SNGs might be the death of me

I think I'm finally realizing what smokkee used to talk about when he said that SNGs were just stealing his soul and that he didn't want to play them anymore. I haven't been able to get myself to grind SNGs in the last couple of days. I've only done about 180 total single-table SNGs since my last entry.

The weirdest thing is that I did pretty well. I averaged over a 10% ROI during that time and I still can't make myself play them. I think I'm going to move back to grinding cash games like I used to. Just playing 9-12 tables of full ring, the decisions were just much more interesting and I didn't have to deal with the runs (both up and down) that I hit playing SNGs.

The swings are just sick, something cashing in 2 of 12 and sometimes cashing in 8 of 12. It's something that drives me nuts as someone that only plays pretty short sessions.

So I'm going back to cash, I destroyed the 25NL level when that was what I was exclusively playing. I beat it for something like 21BB/100 over 15k+ hands. Then I moved up to 50NL and tweaked my game when I didn't need to and that destroyed my results and made me give up cash for a while.

So my goal is to play 20k hands by the end of the month because that should give me a good sample size to see how I'm doing and it should just get me over the mark to hit platinum star for the month, which would keep me on pace to hit supernova at some point this year.

So basically about 1.5-2 hours of play per day average for the rest of the month. That shouldn't be too hard, hopefully I actually end up making money by the end.

Short Term Goal

Yesterday I had one of my worst SNG days in the last few months dropping about $400 at the 25/2 games and the 30/3 games. After that bad run I'm actually running at only a 3% ROI over my last 170 25/2 games. That's discouraging to me. I feel like I need to tweak a few things in my game, specifically the fact that I love to shove over limpers way too much. So I'm dropping back to the 15/1 games for the rest of the month until I feel I'm ready to move up again.

The problem with this is that I'm a points junkie and was on pace to hit Platinum Star this month. So I've decided that I'm still going to make it just playing the 15/1 games. I'll be 16 tabling for the rest of the month and hope to maintain at least a 10% ROI over the 1200-1400 tournaments I think I'll be playing. I'll probably be able to play about 50 a day during the week and more on the weekends. I already have 66 done for today so I'm right on schedule.

Hopefully I'll be able to find and plug some leaks in my game as well as getting some nice money from being in super-grinder mode. I plan to be back at the 25/2 games next month and crushing them.

The Journey

I hate the title of this. I unfortunately have to have a title before I can begin writing anything. It's something that basically crushed me in high school because all of my English teachers wanted good titles for our papers. That was something I was never good at, so I would struggle with the title for hours and never have any work done on my paper. The due date would arrive and I would have nothing to turn in because I was never able to get past the fact that I'm really bad at coming up with titles. As one might assume I did not get the best grades in high school, but it's getting better.

That's all really irrelevant, but I am unhappy with my title.

I have a friend who occasionally gets philosophical and talks about life being about the journey as opposed to the destination. So that's where I got my lame title.

Lately I've been thinking about that in poker. Am I playing for the journey (the actual time I spend playing) or for money I can make in the end (the destination). I think I really play for the destination 95% of the time. I have a goal for what I can acheive in the end. I want x amount of money or I want to reach a certain milestone or I need to win a tournament.

It's not that I just want to sit around and have fun playing a game of cards. I feel lazy when I play less than 6 tables most of the time. I still have fun playing the game. I don't just sit down start clicking and become miserable, but I don't know if I play in a healthy way. I want to get back to the feeling I got when I was learning poker, the joy and excitement that brought to me.





...but it sure will be hard to hit Supernova with that attitude.