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My NEWLife SNG

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(would appreciate admin to put this picture here, I dont know how or I cant :( )

About me:

My name is Vedran Premužić, 31 year old guy with a dream. I live in town called Koprivnica, small town of 30k citizens in beautiful but politicaly tortured Republic of Croatia. Im happily divorced, have a beautiful daughter 10 years old and live with my girlfriend. Started playing poker in 2008 and my beging was playing live poker with friends during weekends. I fell in love with poker so much that I decided to leave my steady job in pharmaceutical company Belupo and along with my friend open first Poker Club in my town. First things go very well and life was great but as always ther is a but, situation in Croatia started to become very difficult and people didnt have any money to spend beside ususal bills and food. Thats the time we decided to close down Poker Club, and my future was very unstable. A lot of friends started playing online poker so only natural thing for me to do is to try playing online. Started playing mtts (like a lot of recreational players) on FullTilt and Pokerstars, results was horrible, so after some time I decided to learn and I mean really learn how to play poker. I read some books, watched some videos and got help from a friend that was crushing NL200 and became first Croatian SNE on PS ever “fakker11”. I really appreciate him and his guidance so I started to play cash games on Pokerstars. Soon enough I was a reg played on NL50 and trying to come up to NL100. At that time Pokerstars Eureka came to Croatia and the buy in was 1000€ + 100€, to be honest it was out of my bankroll BI but “fakker11” told me he got my back on this one. Played the tournament and after 3days ended up on final table. Final result was 6th place winning 11.900,00 EUR and for me It was big payday. Then the road down starts, I was thinking Im the best player there is, confidence sky high, nobody wasnt good enough for me :( . And as You guess I BUSTED! Hmmm what now? Lets play CG and try to build a roll. After playing CG for a while I went to play live micro stakes tournament with my friend “klompa123”, we did nothing ofc, BUT he made some good arguments why I should play SNG poker and journey begins, My NEWlife SNG!

Formats I played online:

Cash game NL2, NL5, NL10, NL25, NL50, NL100 (ended CG career on NL50)
MTTs micro and mid stakes (only good score was shipping The Big $4.40)
STT SNG 6max: $3.5s, $7s and currently playing $15s

People (poker players) that helped me the most (wouldnt be here without You guys, THANK YOU!):

fakker11 – early start of my online poker career

Mixer2211 aka “noherohud” - playing cg all the time with me and spending endless time discussing poker hands and theory, also my real life friend (lives with me in the same city)

klompa123 – BEST RL FRIEND, also the main reason I didnt lose faith in my game and helped me with transition from CG to SNG (also lives in the same city as me ;) ) One more IMPORTANT thing he did for me, he told his mentor and coach about me and is the main reason that still today Im under coaching of TIM64 (best poker coach for SNG – dont even try to tell me different)

onthestoop – MY YODA, MY MASTER, guy who didnt know me, he just trusted klompa123 that Im worth his time and took me under his wings ! THANK YOU TIM64!

About this blog:
Here I will update at least every other day my results from grinding, so this should be my motivation to grind more then now so Ill try not to embarrasse myself. Currently Im grinding SNG STT 6max turbo and regular $7s and $15s. Moved up from only $7s this year so I hope it will be a good one.

My Goals:

* put in more volume (at least 100sng per day)
* Supernova VIP status until August 2015 (Goldstar currently as I write this, will be Platinum in February)
* make some money (of course)
* resolve my medical problems (panic attacks, lack of moving)

Hope You will like my blog, so keep Yours eyes on it, I would appreciate every comment and critic of course, ask me some questions and be part of My NEWLife SNG

THANK YOU ALL! May the force be with You all!


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83 replies

For first post in my blog I think my overall SNG graph would be nice ;) so here it is:


graph is displayed in buy ins

Started playing SNG in 2014 (May I think), started playing $3.5s , in August I moved up to $7s and from December 16th Im mixing $7s and $15s


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IvicaIliev77
Joined: 31.05.2012

Excellent results so far man!
I played klompa quite a lot and I am sure he can help you to beat 15s in near future.
GL with your goals this year and with SNGs overall (lobbies are dying on 30s up and it makes no sense to switch to them now besides if you aim for 3-4k post RB profit as a sealing)


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Mark1790
Joined: 14.09.2010

Good luck Vedran.
What made you choose 6max over FR?
cheers
Mark


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@IvicaIliev, Im working with klompa ofc and he is very helpfull, but I have Tim64 for a coach so im pretty sure Ill be able to beat 15s, just need the time and volume. And for moving up the stakes, we will see, baby steps for now, Im pretty happy playing 15s for now.

@Mark
Thank You Mark!
My whole career I played 6max CG, so by default when I switched to SNG it was 6max, and to be honest FR games are 2 nitty for me ;)


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Ramble
Joined: 17.11.2008

Hi Vedran - Welcome to PokerStrategy community - I will be following this blog with interest!


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Day 1

Yesterday I was playing for 6h, 15s only and played only 77 sng, the main reason for that is table selecting. First morning session was terrible, a lot of not so good regs but still regs and I was running bad, very bad ( - 13BI, and EV +1BI ). For second sesssion I was BE and last session I made a profit of 10BI. (As soon as I will be able to upload ss Ill put graphs for the day and so...)

Overall Day 1 ($15BI):
Hours: 5h 51min
SNG: 77
Profit/Loss: -$28
VPPs: 460,26

(I will be using colors for overall stats of the day as follows: GREEN - satisfied with result
ORANGE - not so good but not bad
RED - bad results )

Also Ill put some interesting hands from time to time and everyone is invited to leave a comment.
Day 2 starts and I hope it will be much better one. See You at the tables _thumbsup:


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IvicaIliev77
Joined: 31.05.2012

How many tables were you playing to get those 77 games?
At what times during the day did you grind?

I know tons of bad regs on 15s who just decline to table select and play for some low ROI (up to 2%) and chase RB (which is super ridiculous).
Glad to hear you are table selecting, long term you can expect 5%+ ROI this way.

Are you mixing regular speeds as well ? Saw Klompa in those also, assume Tim asks you guys to mix with those as well.

Suggestion - don't post hands, you will be giving valuable info to other regs into your own strategy and way of playing. Good reg will adjust and own you ;)


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@IvicaIliev
Im playing 8-10 tables on 15s, and mixing turbo and regular (regular is much softer field but it takes a long time to register in one), as for grinding time, yesterday started first session around 13:30h, second from 17h and last one from 20h...
I dont even consider playing without table selecting, my goal is to make money not boosting my ego, so I will be table selecting always and forever ;)

Thank You for your hands advice, I didnt mean to put my hands, just some interesting hands that I come across from sng and want Your opinions on them. (but like I said from time to time, wont be so often and common)


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Lazza61
Joined: 23.03.2011

Hey yokoyokoo,

The reason your image won't display is because of your status. You need minimum bronze status for that and you can get that for free by signing up for one of our free money offers as per my post in your Introduce yourself! thread.

Regards

Laz

P.S. Here's a freebie :f_biggrin:


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IvicaIliev77
Joined: 31.05.2012

Originally posted by yokoyokoo

Im playing 8-10 tables on 15s, and mixing turbo and regular (regular is much softer field but it takes a long time to register in one), as for grinding time, yesterday started first session around 13:30h, second from 17h and last one from 20h...
I dont even consider playing without table selecting, my goal is to make money not boosting my ego, so I will be table selecting always and forever ;)

Thank You for your hands advice, I didnt mean to put my hands, just some interesting hands that I come across from sng and want Your opinions on them. (but like I said from time to time, wont be so often and common)

You welcome man.
With those kind of start times, you will have very difficult time getting 100 games per day. Around 1pm traffic is very low and in my opinion it is a waste of time to play during that time. You will notice this to be true once you raise to 12-15-20 tabling. With 8-10 tables it might be still OK to grind at that time but I highly doubt it.
Best times to maximize your table count and hourly are 6pm+. On some days you might find traffic from 4pm+ to fill your tables up but general rule is 6pm+ until 12 with 1 brake, you can finish your 2x2.5 hours sessions and get those 100 games that you are going for.
As far as the hands go, I meant for the ones where you made bad plays. You will be surprised how many regs from PS follow blogs here. They will take a note and exploit your weakness.
You can of course turn this around and start posting hands that you know will level them vs you and you will in return do the opposite to own them :f_ugly:
It is just too much hustle and not necessary in my opinion.

Look forward to how far you will come in 2015 with grind vs number of hours invested + profit post RB.
I am still shocked that somebody who was playing NL50 switched to SNGs where traffic is in huge decrease, games are reg infested and there is sealing for hourly once you hit next limit 30s cause of traffic. On the other hand people who play CG NL100 and/or up, solid grinders and regs make close to 100k or even more a year.
Just check out SNG guys instead and find me 10 players that made over 50k$ post RB last year by grinding steady some limits? When doing this don't include the guys that played 100x100s or some ridiculous low volume/super high variance type of upswing/card distribution to get to that post RB profit.
Finally, you mentioned that you had help from 1st ever Croatian SNE CG guy. I am even more shocked that you didn't go all the way with him to improve your game and teach you to crush NL100 and beyond.

Wish you all the best but 3-4k per month post RB is about maximum that you can expect on 6 max SNGs right now. Perhaps in year or two things might change with new recreational player pool but I really doubt it (until USA is out, it will be this way or even worse with new promotions that don't help SNG lobby).


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@IvicaIliev

I agree about grinding time in the 1pm during days, Im working on my sleeping schedule, so Ill change that asap. Will be putting more grind later in the day because as You said it is much easier.
And now about cash game and my switching to SNG. Like I said at the moment Im not dreaming of earning $10k+ per month and grinding SNG is much easier then playing CG at least for me. (I have a lot experience on CG and as Im gathering xp on SNG my opinion is that GREAT sng reg is not even close to GOOD NL100 reg because cash games now days are becoming more and more math formulas rather than poker as presented by awesome CG player Galvin Bay. Of course its still a poker Im just saying its much much harder to improve and move up on CG now than it was ever before.) My ultimate goal now is to have 7% ROI on 15s during the year and I KNOW I CAN, I HAVE TO AND I WILL DO IT. The situation in Croatia for now is that $1.5k winnings per month would be great living standard and that would make me happy ;)


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Originally posted by yokoyokoo
@IvicaIliev

I agree about grinding time in the 1pm during days, Im working on my sleeping schedule, so Ill change that asap. Will be putting more grind later in the day because as You said it is much easier.
And now about cash game and my switching to SNG. Like I said at the moment Im not dreaming of earning $10k+ per month and grinding SNG is much easier then playing CG at least for me. (I have a lot experience on CG and as Im gathering xp on SNG my opinion is that GREAT sng reg is not even close to GOOD NL100 reg because cash games now days are becoming more and more math formulas rather than poker as presented by awesome CG player Galvin Bay. Of course its still a poker Im just saying its much much harder to improve and move up on CG now than it was ever before.) My ultimate goal now is to have 7% ROI on 15s during the year and I KNOW I CAN, I HAVE TO AND I WILL DO IT. The situation in Croatia for now is that $1.5k winnings per month would be great living standard and that would make me happy ;)

It will be extremely hard to reach that RoI in a year span without extremely heavy table selection. If you depend on volume to reach SN as a goal, it might be too optimistic of a goal. On the other hand always shoot for the stars.


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Originally posted by CekamBoju
It will be extremely hard to reach that RoI in a year span without extremely heavy table selection. If you depend on volume to reach SN as a goal, it might be too optimistic of a goal. On the other hand always shoot for the stars.

I know its hard to get 7% ROI but with table selecting Im pretty sure Ill make it, and chasing supernova is just one goal, I wont be dumb enough to do everything just to get to supernova, my game is the most important to me and playing my A game for most of the time is cruical for 7% ROI, tbh I cant go to supermarket and show the lady at the cashier my pokerstars supernova card to pay for my food, so money is the ultimate goal. Im hoping for the best this year so lets be optimistic and see ;)
Thank You for your comment I appreciate it _drink:


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klompa
Joined: 09.09.2010

Only 100BIs below EV? Luckbox, not gonna talk to you anymore. :f_biggrin:

Nice to see you here and let the games begin. Get those 7%. :f_cool:


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Yeah I know what you mean

I am just saying that setting realistic goals is important so you can achieve them and get extra motivation from that. If you set a goal like this and end up the year around 3-4% RoI it will seem like a disappointment even though that is also an excellent result on that level for a player just improving in SNGs. My advice is to go to sharkscope and see the leaderboards from last year for people playing 15s and 30s. Just take a look at anybody who played 15k+ SNGs at 15$ to see what kind of RoI they maintained. It will be extremely hard to find any of them or it will be a just a few.

A lot of people can show 7% RoI on few thousand SNGs, on larger sample nope...

So just keep that in mind.


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IvicaIliev77
Joined: 31.05.2012

Originally posted by yokoyokoo
@IvicaIliev

I agree about grinding time in the 1pm during days, Im working on my sleeping schedule, so Ill change that asap. Will be putting more grind later in the day because as You said it is much easier.
And now about cash game and my switching to SNG. Like I said at the moment Im not dreaming of earning $10k+ per month and grinding SNG is much easier then playing CG at least for me. (I have a lot experience on CG and as Im gathering xp on SNG my opinion is that GREAT sng reg is not even close to GOOD NL100 reg because cash games now days are becoming more and more math formulas rather than poker as presented by awesome CG player Galvin Bay. Of course its still a poker Im just saying its much much harder to improve and move up on CG now than it was ever before.) My ultimate goal now is to have 7% ROI on 15s during the year and I KNOW I CAN, I HAVE TO AND I WILL DO IT. The situation in Croatia for now is that $1.5k winnings per month would be great living standard and that would make me happy ;)

Text in bold is key here I think.
You choose easier and less stressful format to make similar or less money. This is the road that many poker players take, usually the ones that choose not to work on their game further and/or fail to improve (invest time in studying, get coaching and help etc). I personally know many regs that even after 2 years of massive grinding haven't improved and failed to work on their game. These guys are stuck at same limits and their ROI has gone down instead of up because they felt they were too good vs rest of opponents and got satisfied with where they were (making whatever amount of $ per month!)

From what I got in your blog so far is that you are very ambitious with your goals. Also you seem to know how to achieve those goals by working with klompa and Tim, working around your time management and doing table selecting.
Finally arriving to my point now :)
With this kind of approach on NL50 you would have had hourly post RB on Stars way higher then on 15s with 7% ROI! Not only that but you would have most likely played NL100+ by now and reached 40$+ hourly!
So my whole point is that if you did decide to go all in with your working on the game, improving and becoming best you can be (always looking at quality of your game and improving it) then sticking to CG makes way more sense for lots of reasons.
Will list just some:
- SNG lobby is only alive on Stars for 15s while CG NL50 + exists everywhere (consider better RB playing CG on other sites as well it adds quite a lot to your hourly!!!)
- Future of SNGs is not looking good now vs CG which you can always go play somewhere else! (imagine another introduction of gamble type formats, even more fish leaving your current limits, you end up table selecting longer, lowering number of tables per hour, hourly goes down etc)
- CG is harder than SNGs for sure but learning to crush CG will help you crush any no limit format (HU, 6 -9 max, MTTs etc)

If you want I can give you some simple hourly calculations for NL50 CG vs 15s 6 max, to show you how much long term you are loosing by not sticking with CG.

Just to let you know, I know couple of guys that play NL200 on weaker sites and have lots of leaks in their game, fail to work on their game and correct them (too lazy and content with money they are making) so they choose to make 5-6k euro per month with less stress playing weaker opponents instead of staying on Stars.

I do agree with you that CG is a lot tougher and is more mathematical, but if you stick with it, stay on Stars and manage to get to NL200, you can comfortably any limits on any other sites/network and make 7k+ $/euro per month post RB.
I know, 1.5k is great money in Croatia and in Serbia also but if your main motivator is money in poker you will not go long way (it should be competing with yourself and becoming best you can be).

Again wish you all the best with your goals and look forward to your updates with specific hours spent grinding, number of tables, ROI, table selection you applied and finally hourly you achieved. Especially end of the year update!

GL, we might see each other often in mid February on 15s - if I do return to mass multi tabling SNGs that is ;)


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Day 2

Today I played $7s only, there was some decent tables and finaly $7s didnt give me hard time in meaning of runing bad. (still 20BI under EV this month). Ill try to stay awake now so I can sleep longer tomorrow and change my grind schedule to put more volume later in the day. (Could play more today but I feel kinda tired now so ill work off tables)

Overall Day 2 ($7BI):
Hours: 5h 05min
SNG: 87
Profit/Loss: + $87,13
VPPs: 248,82
(satisfied with that because I played only $7 BI)

Tomorrow is my day off (1 day in the week) and then $15s here I come. Decided that wednesday is better than Sunday ;)

Now I can adress this dispute in my blog. Im having fun reading your comments and answering, but I dont feel that its a good place for players to go into disputes.
@IvicaIliev
I welcome Your posts and Im glad You have advices for me but this blog is all about my SNG life and SNG only, I understand everything You are writing about CG but I wont be back to CG in so near future and would appreciate if You can comment about SNG game and related stuff. I also understand your point of view and respect Your 2 years long SNG career, so lets stick to SNG format and everything will be just fine. Once more, I welcome your posts and opinions. _drink:


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ntelis1
Joined: 09.03.2011

nice keep grinding OP.
GL


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Tim64
Joined: 03.11.2008

Good luck, yokoyokoo and glad you decided to start blogging. Whatever you decide to play and whoever's advice you take, writing about your experiences is sure to help you dealing with the many pressures, highs and lows of this wonderful career!

Best wishes,
Tim


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