables that you play and try to find a sweet spot where your ROI and hourly rate meet in the middle. Once you have done that, well, you’re laughing all the way to the bank really.

So the next time you are scouring the internet looking for a player’s ROI and discover that it is quite low, be careful not to judge because they could be earning three times or more than you ever could!

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Assumptions That Go Out of the Window at the Micros 2x4e6g LOL Donkaments

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 12:48:15 +0000

By Matthew "Yorkshire Pudding" Pitt

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres once said: “You should never assume. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and me because that’s how it’s spelled.” DeGeneres must have been a micro-stakes poker player to come out with that piece of gold.

As a micro-stakes player, you should assume nothing. Actually, that’s a small lie because you should actually assume that something weird, wonderful and downright ridiculous is going to happen at one of your tables before you finish your session. That’s the beauty of the micros! They are unpredictable, frighteningly frustrating but oh so profitable.

Making assumptions about your fellow micro-stakes players is a risky business indeed. Here are a few assumptions that you can toss out of the window and completely forget about when you sit down at a typical micro-stakes table.

That your opponents know about the Gap Concept

You know the one; you need a stronger hand to call a raise with than you do to make a raise with. It’s part of the basics of poker. It’s not part of the poker vocabulary of your typical micro-stakes dweller.

You raise with Ad-Ks, they look down at 9h-7h and go, “Ooooh! Pretty hearts. Ooooh. My the Titanic film was released in ’97. I call.” God bless them.

That your opponents will make plays based on pot odds

Against a solid, thinking player you can assume that if you make a bet that offers them lower pot odds – and implied pot odds – than the odds of making their hand, they will fold. Again, it is basic poker. Not to the majority of our micro-stakes lovers. At least half of these people think pot odds are what happens when you don’t by plates and other china pieces in pairs or in funny shapes.

That your opponents can fold 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th pair

Take it from me, a payoff wizard, that if our fellow micro-donks have ANY piece of the board they are calling you. If they hold 8s-3c and you have bet the flop, turn and river of the As-Td-9d-3h-7c board, they will call you with their lowly trey with a pathetic kicker. Make sure you have better than king-high in this spot!

That your opponents actually understand what you are trying to do

Try not to run any elaborate and intricate bluffs – in fact don’t make any bluffs – because the majority of players are more interested in what to make the kids for lunch, what accessories they need to buy for their cat or how pretty two hole cards with diamonds are to care about your min-check raise on the turn of a draw heavy board represents. Simple lines for simple minds!

That the statistics you have on a player are set in stone

I often use a Heads-Up Display (HUD) when I am playing online poker and I have lost count the number of times the statistics on my HUD tell me someone is playing a nitty 10/10/2 style of play only for them to have some sort of blow up that results in them getting their chips into the middle of a five-bet pot with nine-high.

Poker is a game played with incomplete information and it is up to you to discover new information. By making assumptions, you are putting yourself in danger of having inaccurate information, which is worse than having no info at all.

Matt

- Players looking for a great strategy to crush the micros should try the SNG Blueprint - this free course takes you through the strategies you need to withstand those crazy plays and still make a profit - check out the preview here.

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LOL Donkaments 3n1c50 The Art of Folding

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:07:49 +0000

Fold. . Muck. Three little words that mean you have given up on your hand and have tossed it back to the dealer, either real or virtual. It is a ive move to make and in a world where aggression is key some will frown upon you for such ivity, but sometimes folding is the best play even if it is one that your do not like to make.

One thing that you need to be aware of is that the value of chips differ at various stages of the tournament. For example, at the start of an $8 buy-in 180-man turbo tournament at PokerStars your chips are worth $0.0053 each ($8/1500) yet when you go on and win all of the 270,000 chips that are in play and the first place prize of $396.49 finds its way to your , they are only worth $0.001468 each. The chips you start the tournament with are more valuable than those you can win so it pays to keep hold of them!

You need to get it out of your head that folding is weak because nobody likes to be perceived as being weak and having this mindset will make you reluctant to fold. While folding does not win you chips, it does conserve them and that in itself is vitally important. Being able to live to fight another day is crucial to success in poker tournaments.

In cash games, you have to push every edge that you have. If you gave me the opportunity to get my entire stack into the middle preflop with pocket tens against an opponent’s ace-king I would bite your hand off every time. Why? Because if I lose I can always top-up my stack and go again. However, in a tournament, particularly in the early stages, it may be correct to fold the same pocket tens in a similar spot so that you can use the chips later in a different situation where you are a more substantial favourite to win the hand. Obviously, this goes out of the window if the tournament is a re-entry or rebuy.

Folding can be used a powerful weapon, too. Not only does releasing your hand preserve your chips it also prevents your opponents from accumulating more, which is a win-win scenario surely?

Kenny Rogers got it spot on in The Gambler when he sang, “You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em, known when to walk away, know when to run.” Figure out when you should be folding and walking away from a hand and you will find yourself going deeper in more tournaments more often than you ever have before.

Matt

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Five Sure Fire Signs That It is YOU Who is a Donk! LOL Donkaments 4v4359

Mon, 28 Oct 2013 10:37:30 +0000

By Matthew "Yorkshire Pudding" Pitt

Hello? Is anyone here? Good. Then let’s begin. Hands up everyone who has ever banged their fists on the table in frustration as they are outdrawn and lose to some seemingly ridiculous two pair hand. Keep those hands up if you continually blame others for your lack of results. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you are probably a bigger donk than those players you are calling a donk.

Poker is like sex and driving in that everyone think they are awesome at it. Unfortunately, for your other half and fellow road s, you are definitely not as good as you think you are. Below are traits of the classic donk or fish who frequent your games. How many of them apply to you?

You Don’t Know the Mathematics Behind Poker and Refuse to Learn Them

Whether you like it or not, or whether you want to believe it or not, poker is a game governed on mathematics. The sooner you realise that and begin using maths in poker, even basic maths, the better.

Yes, there is the element of who dares wins. And yes, some players can look into the souls of their opponents and find a winning bluff, yet the biggest winners are all well versed in poker maths.

I’m not suggesting for one minute you should bore yourself to death with fold equity calculations and finding the optimal bluff frequency for a player playing 23% of his starting hands, unless you really want to that is. You should, however, at least learn the basic odds and probabilities for common situations such as flopping a set, hitting a flush draw and pot odds – they really are not difficult.

You Continually Blame Other Donks Instead of Understanding Variance

As poker is a game governed by maths, some crazy things can and will happen – and more often that you would like to believe. If you are blaming bad players who cracked your pocket aces with eight-three offsuit for your losses, you need to give your head a shake. You should be embracing these players and begging them to be in your games.

If you understood the maths behind poker (see above) then you would know that your pocket aces are around an 87% favourite over eight-three offsuit. This means that your beloved “Pocket Rockets” will be beaten 13% of the time, on average of course. There are times when you will win 10 out of 10 of such confrontations. Other times, you will lose 6 out of 10. But, and here’s the but, if you played trillions of hands your aces would run out an 87% winner.

Variance sucks and variance will cause you to pull your hair out at times. Yet it is variance that gives the donks a taste of success and keeps them playing eight-three offsuit as if it is pocket aces.

Your Poker Ends the Minute Your Session Does

The game of poker is continually evolving and moves that were once profitable are suddenly so common that they no longer bamboozle your opponents. One way to keep your edge over opponents is to put time into your game away from the felt in the form of studying.

Most of finished school several years ago – some of us longer than that – and see it as time consuming. That it may be, but it is vitally important to continually improve your own skill set so that you stay one step ahead of your foes, be this through studying your hand histories or via a training site. Put some time in away from the tables or risk becoming a donk.

You’ve Been Stuck at One Level For What Seems Like an Age

It takes time to progress from one buy-in level to another. Depending on how often you play for and for how long, it can takes weeks or even months to move up. That said, if you are still struggling to beat $0.50 Sit & Go tournament three years after discovering poker then there is something wrong with your game.

If you are stuck at a certain level, ask yourself why that is the case. Could it be because you haven’t learned the maths behind poker, refuse to put any study time in and blame others apart from yourself for a lack of progress? Probably.

You Continually Lose

Losing is part and parcel of playing poker. New players lose more than established players, as a rule, so if you have been playing poker for any significant length of time and are still losing more than you win then you sir (or madam) could be a donk!

Some people are not made for this game and regardless of what they do and how much effort they put in, they still cannot win. Be honest with yourself. Do you want a bank statement full of deposits to online poker sites? Do you want to be targeted by winning players whenever you sit down. If the answer is no, poker may not be for you.

One way to prevent slipping into Donk status would be to get hold of and study the $16 per hour Sit n Go Blueprint Course that is free to SNG Planet . Good luck, donk.

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For Crying Out Loud 6de1u Take a Shot Will You! LOL Donkaments

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:44:16 +0000

By Matthew "Yorkshire Pudding" Pitt

In many forms of life, poker included, you often have to speculate in order to accumulate. Putting it in simple poker for you fine people out there, you have to take the occasional shot at the big time if you want to make some serious money from this crazy game.

I pride myself on the fact that I have never gone broke playing poker thanks to my strict bankroll management requirements. I have endured (in fact I am in the midst of one right now) horrendous downswings that would have seen most recreational players looking for a new hobby and come out of the other side. However, having strict bankroll requirements in place can be boring and quite prohibitive in some cases.

A large percentage of recreational online poker players deposit $50-$200 onto a site and have visions of turning this humble amount into something much more meaningful by grinding their way up the various stakes and buy-in limits. This is all well and good, but have you ever thought about why they call it a grind? Here is a clue, it is because it will grind your gears and eventually grind you down until you hate the game you once loved. Continually grind the nano and micro-stakes games and there is a chance that you will never get to play higher buy-in games because you will have bored yourself to death!

Readers of my articles here at SNG Planet will be aware that I am currently grinding the $2.50 and $8.00 180-man turbo tournaments at PokerStars. I do OK in these. They can feel like a grind at times, but I make a relatively steady income from them and I find them perfect for my busy schedule. On an average day, I spend around £100 buying into 180-man games (I keep my records in British Pounds) so why not, once in a while, not play £100 worth of 180-man games but play a £100 buy-in tournament instead?

While doing something like the example above is far from ideal bankroll management and if you did it often enough you would be broke before you could yell “Rebuy” at the top of your voice, if can give you respite from the monotony of your usual games. You don’t even have to go the whole hog an

d buy into something huge. If you are a $2.50 180-man turbo player and fancy taking a shot, jump into a $22 buy-in tournament instead. If you have been saving up your VPPs for that luxury mouse mat you always wanted or a box of chocolates for the other half, why not parlay it into a larger buy-in tournament instead? I have enough VPPs at PokerStars to purchase 10 entries into The Big $22 and while this is above my current stakes, it is a buy-in level I have frequently bought into in the past. For the same amount, I can take a shot at the Sunday Million. Which would you rather try if you were essentially freerolling? Good choice!

The excitement of vying for a much larger prize than you are used to playing for can keep renew your focus and enjoyment of poker, while playing against better-skilled opponents can help develop your own skills at a far more rapid rate than in your usual low-stakes games.

To reiterate, do not be afraid of taking shots, especially as a tournament player. Make sure that you shot isn’t going to break the bank (i.e. your bankroll is $300 and you buy into a $215 MTT) and ensure your shot taking isn’t too regular and you never know, you could bag yourself a massive score and catapult your poker career to previously unseen heights.

Matt

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Online Poker Festivals gl6g A Love-Hate Relationship - LOL Donkaments

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 08:06:25 +0000

By Matthew 'Yorkshire Pudding' Pitt

It sometimes feels like a month does not go by without a major online poker tournament festival taking place. Acronyms such as SCOOP, TCOOP, WCOOP, FTOPS, MiniFTOPS and MTOPS seem to dominate online poker sites’ offerings to tournament players. I’ve getting FEDUP of seeing them.

As someone who prefers tournament poker to any other form of this beautiful game, you would think that I would be tingling with anticipation at the mere thought of an online poker festival taking place. After all, my current life situation does not allow me to head to the various live festivals in the UK, Ireland and the rest of mainland Europe. Surely these online festivals are perfect for a player like me? No, they are not.

In August, Full Tilt Poker ran the FTOPS where the buy-ins ranged from $109 to $2,100 although most were in the region of $215. Three weeks later, Full Tilt Poker customers saw the tournament lobby filled with MiniFTOPS events, a festival that mirrored its larger cousin but with buy-ins around 10 times less. I did not play in a single event.

In less than a fortnight, the MTOPS takes place, which I believe stands for Micro Turbo Online Poker Series.

Full Tilt Poker’s sister site, PokerStars, is the home to two of the richest online festivals – the SCOOP and WCOOP. The WCOOP, or World Championship Of Online Poker, only finished a couple of days ago and awarded more than $62 million during the series, a phenomenal amount. While I enjoyed reading about players winning ridiculous sums of money and getting to watch the biggest names in poker play against each other, I couldn’t afford to play in any of the events. That’s not entirely true, I could have bought into a couple of them but they are way outside the constraints of my bankroll. This particular festival is for the game’s elite.

The feeling I get from some of these festivals is they only cater for gamblers or for the professional players. High buy-in festivals such as FTOPS and WCOOP are fantastic to watch from the sidelines for reasons already mentioned, but most players won’t be able to afford more than one buy-in. Some will argue that the lower buy-in levels of the SCOOP series and the MiniFTOPS cater for those who can’t afford the bigger buy-in, and they would have a point.

The problem lies in that the field sizes in the low buy-in events are so large there is little point entering them because your chances of winning are so slim that I would rather invest my time elsewhere. Some of the low buy-in SCOOP tournament had more than 30,000 players in them and took 15-16 hours to finish. True, you could win a ridiculous sum of money for a tiny outlay, something that appeals to the gamblers in this game, but I could do that by playing the lottery or doing the football pools (do they still do those?).

As a spectacle, the online festivals are superb, but they just aren’t needed. The major online sites offer fantastic tournament schedules as it is. Maybe I would not be so anti-festival if they were run once or twice a year, not once every couple of weeks as it feels happens now.

Matt

Ironic addition from Mark... PokerStars just announced their 'Carnival Of Tournaments' kicking of October 13th, to celebrate 800 Million tournaments (mind blowing or what?). Looks pretty good with Golden SNGs returning + additions to regular guarantees + a $1M special. Check out the details at www.pokerstars.com

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The Mental Toll of Tournament Poker Variance j2z5q LOL Donkaments

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:18:45 +0000

In the 2nd installment from the world of smaller stakes online tourneys, Matthew 'Yorkshire Pudding' Pitt reflects on the subject of variance.

When poker is going well for you and variance is on your side, it is the best game and easiest game in the world. Your pocket pairs flop sets all the time, your draws come in with alarming regularity and you can read your opponents like you can see their hole cards.

Unfortunately, when variance is not working with you the exact opposite is true. Negative variance, which is common in tournament poker, is about as welcome as your mother-in-law on a hangover-filled Sunday morning. Yes, it is that bad.

As a tournament player, you have to be able to disassociate yourself from losing because you almost guaranteed to lose every time you play a tournament. Some of the very best tournament players in the world only cash in 12-15% of the tournaments they enter, they hope they finish high enough in the money places when they do cash to make up for these times.

In 2012 and the start off 2013 I ran like sweet baby Jesus and bagged some big scores. Within three months I chopped the $3.30 rebuy at PokerStars for $3,200; came 11^th in a GSOP event for $3,567 and then won a GSOP event for my career-best cash of $5,369. Life was good. I was planning on playing more tournaments than ever before and maybe, just maybe, I had a chance of going semi-pro or even pro. I got ahead of myself.

The last couple of months have seen me go on a horrible downswing where I can’t do anything right, and believe me I have been trying. I have burst more bubbles than an overenthusiastic three-year old at a birthday party. Whenever I get my chips into the middle with top set, I fist pump the air in celebration only to see the board run out runner-runner flush. If you want to win plenty of chips, come and find me at the felt because I could lose money betting on a one horse race right now.

“How badly can you run?” I hear you ask. My reply is simple, think about a dark place where you have run worse than you thought was humanly possible. One where nothing you do is correct. One where your confidence is ripped out, thrown onto the floor and stamped on. One where, you get the idea.

“So why do you put yourself through this? Why play tournaments at all?” Because, my friend, these bad runs do not last forever and when poker is going well for you and variance is on your side, it is the best and easiest game in the world.

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LOL Donkaments 3n1c50 Who Will You Meet in 180-Man Turbo Games?

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 13:11:19 +0000

I am happy to introduce a new writer today, Matthew 'Yorkshire Pudding' Pitt has been a blogger and poker journalist for many years, who also plays online poker tournaments. I love his unique style and great sense of humor and have asked him to bring some of his experiences in lower to mid buy-in tournaments to this b a new column titled 'LOL Donkaments'. We start off today with a look at the 180 Player Sit N Goes and some categories of opponent you will meet at the tables. If you enjoy this piece, I would appreciate you sharing it!

LOL Donkaments: Who Will You Meet in 180-Man Turbo Games?

I love the 180 player Sit N Goes at PokerStars. I it that declaring my love for a turbo tournament may be unnerving for some, but when you play thousands of them over the course of a couple of months you too will begin falling in love with this popular variant. Think of it as being like Stockholm Syndrome.

My day job gave me the chance to travel to Las Vegas for the 2013 World Series of Poker, a chance that I instantly snapped up for obvious reasons. Not wanting to scrimp and scrape my way through a month in “Sin City,” I took it upon myself to build a life bankroll by grinding the 180 player SNG with the plan being to withdraw any profit and use it as spending money during my time away. To cut a long story short, after much spilled blood and after many tears cried, I made a decent profit that I then went and blew in Las Vegas! Easy come, easy go.

During my bankroll building quest, I played somewhere around 1,000 of the 180 player SNG at PokerStars, with buy-ins ranging from the $2.50 games up to $15. This gave me an insight into the different players that frequent these games, players that I have categorised into the following groups.

Recreational players / Rank Amateurs

The main players you will come across in the 180 player SNG are recreational players who are, for the most part, losing players. These players are your best friends. You want them in your games because they make many mistakes, mistakes that we profit from. And we like profit!

This may be a sweeping statement, but I’ll say it anyway because I am like that, these players are terrible, especially in the $2.50 and $8 games. Don’t try to bluff them, don’t try anything fancy because they are more interested in checking Facebook and Twitter than figuring out what you are trying to do to them.

Half-Decent Regulars

There are plenty of what I would call half-decent regulars in the 180 player Sit n Goes, although they shouldn’t give you too much trouble. While they will attempt to baffle you with science in the chat box and tell you how awesome they are for being able to play 15 tables at once, in reality most breakeven and are only winning players thanks to PokerStars’ VIP club.

Solid, Winning Regulars

This group of player is not as common as the other two, but can be a real pain if you are unfortunate enough to have two or more of them on your table. Their play is close to mathematical perfection as you can get for low stakes tournaments and they will pounce on any mistakes they see with their eagle eyes. Think of them as a kind of Terminator, sent back in time to rid the low stakes 180 player SNG of recreational players. Actually, scrap that. That’s a tad over the top. They’re good OK, let’s leave it at that.

Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at the different player types and how you can defend yourself from their strong points and how you can pounce like a tiger on their weaknesses.

Quick Addition from Mark: Telling the difference between the winning and bad regulars is important, services like Sharkscope and the awesome Poker Pro Labs allow you to access statistics on your opponen't history.

Good luck!

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