Tony's path from being nuts to being THE nuts [at various SNGs]

First!

And of course subbed ..... glglglglgl, Tony! ♠_thumbsup:

Thanks for coming, Prim, enjoy your vacation and crush 2019 with a fresh mind!

Meanwhile, I'm ITM in the $10K Stars Rewards freeroll after having registered late in the last minute, and that only required growing the starting stack by 2.5 times, lolwut $2.49 for a 20-minute 1-table grind isn't a bad hourly rate (Update: out w/ AK, time for a new dose of black tea.)

Now I'll have a look at how many SNG satties are running to the Winter Series event; if a lot, then I'll just reg into the event and grind as many satties as I can for the T$

Gogogo, Tony! Glglgl! ♠_thumbsup:

Thanks!

Oops, and actually, it's the end of the month and the big freeroll time at 888, so I have a chance to earn some $ in today's level 60+ & 80+ and tomorrow's level 100+ freerolls that I'll be able to play in the browser version

Basically, level 100+ is about the only game that I've been playing at 888 this year (plus Blast SNGs to punt off the freeroll winnings or spin them up to a withdrawable amount).

That said, it turns out I can only play Starscoin sats that are unraked because the real money sats to $0.55 events have $0.01 rake that's relatively too high

And I'm out of coins already. I almost qualified for event 25 for 1 coin but finished 3rd in the 64-man in a cooler

I only have to rake $0.68 more for the next gold chest, though

In last week's test sessions in the search of an additional SnG format (before I withdrew for life expenses), $1.50 90-man KOs were visually soft; the most likely reason for an unsatisfactory EV, apart from the hilariously small sample size, was that I was spewing too much If I stop overadjusting to the bounties that don't matter all that much at the final 3 tables of a 90-man, I think I'll start doing fine.

In case you're wondering why I'm talking about $1.50s, I've deposited $10 more (to empty my Skrill balance that was doing nothing; this must be my last bullet) and won $11 in a mini-heater, so the balance is $37 now

I still have daily doubts about what to grind The traffic at Stars MTSNGs (as well as other sites' MTTs) gets really low after the CET midnight - even $1 non-turbo 45-mans go off every 10-15 minutes at that time, as opposed to every 5 minutes at peak hours, but they're certainly much softer during the Latin semi-off-peak, or rather, I haven't yet felt how relatively tough they are during the peak.

The bad feature of 18-mans is that they only go on break every 2 hours, and I've started thinking that I really need to meditate at least every hour, and I don't want to halve the break frequency for the sake of 18-mans.

So I'm really thinking about returning to $1 Spin & Go Max on a regular basis that's still soft enough despite the presence of a small number of 10-tablers

45-mans do look like easy money too, though So, most likely, I'll still keep them as a staple (at least for tomorrow, lol at my indecisiveness), but there's likely no harm in throwing a few spins in at the end of the session to maintain a satisfactory workload unless and until I hit a couple of FTs.

Derp :facepalm:: I've failed to take into account that 45-man turbos aren't too tough at off-peak hours either.

As they're easier to mass-multitable while requiring the same BR, they make much more sense than Spin Max or Hexapro as a supplement.

So the current plan is to add $1.50 turbos at the off-peak when BR>$40 or $0.25 non-turbos when BR<=$40 (while still grinding $1s when BR>$20).

Writing thoughts down helps declutter them a little bit

Originally posted by tonypmm
But frequenting Collin Moshman's coachings and videos must be another predictor of success.

So let's build some sample and try to pay the bills in the process (just $150 a month, don't sweat)

Haha thanks Tony I hope so! Will be very interested to hear your thoughts on the different formats and where the best value is. Good luck!

Collin, I didn't expect you to detect this blog so fast, thanks for coming and in 2019!

The usefulness of my analysis is rather dubious, as it only applies to a particular person (me) with particular leaks and a particular BR size ($52, with no more than $80 available for an emergency redeposit).

The reason why I'm fond of 18- and 45-mans is that the duration of periods when the ICM tax is large, relatively to the duration of the whole SNG, is longer than at 9- and 90-mans and on-demands (which are typically 85-120-man), and especially than at 180-mans and scheduled MTTs.

My judgement on this matter is based on an excellent old 2+2 thread by Richard 'LektorAJ' where average bubble factors are posted for most common SNG formats. It reveals that, even though the 3- and 4-handed bubbles are rather light in a 45-man, the 5-7-handed ones are surprisingly extreme, and moreover, the ICM tax is quite large at the final 2 tables already, which many $1-1.5 players probably don't realise even nowadays.

The bubble factor is bigger than 1.33 when there are 3-11 players left, whereas in an 18-man, that happens with 3-7 players left, so such a zone of ICM pressure is 9 places long in a 45-man (11-3+1), which is 20% of the field, and 5 places long in an 18-man, 28% of the field. However, because not everyone is mindful of the ICM before the FT, I believe pushing much tighter than Nash and calling a bit wider makes extra money at the F3T of a 45-man.

So I'm testing a low VPIP strategy and am also going to test a new stack-and-tile setup hopefully tomorrow (with FTs dragged out of the stack into their own grid slots, of course), to enable a table count increase from 9-12 to around 20 at the peak load, which only works well at $1.50 or below but will hopefully allow me to make a bit more money (nothing serious, maybe 1.2x) without adding $4.50 non-turbo on-demands.

As another format that can work for someone else and has sufficient traffic, I recommend 9-man KOs - they're soft enough up to the $5 level (I haven't tested $10s). However, as you mentioned in one of your 90-man PKO videos, KOs are more difficult to multitable because one needs to be acutely aware of who's covering whom. Of course, I have the stack sizes as of the start of the hand displayed as a separate PT4 HUD group (the stat is called 'Live Stack'), but reading and processing that info does take extra time.

What's peculiar about non-turbo KOs is that they allow to wait longer for a premium hand as a short stack, so their shoving ranges tend to correctly be extremely tight. This effect can't be captured properly by modern ICM calculators because their FGS depths are low.

P.S. Many thanks for reading my thoughts and making a video about on-demands posted today I like their payout structure much more than the first-place-heavy structure of 180-mans; I think the OD structure is at the same level of ICM extremity as 9- and 90-mans, in terms of the subjectively measured length of the zone where the ICM effects are hard enough.

To HU fans, I recommend to sit in 4-man turbos instead of 2-man unless there are already 2 regs in the 4-man, and of course, to pick non-turbos over turbos whenever possible, because of the rake. There's a timeless 2+2 thread about the lightness of rake in 4-mans.

In fact, even if there's 1 reg opponent per 4-man, it still turns out more profitable than a strictly 2-man turbo grind (when you're still occasionally sat by regs, I guess, especially when you're taking a shot at a higher stake where no one recognises you as a reg).

Moreover, paradoxically, I think the BR requirement for a 4-man isn't much different from the one for a 2-man of the same stake, because the expected ROI is much bigger in a 4-man, particularly at $1.5-3.5.

Among cash games, I have high hopes for Fusion. It's a relatively unstudied game which is different from PLO in a few ways. Because you're dealt 2 extra cards on the turn, 1 of them private, I think position is more important in Fusion than in PLO, perhaps more important than preflop holdings (preflop equities run rather close). Also, because players don't see their 4th card before the turn nor the 3rd card preflop, hand reading is more important; there are fewer nuts on showdown than in PLO because some of the potential nuts are folded preflop or on the flop. Perhaps a K-high flush is often good in Fusion (and should be played fast on the flop for protection from the naked ace of that suit, which is actually a draw on the flop), as opposed to PLO.

In terms of variance and, alas, rake, Fusion seems much like PLO.

Yeah, the traffic on the Stars SNG-MTTs gets lower and lower ♠_cry: I will specify on small-field MTTs and PLO-CG and of course PLO-MTTs. In order to get enough volume in the NLHE-MTTs I play on 5 different rooms now: Party, Stars, RedKings, Unibet, Titan and thinking about playing PLO-CGs at 888. So far the fishies games you can find on Titan Poker, Unibet and 888. Unibet-MTTs are super fishy but not the PLO-CG! On 888 the MTTs suck (almost all of them are rebuy) but the PLO-CGs seem to be really fishy.

Thanks for the analysis!

We might be talking about two different iPokers What I was experiencing in 2013-16 as an iPoker jackpot SNG and Twister reg was that the €10-20 games were full of rakeracing regs (some of them really bad, though), even after source-based rake allocation started in 2015, though it improved the ecosystem somewhat.

Nowadays, fewer iPoker skins are offering generous VIP programs and races, but Betfair still does run a Twister race, so I wouldn't expect there to be much fewer regs now than 3 years ago. Cash games at €0.05/0.10 and below are soft only because the rake is brutal (6.7%) and regs move up fast to pay 5% instead at €0.10/0.20.

The MPN was my favourite network for a long time, just it's a bit hard to make use of its and iPoker's offers in Russia without using a VPN.

I generally avoid Party but may make an exception for Bounty Hunters because bounties are unraked and because some edge can be had over regs at PKOs, so it matters less at PKOs that Party is generally notoriously full of regs (at 'serious' stakes, I mean).

I know I was supposed to play serious poker formats, but 36-man $1 hyper-super-KOs are just so perfect for a 'cheat night'

Hyper-Super-Suckouts Ep. 1

PokerStars - 25/50 Ante 10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 455 (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 50.00, 3Bet Preflop: 100.00, Hands: 2)
UTG: 1,020 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: -, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
CO: 420 (VPIP: 42.86, PFR: 50.00, 3Bet Preflop: 100.00, Hands: 7)
BTN: 435 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 3)
Hero (SB): 2,715

5 players post ante of 10, Hero posts SB 25, BB posts BB 50

Pre Flop: (pot: 125) Hero has K♥ 2♦

UTG raises to 1,010 and is all-in, CO calls 410 and is all-in, fold, Hero raises to 2,705 and is all-in, fold

A final table (the bubble has just burst):

PokerStars - 200/400 Ante 60 NL (7 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 5,330 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 1)
BTN: 530 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: -, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
SB: 4,400 (VPIP: 100.00, PFR: 100.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
BB: 1,610 (VPIP: 35.29, PFR: 21.43, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 17)
UTG: 440 (VPIP: 40.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
Hero (MP): 5,690

6 players post ante of 60, SB posts SB 200, BB posts BB 400

Pre Flop: (pot: 960) Hero has 7♣ 5♠

UTG calls 380 and is all-in, Hero raises to 5,630 and is all-in, fold, fold, SB calls 4,140 and is all-in, fold

Surprisingly, Hero's Nash range here is not ATC (rather, 80-90%), but 75o turns out a part of it. SB's range for overcalling surely includes AKo, though it has to be rather narrow because I'm covering him.

Super-KO MTSnGs are utterly insane Their beauty and horror is that they're so short that I could easily get in 90-100 of them per peak hour, so in terms of the hourly EV, I may turn out either crushing or burning money, and it's expensive to find out which is the case

Crushing them would be actually a nontrivial achievement, not just because of the 12% rake but because of the complexity of the calculation of the value of a stack in different phases. While at $5 turbo PKOs, someone who is good at KO MTTs can gain some edge by early blind level postflop expertise that can compensate for the lack of late phase ability, the edges at hyper-KOs and Spin Max (when 2+ places are paid) rely heavily on the accuracy of the preflop equity models.

This reminds me of Stars' PASSCode promo and of 'skill game jackpots' in Second Life, where gambling is banned (because of the US law), but it's legal to offer difficult puzzles that hardly anyone can solve.

Introducing the personal poker R&D fund (RDF) - a more robust way of 'cheat day' allocation

MTT players have Sunday as a natural day when their ABI goes up.

Outside MTTs, the difference between profits is smaller between the days of the week, so the calendar doesn't really work as a prompt for risk increase.

Even non-MTT players have some FOMO because new poker formats appear regularly.

For such cases, I've found it viable to deduct a share of the profits from my normal games to create an R&D fund that can be used towards poker formats where the probability distribution of my success is heavy-tailed (I can be either losing EV or crushing).

For the time being, I'll be a relative nit and set the deduction towards the RDF at 30% of the profits from normal games above the latest peak BR. The RDF (to be invested on a day/hour when the normal games are tougher or aren't running or the experimental games are softer) can be spent on any game at its lowest available stake until the SPRT gives a confident result (indicates that I'm either surely beating or surely not beating them at a higher hourly winrate than my normal games).

For example:

The current BR for normal games is $60.

If I lose $10 today, I'll deduct nothing.

If I then win $20 tomorrow, I'll be at a new high point of $70 and deduct $3 = 30% * ($70-$60), setting the new high point to be $67.

If I then lose $20 on Sunday, I'll again deduct nothing.

If I then win $40 on Monday, that will bring the normal game BR to $87, from which $6 = 30% * ($87-$67) will be deducted into the RDF only if the initial $3 has been busted, leaving the new high point at $81 and the total RDF contribution at $9.

If I were a total nit, I'd increase BR requirements for moving up at normal games to 1.4x the previous ones (as I'd only keep 70% of the profit and lose 30% of it at dubious games in the worst-case scenario), but in reality, I don't think the requirements should be increased by more than 1.2x because I might run good or even actually be good at the dubious games, and in that case, I won't care about going busto at the normal games.

(Imagine a world where everyone in a relationship would allow the partner(s) to spend as much as 5% of the quality time on dating in search of a better option )

The above strategy is very superficial; the problem clearly belongs to the 'multi-armed bandit' class of problems, and the theory of reinforcement learning likely already has an optimal algorithm (maybe the upper confidence bound algorithm is the answer).

Hyper-Super-Suckouts Ep. 2

PokerStars - 25/50 Ante 10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 500
SB: 500
BB: 500
UTG: 500
MP: 500
Hero (CO): 500

6 players post ante of 10, SB posts SB 25, BB posts BB 50

Pre Flop: (pot: 135) Hero has Q♥ 3♠

fold, MP raises to 490 and is all-in, Hero calls 490 and is all-in, BTN calls 490 and is all-in, SB calls 465 and is all-in, fold

PokerStars - 25/50 Ante 10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 500
SB: 500 (VPIP: 31.58, PFR: 41.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 19)
BB: 500 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 1)
UTG: 500
MP: 500
CO: 500 (VPIP: 21.09, PFR: 13.18, 3Bet Preflop: 5.77, Hands: 149)

6 players post ante of 10, SB posts SB 25, BB posts BB 50

Pre Flop: (pot: 135) Hero has J♥ 6♠

UTG calls 50, MP calls 50, CO raises to 490 and is all-in, Hero calls 490 and is all-in, SB calls 465 and is all-in, BB calls 440 and is all-in, fold, fold

PokerStars - 50/100 Ante 20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 295 (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 8)
CO: 935 (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 100.00, 3Bet Preflop: 100.00, Hands: 3)
BTN: 2,700 (VPIP: 75.00, PFR: 100.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 4)
UTG: 5 (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 40.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
Hero (BB): 1,110

4 players post ante of 20, UTG posts ante 5 and is all-in, Hero posts BB 100

Pre Flop: (pot: 185) Hero has Q♥ 4♥

fold, fold, BTN raises to 2,680 and is all-in, Hero calls 990 and is all-in

Sorry for the lack of postflop content, I just can't resist showing how wide the ranges are supposed to be in this SNG format