SNGs and Guarantees

I’m doing OK in my goal of playing more poker this year than last. My monetary results are a bit behind the pace I need to reach my goal, but it’s still early in the year, and I’m not too worried about that.

For SNGs, so far it’s been either all or nothing. I’ve either won, or finished 6^th or worse. I’ve been playing 30+3s and 33+3 turbos on FullTilt and I can’t say that I’ve noticed any significant differences between this level and the one I was playing last year. Hopefully I can move up again soon.

Last night I decided to play in the $25K Guaranteed on FullTilt. It was about a quarter to seven at the time, and the $25K didn’t start until eight, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to win a token for my entrance. Because you know $26 is way over my price range. Even though a normal SNG takes about an hour I thought that I could do a two-table in a little under an hour and fifteen minutes so I could use my shiny new token for the $25K Guaranteed. I figured since the last four win a token and we wouldn’t have to eliminate the last three people it would go quickly. I was wrong. When we were down to six we all had plenty of chips in relation to the blinds, and the short stack kept doubling up. I had already busted out of the $25K by the time I won my token. But at least the next one will be free.

Oh, and for you young players out there, pushing all in pre-flop with AKs in the first 20 minutes of a huge multiplayer tournament, is not really a good plan. Probably the dumbest move I’ve made in quite a while. And I knew it as soon as did it, before they even called. Yes there were two other players in the hand. I told you it was the dumbest move I’ve made in a while. I think I was frustrated by the fact that the token SNG was still going so I was a little more aggressive in the Guaranteed than I needed to be. How much do you have to suck to go out 1200 or so out of 1500ish without suffering a horrible bad beat?

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I think the first tournament for the 2007 wpbt is tonight. Hopefully I’ll actually remember to play. I don’t really have an excuse not to.

[edit] And by tonight I mean two weeks from tonight. And I will have an excuse for missing that as I'll be in Mesa Arizona attending the Cubs fantasy camp. [/edit]

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I don’t intend to play anywhere other than FullTilt and PokerStars this year. I like both sites, and keeping track of which sites I have money at, and where I’m chasing bonuses, and all that is more pain in the ass than its worth, so I’m going to limit it to those two sites. Or at least I was going to. If you haven’t heard, Mansion Poker is running daily $100,000 Guaranteed tournaments. Word on the street is that they are only getting about $50K worth of registrations. That’s a fairly large overlay and might be big enough to tempt me to try them out. Of course everyone keeps mentioning this, so sooner or later they are going to get enough people playing to cover the guarantee, which I guess is the point for them. The only reason I haven’t tried this tourney out yet is because it costs $100 to enter which is a bit over my comfort zone. Still, that’s a big overlay.

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Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com