PlauZee's HU SNG Poker Blog

It’s been a while since my last post. Normally I don’t blog due to bigger downswings, less motivation of blogging or just because I’m too lazy to do so. This time it was kind of different, because every time I thought it was time to give some updates I knew I would have to write a looong post about the specific topic. Let’s see if I can shorten it to a summarization of May’s news.

SCOOPy dooby doo!
2011′s SCOOP was fun, but full of frustrations the same time. I was looking forward for those events a lot, but didn’t play many in the end. I played the HU MTTs where I did pretty well, but wasn’t able to run as well as I did in HU SNGs this month (200BBs deep great play by fish and bad beat inside). I had my best result in a 6max $22 buyin MTT where I busted as 32nd with QQ vs AK for huge chiplead in a field of 20,000 entrants. At least one of those very rare deep runs. I should play some more of those soon, at least some 6max events which are a lot of fun beside fullring donkaments.
Some of others HU SNG regs did very well in the SCOOP, like ‘bandano‘, ‘“0Piggybank“‘ and especially Mr. HU SNG of 2010 ‘treezer‘ who won the 2,6k HU MTT. Grats again bro!
[bad beat story]

HU SNGs - May 2011

May’s HU SNG performance
After I won the one and only 10k HU SNG in the beginning of the month I was able to make some more decent winnings. My graph looks pretty nice, but I sold a lot of action for those nosebleed-games. I still have the month in a while on Stars and made about 10k with SuperTurbos on FullTilt in May as well. Could be fun if Stars is going to offer those games soon, too. It’s hard to handle their swings, but they attract fishes willing to gamble more than any other game.

Stars recently changed their HU SNG lobby once again. They had only one 10k HU SNG running, but deleted them already and changed the buyin once again. The lobby looks way better than before now. It’s weird they don’t have multi lobbies anymore and I’m wondering if they will run those hyperturbo HU SNGs on highstakes soon as well. At the moment they are still testing them with $7 buyins.

“Waaaghbozz” recently wrote about a new book called “Mental Game of Poker” which might be even better than “The Poker Mindset” which I read about 1.5years ago and helped me a lot.

Greetings from Hamburg

It’s always worth reading something new, especially about the most difficult part of professional poker play – the game psychology. I will read and share my thoughts about it very soon.

I’m still kind of disappointed I didn’t make it to EPT Barcelona meeting “pistons87” and the guys of his bootcamp. I travelled to some German cities recently what was great, but of course still not the same. But the summer is near and summer 2011 means: going to Slovenia! Looking forward to hang out with “mtvdeuem” and his crazy Slovenian friends (nope, no joke about Slovenia inside – at least not this time ).

Good luck guys & Take care!
Chris

Stars added a 10k turbo HU SNG lobby today. The first 10k HU SNG match was already over after 1st hand when “JustPushIt” from Denmark snap-called the river.

Here’s the handhistory:
http://www.cardrunners.com/pokertools/session/342182/replay/

And the screenshot of the match…

Thx to “Picasso” for probably best song to insta-win a 10k match:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXJiUQhauWs&feature=player_embedded

Cheers! I’m back grinding some 200s now.
Chris

/Edit:
Some hours later PokerStars took those 10ks from the server again. So, it was the first and only ever played 10k HUSNG match at Stars. mbn

I wrote about possible changes for HU SNG lobbies on Stars after PCA when they told us they gonna add more lobbies soon. They needed bit longer, but now they changed it. Not only adding some lobbies, but copying the system of FTP almost 1 to 1.

What Stars just changed for their HU SNGs:

• New Blind structure (almost same like FTP: 3min levels for turbos, 6min for reg-speed, more blind levels; only difference to FTP  is 1st blind level with 10-20 so still 75 BBs deep)
• Buyins up to 10k (gl guys!)
• More timebank than before
• 

  old vs new Rake

  Hypertorbu HU SNGs for $5 installed as a trial

• Lower rake at high stakes ($200+$6.83 looks pretty weird)
  -> The higher you play, the less rake u pay. They had similar system before, but it’s lower for $200s+ now. It’s still 4.5% at $100s like before at $115s, but 3.4% at $200s (instead of 4.5%) , 2.9% at $300s (4.5%), 2.6% at 500s (3.6%) and 2.2% at 1ks (2.7%). Playing a $10,000 turbo HU SNG is almost same price in rake ($127.50) than $5,500 before ($100).

What Stars will probably change soon:.

• The hypertubo HU SNGs are running as a trial at the moment. Sounds like they are pretty sure they gonna add them at high stakes soon as well. If they’ll really add those hypers to high stakes as well, things probably will be exactly like on Full Tilt where almost none not-hypers are running anymore.
• The time until a game starts is 1min now again as it was about a year ago. Hopefully they gonna change it back to 15secs or even better: copy the “I’m ready” button of Full Tilt, please.
• The rake of $x.xx is way too complicated. I’m pretty sure they gonna change it to a buyins like $978.7+$21.3 (“$1000 buyin”) instead of $1000+$21.25. At least hopefully. The actual buyins are way too complicated, especially for players who don’t play that often.
• At the moment there is neither a maximum of lobbies per buy in, nor a maximum of lobbies each player can sit. Let’s hope there will be a maximum at least for each buy in soon. Would be pretty disgusting to see 10 regs waiting for 1 fish.

To lower the rake will definitely influence Full Tilt as well. Let’s see when and how much they will lower their rake. Less rake means two main things: It’s gonna be way harder to reach different VPP-steps, like Supernova Elite, but it will be way more attractive to play less talented regulars.

Feel free to discuss in comment function. I’m pretty sure your comments and thoughts will be read, not only by me and others, but by those who are be able to change the system, as well.
Official feedback thread at 2+2 by Steve

Good luck
Chris