August in review

Internet Poker / Matthew Pitt / 03 September 2010 / Leave a Comment

Towards the back end of August I had the urge to play a few tournaments, mainly the 180 man turbo SNG and 45 man turbo SNG, with decent results all considering.

I managed to play a total of 130 of the 180 man games, achieving an ITM of 10.8% and an ROI of 18.3%, which although I was aiming for closer to an ROI of 50% I can't really moan as my sample size is still pretty irrelevant for this type of game and winning is winning after all is said and done. Winning was made even more sweet by the fact I actually ran around 82,000 chips under expectation over this 130 game sample. Always nice to win when running badly!

Although I enjoy the 180 man games and seem to be able to beat them whilst playing 15 tables or more, they simply drag on for far too long as they take around 1.5 hours to win. Whilst this isn't really a great length of time in the grand scheme of things, if I want to play 25-40 per night it can mean a five to seven hour poker session and whilst I would happily play poker for this long every night, Mrs P would likely castrate me! I suppose it would be much different if I were playing for 3-4x the stakes I am now and pulling a five figures every month!

Anyway, with that in mind I thought I would try my arm of the 45 man games and see how I did. I've got an ROI of around 30% in these over a 500 game sample at the $3.25 level but I got completely owned at the $6.50 when I was being backed so my overall stats are pretty crap. The 45 man games finish much sooner, with a win only taking 60-70 minutes at the most so I can play loads more. As an example I played 50 in a 3.5 hour period the other day.

The first session of the 45 man games I played was a 30 game sample where despite cashing in 20% of them I still had a negative ROI of 13.8%, not exactly the start I was looking for. However, I knew I was playing well and it was just the cards not falling the way they should have been. The following night I played the most I have done in ages and logged 50 games, cashing in 24% of them for a positive 32.9% ROI, which is much more like it! Overall from the 80 games I played over the course of two days I ran 115,000 chips under EV yet managed to achieve an ROI of 15.4%, hardly balla status but still good having a hobby that paid me a few quid per hour.

So totting everything up I played a total of 210 tournaments, cashed in 15.2% of them for an ROI of 16.9% which I am pretty pleased with when I take into consideration I ran over 200,000 chips under EV. I've actually yet to play a single hand in September, mainly due to not feeling like it and there is no point playing just for the sake of it. A couple of times I was going to play a session but didn't even log on, which has probably saved me some cash to be honest.

I'm hoping to have a decent session tonight, probably between 40-50 games, and hopefully run around the 20-30% ROI mark. Although I try not to make any plans anymore with poker, it would be great if I could play 1,000 tournaments this month doable if I get off my lazy ass and play some poker!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!