Get Rich or Die Tryin' - HU Hyper Edition: current stake $1.5

He MWCore,

how is it going? 3-5 years without poker, how did you survive that?
Where are you going to grind?
For Hyper turbos I can recommend you to take a look:
Hypers in the mix with collin Moshman (free video)
or even better:
Guide to beating Hypers by Collin Moshman, but that one requires Silver Status.

Did you read everything about our BR challenge promo? With a weekly update you will have the chance to also win the silver status - one lucky guy gets a +1 per week. All you have to do for this: keep your blog up to date & post an update once a week in our https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=326222&goto=firstnew

CU& GL at the tables,SvenBe

Good luck with your challenge

Thanks for the support SvenBe and Malendes.

In the last couple of years I was busy finishing various degrees so that I did not have much time for poker anyways (apart from the occasional kitchen table game here or there).
The videos you posted look interesting and I will watch the first one this week. Currently I'm working with Moshman's book (Heads-up no-limit hold'em) and the ebook by mersenneary. I already played my first headsup hyper SNG yesterday, but I am pretty sure that I am still the fish on the table :f_drink:.

Good luck MWCore!

hi

Thanks for all the support.
I managed to play 20 HU hyper turbos so far and hope to get at least a total of 100 tournaments within week 1.

Graph so far:

Week 1 results

Tournaments: 166
Profit/Loss: + $ 16.48
Bankroll: $ 81.08

Graph:

I played 165 $1.50 HU hyper turbos and accidently entered one $3.50 HU hyper turbo which I lost. Overall I'm pretty happy with the volume I managed to play and also with the amount of learning I got to do. I am still pretty much a beginner at hu hypers and have noticed many things I dearly need to improve. During next week I want to particularly focus on:

• Push or Fold decisions at ~8BB or less (what is the best way to pratice these situations ... SNG Wizard? ICMIZER?)
• Preflop play >15 BB deep

I'll try to analyze my past SnGs with these aspects in mind using Poker Tracker 2 (still trying to figure out if I should buy it or not) and I will post a couple of hands either in this blog or in the hand discussions forum.

Random thoughts on BRM, Rake, and Edge

HU hypers are a low edge game. Over my sample of about 200 tournaments I currently have won about 55% of them. This is, of course, not a meaningful sample to determine my ROI. But from what I have seen in the forums this seems to be a level good players can maintain. Given the low edge in HU hypers the amount of rake if of paramount importance. Here is how the rake for the HU hypers on pokerstars looks like:

• Buy-in $1.5 - Rake 4.0%
• Buy-in $3.5 - Rake 2.9%
• Buy-in $7.0 - Rake 2.1%

The rake at the $1.5 tournaments is waaaay higher than at any other buy-in. My plan going forward will therefor be to leave the $1.5 level behind as soon as possible. This desire to leave the $1.5 stakes has to be weighted against the fact that HU hypers are an inherently swingy game. Against tough opponents I plan to gather a bankroll of 200 buy-ins for the next higher limit before moving up. In order to leave the high rake of the $1.5 behind me I am willing to move to the $3.5 stakes as soon as I reach 50 buy-ins for this level. This necessiates moving down quickly if I am losing money at this stake. I will move down once my bankroll dwindles below 35 buy-ins. For going up to the $7 tournaments I want to have 100 buy-ins and after that use my baseline requirement of 200 buy-ins to move up. This means my medium- to long-term plan looks like this:

• $0 <= BR <= $175 - $1.5 SnGs
• $175 <= BR <= $700 - $3.5 SnGs (move down if BR falls below $123)
• $700 <= BR <= $3000 - $7 SnGs

Here is hoping I get to actually reach these bullet points.

I just noticed I am over 250 tournaments in total ... time for a quick graphical update:

Week 2 results

Tournaments: 210
Profit/Loss: - $ 3.96
Bankroll: $ 77.12

So this week was more in line with what I expected for the first few weeks of playing HU hypers. I still believe that I have some pretty bad leaks and I am currently working on finding them with pokertracker.

Week 2 graph:

Overall graph:

Quick analysis

I used pockertracker to take a look at how I performed at different effective stack depths. The bitter truth is the following:

25 BB >= effective stack >= 20 BB

20 BB > effective stack >= 15 BB

15 BB > effective stack >= 8 BB

8 BB > effective stack >= 0 BB (Push or Fold)

These stats are very revealing to me. My push-fold game seems to be fine (at least for the $1.5 games) and should not be my main focus for now. At higher effective stacks I am doing considerably worse - especially in the BB. I suspect that this may be caused by calling too much in the BB and playing too much fit or fold on the flop. Analyzing and improving my BB play at larger effective stack sizes will be my main concern going forward.

Week 3 results

Tournaments: 211
Profit/Loss: - $ 16.98
Rakeback: $ 3.00
Bankroll: $ 63.14

This week didn't go well. I played more than 200 HU hypers and tried to work on my BB play, but I am still massively losing chips when in the BB.

Week 3 graph:

Overall graph:

I just noticed that there are $1 satellites to the Sunday Million Anniversary and that there structure is a 4-max 4x-shootout with really shallow stacks (starting stacks 10 BB). I think HU Hypers are pretty similiar to this structure and I will try my luck with some of those.

Week 4 results

Tournaments: 174
Profit/Loss: + $ 3.72
Rakeback: $ 0.00
Bankroll: $ 66.86

This week was sort of a mixed bag. I played a bunch of the $1 satellites to the Sunday Million, which was a real drag on my bankroll and I didn't even win a ticket. At the same time my results at the $1.5 HU hypers were very good (it helps that I am also running significantly above EV). I will start to filter my charts by buy-in, because it doesn't really make sense to mix the satellites into the HU hyper graphs.

Week 4 graph ($1.5 HU hypers)

Overall graph ($1.5 HU hypers)

Learning vs Volume

I am a bit time constrained and I am currently unable to put in meaningful volume one tabling (I am currently in week 5 of the bankroll challenge and have only played ~850 HU hyper SnGs). However, I do believe that one tabling is the best way to learn more about the game and think more deeply about the decision at hand and the opponents tendencies. I would like to hear some advice from more experienced HU hyper players:

Is it worth starting to two table to increase volume or should I continue to one table and focus on learning first?

Aside:
I believe that my studying away from the tables could actually benefit from two tabling, as I would have a larger sample size of hands to analyze.

Week 5 results

Tournaments: 324
Profit/Loss: + $ 33.78
Rakeback: $ 4.50
Bankroll: $ 100.64

I had a bit more time to play this week, but I am still pretty scpetical about getting the volume necessary to draw any valid conclusions about my game. I think I will ultimately have to learn to two table and its probably better to learn it now.
Also, I lost some money again trying to qualify for the Sunday Million.

Week 5 graph ($1.5 HU hypers)

Overall graph ($1.5 HU hypers)

Howdy MWCore,

how is it going? As soon as the BR reaches $100, your posts stop?
But...they are not allowed to, because for your goal you need an additional 0!

Have a look: https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=2328963#post2328963

CU,SvenBe