Thursday, October 26, 2006

Let's Get Grindy

Many thanks for all the comments on recent SnG posts. 90% of me agrees with the consensus that the hand yesterday is a push, but a tiny part of me still wonders at the value of picking up the blinds there, as opposed to waiting an orbit to let things clarify themselves a bit, as far as an obvious chip lead, mid stacks, and short stack emerging. You can't wait for forever, though, thus the shove, as you're likely not going to get a better hand than that in the next 1-3 orbits.

Had a good night at the tables last night, which spilled through to this morning. I also broke down and paid for two months subscription to Sharkscope, as well as ponying up the cash for SnGPT. 'Tis a little time-consuming looking up players and saving Sharkscope data, etc., but pretty worthwhile overall, methinks. Granted, SnGs are harder to datamine in many ways as they're a different beast from cash games, but it definitely helps to know that you're sitting on the bubble with profitable regulars, as opposed to a losing player playing way over their normal buy-in.

It also erased any lingering doubts that I need to just focus on the $60s and hammer those pretty hard. Not only are there multiple instances of players beating those to the tune of +$10K months so far, but the average game is light years better than at the $120 level. Far too often in the $120s it gets down to four or five handed and everyone left is a solid, profitable regular at those levels, with not much of an edge to be had. Not so with the $60s, though, as they manage to summon up some pretty wacky play, even/especially around the bubble. The fact that I'm chugging along at 15% ROI at the $60s and, umm, cough, much less than that at the $120s sort of seals the deal.

Looking like it may take a wee miracle for me to cash in on my futures bet on the Tigers winning the World Series, but it's hard to get too upset about that, as far as plunking down a longshot free bet midway through the season, solely because the odds were juicy. My silly -EV sportsbetting has pretty much ceased, suffering the double whammy of some terrible weeks plus cashing out the majority of my online funds. How people make a living betting sports, I do not know, as the inherent stress alone would send me to an early grave, even if I was competent at making profitable picks.

Thumbs up to all of you kids who kept recommending Heroes, as we caught up on all the episodes last night and that's definitely one to add to the rotation. I have to join the chorus of people expressing much happy disbelief that such a show got greenlighted and is getting beamed to our television sets, amidst so much crappy, crappy programming these days. Part of me wants to believe that the pendulum will have to swing back and that we'll see more similar fare, but then American Idol and Dancing with the Stars keep drawing 172.192.194,102 viewers each week, so who knows.

Going to start taking classes in November towards getting my real estate license. I'm a little meh about the whole thing, but it does make sense, and I can hopefully blow through them pretty quickly. There's a school here in town that offers the six 30 hour classes I need, with a Friday/Saturday/Sunday schedule (10 hours in the classroom each day) that I'll probably take. Even if I never work professionally as a realtor it'd pay for itself pretty quickly, if I'm going to be investing/renovating/flipping properties, and while the prospect of potentially working as a realtor some day far off in the future doesn't fill me with glee, neither does it fill me with dread. I'm happy enough to keep cashing paychecks from the current day job, but we're pretty firmly on the Layoff Expressway right now, as all signs point towards disappointing earnings, layoffs, etc.

4 comments:

Pokerwolf said...

The benefit of stealing the blinds with your 77 hand is that you're about to go into the blinds on the next hand. In other words, you're paying for the blinds for the next orbit. You keep your stack at the same level for another orbit, which gives your pushes more 'oomph' and will make your opponents fold again unless they're desperate, tilting or they have a monster.

ScurvyDog said...

Pokerwolf,

I definitely grasp the benefit of stealing the blinds there.

What I was trying to get at wasn't so much whether I should push there or not, but trying to get my noggin' around situations where blinds aren't cripplingly high, there are 5-6 players left, and everyone has roughly the same size stack.

It's a bit of a different situation than your normal SnG scenario. Even if I fold my looming BB and SB, that just costs my 300 chips. I'm not desperately short after that. More likely than not everyone will still be evenly stacked after I pay my blinds, so I still have lots of fold equity if I shove the next orbit. If blinds were instead 400/600 then yes, of course, shove shove shove.

Because stacks are so even, if I shove with 77 UTG and get called, I'm usually in really bad shape, except for AK. That's a function of the fact that everyone is roughly even in chips, so it takes more to call, since anyone who does is essentially calling off their entire stack. If there were instead one huge stack and one shorty with 600 chips or so, and everyone else with equal stacks, then I like shoving with 77 UTG better, as you have a chance of picking up chips from loose/desperate calls.

None of that means that you should fold 77 in that spot. I was just trying to get at a trickier situation than normal, given the even stacks and the fact that blinds are still relatively small, so the 300 chips you pick up when you aren't called don't mean quite as much, as well as a spot where when you are called, more often than not you're in bad shape.

Dave said...

If you like Heros - you'd love Battlestar Galactica on SciFi channel even better. You can get past episodes on DVD now or via iTunes. Very good drama, not cheesy SciFi, plus the Cylons are sexy now.

Anonymous said...

I can't remember the last time there's been a show like Heroes that really thinks outside the box, and makes its viewers think.

I love this show, and glad you got caught up on it!

Good Luck in the SNGs! I'm currently building my little roll at the $5.50 level, so any SNG talk I'm more than happy to see and chime in on.