PlauZee's HU SNG Poker Blog

While treezer was the absolute number one in 2010 with >$600,000 winnings in HU SNGs before rakeback, there are several guys in 2011 who made extraordinary winnings and are very close in the yearly leaderboard.

Thanks to the new hyperturbo HUSNGs at PokerStars there was way much more money to be won in our business what makes it impossible to compare those figures to the winnings treezer made the year before. He didn’t play many HUSNGs in 2011 anymore, but focussed at MTTs where he also did pretty damn well this year.

treezer

People who wanted to gamble didn’t sit highstakes cashgames that often anymore, but chose to play those hyperturbo games which are very fast and full of variance. It’s kind of a psychological phenomena that people who want to gamble will play the same game over and over again the faster it is and the more variance it is. Most fishies playing those hypers are pretty sure that they only have a chance to win in about of 47%. But it’s the same at BlackJack or wherever people gamble. They are looking for a fast double up and love the thrill when cards are being dealt.

Serkules stats at PokerStars

Serkules

The more often they are lucky enough to catch an upswing after some games the more often they will come back. That’s probably the reason why fishies prefer playing hypers that much more than turbo HUSNG where the edge against them is much higher. The number one winner of 2011 is not a turbo HUSNG player anymore, but a German guy named Serkules who plays hyperturbos only. Before Black Friday he played at FullTilt only and didn’t even have an account at PokerStars. Since then he started crushing hypers more than everyone else at Stars. In 2011 he made $576,000 on both sites with hyperturbo HUSNGs only. In fact, he played only 4(!) turbo HUSNGs this year. If you don’t think there is any edge in those games or any money to be won at hypers just have a look at those crazy guys like him and SkaiWalkurrr, who’s up more than $400,000 this year.

FisFarFar

FisFarFar, a crazy guy from Sweden who still regrets his screenname… , is the actual number one of SharkScope’s HUSNG yearly leaderboard. He won most with one account only and made more than $540,000 in 2011 before rakeback, about the half at hypers and the other part at turbo HU SNGs (-> stats of FisFarFar).

Fishenzon

The Canadian HUSNG pro Fishenzon is right behind him with stats which are very similar to those of FisFarFar. Fishenzon made $550,000 in 2011 overall, $215,000 with turbos and rest with hyperturbo HU SNGs (-> stats of Fishenzon).

adonis112

Olivier Busquet, adonis112 on PokerStars and livb112 at FullTilt, was able to finish another very sick and decent year. With winnings of more than $505,000 in 2011 he proved once again he’s still one of the best.
He played a lot against one of the most popular newcomer at HUSNGs in 2011 as well, German Björn Schäfer, bjoerni89, who was able to get a sponsorship with PokerStars and became TeamPro Online recently. His stats are hidden at SharkScope, but pokeroptimizer shows his HeadsUp stats of 2011.

bjoerni89 HUSNG stats of 2011

bjoerni89 had a very sick run at the first half of 2011 when he climbed up from $100s to the $5k HUSNGs within no time after he was able to win big at a Sunday Warmup, but had to take huge constantly losses in the 2nd half in which he tried to play $2ks+ only. After he was up about 300k at the first half of the year he lost even more and ended at -200k before rakeback. The try to play $2ks+ only didn’t turn out to be profitable, but brought him the title of the new VPP record holder which he earned last night and therefor the Team Pro Online sponsorship. He made more than 3,050,000 VPP in 2011 and payed more than $550k rake to PokerStars to also collect more than $300k of rakeback. So at the buttomline he might be about $100k up with HUSNGs in 2011. Not that much, but paying most rake is obviously enough reason to get a PokerStars sponsorship.

Last, but not least, another German HUSNG reg not to forget, Martin Finger, “0Piggybank”, who was able to take down the EPT Prague!

2011 was full of interesting changes, runs, reg-battles or even -wars which seemed to become more and more in the last half year. Let’s see how 2012 will change the poker community and what impact the changes of the rakeback system of cashgames to the HUSNG community will have.

I wish you all the very best for Christmas and hope you can enjoy the time with your family – without poker or the need to grind the missing VPPs for Supernova Elite

Cheers!
Chris

Beside all great stories about the PCA Bahamas there are some things you should consider before buyin your ticket to the paradise. Sure, I had a very great time there and enjoyed my trip a lot. I met a lot of crazy guys and I’m very thankful for every moment I spent there. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t do the trip again without the free ticket which I had. It’s a pitty that PokerStars don’t have their free tournament packages for Supernova Elite’s anymore. They still have a huge cutback for Supernova Elite’s buying the package, but it’s still very expensive and not that exclusive anymore. PCA Bahamas was kind of meeting point for SNEs, even tho there weren’t any special activities or events for them. PokerStars should have made PCA Bahamas to a very special bonus for everyone reaching the 1,000,000 VPP. The possibilities they have there are enormous. What we got already was a free upgrade to a Suite in the best tower of the hotel area, the Paradise Island, what was awesome. But beside that upgrade there wasn’t any special event, like a SNE-only dinner with well-known poker pro’s, some kind of meet and greet, or activities like boat-trips only – or at least for free – for Supernova Elite’s.

For everyone who hates reading long blog posts, but need some facts – here we go with the most important reasons not to go to PCA Bahamas 2012:

1. Off season weather: We went to the PCA Bahamas in 2011 and were very lucky to have great weather, at least compared to the years before what I heard from others players. In January, it’s pretty often cloudy there, you should expect to have at least one or two raining days during your stay and temperatures are around 21° C (70° F). But, if you are lucky to have good weather and bust early out of the Main Event, you will love the area at the Paradise Island. (-> more information about the weather)
2. Travel time: Europeans need very long to get there.
3. Party: There are some clubs where you can have a lot of fun, at the hotel area and at the main island. But during that time there aren’t many other people around who aren’t poker-players. Means: It’s great to meet other HU SNG geeks, but if you want to go clubbing don’t expect to see many girls around. If you are looking for great party nights you should save your money and spend it somewhere else.
4. Prices: There aren’t many situations you’ll leave the area of the hotel for, the Paradise Island. You can find, buy and eat everything there and it takes quite a while to get into the city. The prices at the hotel area are pretty high ($10 for a 1l bottle water), but I expected them to be even higher.
5. Dark poker room: If you play the event, you can simply feel how special it is. Nevertheless, you are sitting inside of a room without windows. It’s strange to play all day without having any time to enjoy the great island and possibly longer than 12 hours per day and until midnight.

Reasons why you shouldn’t miss the PCA Bahamas 2012:

1. Paradise Island: The hotel is just fkn awesome! There is simply none of my photos on which you can see how great the island is and the suites are.
   
2. Meeting Poker Pro’s: The PCA Bahamas is the one and only event which almost every poker pro participate and is not pissed to get questioned by a random fan. They see it as you should see it as well: It’s holidays.
3. Playing the Main Event: The Main Event of PCA Bahamas became to one of the most famous poker events world-wide. Most pro’s play it and there is huge media who are following the event.

It’s not that I didn’t like my trip to the PCA Bahamas 2011, don’t get me wrong there. But for the money and time you have to spent as European to get there I would prefer making awesome holidays anywhere else and not during off-season. I loved it and it was kind of dream to play the PCA main event, but without that tournament package with all included I wouldn’t have gone there.

No matter if you’re planning to go or not to go, there is just one and only NO GO at the PCA Bahamas in case you have great weather: DON’T GRIND ALL DAY! I saw so many geeks playing poker all day who couldn’t quit and enjoy the place, it really made me sad.

The trip to the PCA Bahamas is everything, but a normal poker trip. It’s holidays and that’s how you should think about it. It’s just not comparable to any other EPT. Check my PCA Bahamas 2011 page if you want to know more about my trip.

I won’t be there this time and I’ll envy everyone who will.
Enjoy your time!
Chris

Last night HUSNG.com finally published their very new Heads Up SNG Poker Ebook by one of the most well-known HUSNG coaches and pro’s Mersenneary. It’s totally free, so stop reading this lame blog, get your best Christmas gift you could imagine and enjoy the very first international advanced HUSNG book!

Thx a lot to Mersenneary and Ryan for their efforts! This book might make HUSNGs way more established and attractive to new players. Let’s hope Olivier Busquet, adonis112 / livb112, wasn’t that much right with his very emotional freak out at the 2+2 thread when he heard about the book (3rd post at this and following pages).

-> Table of content and ebook presentation by HUSNG.com
-> Direct link to the download

Screenshot of the free HUSNG Ebook

Harthor is going to mess with the best. He’s going to challenge SkaiWalkurrr (real name: Rachid Ben Cherif ), 6tabling $200 hyperturbo (former surperturbo) HU SNGs starting today, Wednesday the 14th. They gonna play best of 1,001 games with a $5k even side-bet.
If you are interested in side-betting, just have a look the the 2+2 thread which is full of offers, mostly with 2-1 odds against Harthor. He’ll have a very tough time against SkaiWalkurrr who is playing hypers exclusively and used to 6table them a lot. Harthor often proved he became one of the best HUSNG players recently. He’s still not that used to hypers at 6tables as SkaiWalkurrr is, so 2-1 odds against him seems pretty decent. It’s still tough to bet against the dutch…

Harthor		SkaiWalkurrr

Here’s a short chat after Harthor gave up right after half of the challenge. Grats to Skai who proved once again how sick he is…

[15.12.11 00:46:13] SkaiWalkurrr: i won
[15.12.11 00:46:29] SkaiWalkurrr: 274-231 he gave up
[15.12.11 00:46:38] Fishenzon:
[15.12.11 00:46:43] Leon Vichman: nice
[15.12.11 00:46:48] SkaiWalkurrr: (happy)
[15.12.11 00:47:29] jackstack99: lol
[15.12.11 00:47:29] jackstack99: skai
[15.12.11 00:47:33] jackstack99: you took 10k from the kid
[15.12.11 00:47:37] jackstack99: how do you feel about urself
[15.12.11 00:47:41] SkaiWalkurrr: i ran too hot
[15.12.11 00:47:52] jackstack99: did you really
[15.12.11 00:47:56] SkaiWalkurrr: obv
[15.12.11 00:47:59] jackstack99: do you feel you have big edge
[15.12.11 00:48:00] jackstack99: on him tho
[15.12.11 00:48:04] jackstack99: or small edge
[15.12.11 00:48:05] jackstack99: or what
[15.12.11 00:48:11] SkaiWalkurrr: smaller than on most regs
[15.12.11 00:48:21] jackstack99: so hes good in ur opinion
[15.12.11 00:48:27] SkaiWalkurrr: well yeah

Stats of the challenge

One month ago I wrote about my goal climbing down the ladder and sticking to the $60-$200 HUSNGs  which felt like micros after playing $300-$1k levels regularly with bum hunting up to $5ks – lol, and even the one and only ever played $10k HU SNG of course… It felt absurd being back where I kinda started like two years ago, but I was pretty sure it would be the only way grinding HeadsUps regularly without getting too much commitment to the game and staying away from bigger swings. I just read what mersenneary wrote about the ego of HU players and that he questions there even exists players who played $200 HU SNGs regularly and go back to $50s instead of quitting grinding poker. As proved, there are some of those, but he’s still damn right about the problem with the ego. It was so fkn hard in the beginning to take those “micros” seriously, not to tilt too much because of dumb plays by the opponents which you probably never see at the nosebleeds, to forget about those insane numbers of winnings per day in the past and to give up reaching Supernova Elite once again (until July I was pretty much on pace, but after my summer break I will finish the year with 650k VPP only).

Well, back to the topic… Reviewing the last 30 days I think I did pretty well, not only talking about stats and winnings, but about my mindset as well. It’s weird, but after playing so many games at mostly $60 and $100 buyins, it feels like “taking a shot” when I play one of those rare $200 HU SNGs. Now, I’m just where I was hoping to be again: A successful $60-$100 HU SNG reg playing A-Game most of the time, taking the sweet buyins as serious as I took those at $1k+ and most important: I don’t have any problems to stick to my “new” buyins or feel the need I would have to climb up the buyins again. Sure, I don’t make that much money as I did in the past, but my hourly is still pretty decent since I two- or even three-table most of the time.

Holdem Manager 2 still can’t handle 4mans and I guess that’s the reason why the stats are that much off from the actual stats shown by Sharkscope. In the beginning I ran hotter than the sun, way above my personal EV (not just allin-EV) and even won almost every flip when chopping with others regs. The downswing I had was kind of big, but after winning every chop I lost almost every chop at 4mans falsifying the stats of Sharkscope a bit. But, no matter how big the up- and downswings were the overall stats are pretty nice and I hope I can reach on overall ROI of 7%+ while two- and three-tabling those turbo games.
As a sidenote: even months after release an official re-presenter of Holdem Manager just advised HUSNG players still to stay with Holdem Manager version 1 instead of buying version 2…
As following my actual Sharkscope stats which should tracked correctly filtered for turbo games and the some-how-what-ever-HM2-tries-to-calculate-overall-stats, both since Nov, 10th:

Sharkscope stats	Holdem Manager 2 stats

Geman HU SNG Pro and Supernova Elite grinder Martin Finger, better known as “0Piggybank“, wins EPT Prague for 720,000€ after making a deal in the HeadsUp. As far as I know, he sold about 50% of his action, still taking home an insane amount of € which he’ll probably invest in his next epic party nights in Germany. How come PokerStars didn’t pick a winner like him as new HeadsUp SNG Team Pro Online member…?!
Read the full story on PokerNews.com.

Congratulations to Martin, a student of mine and another friend of mine who both had decent amount of his action! m b f n!

Here’s the official interview by PokerStars with EPT Prague winner Martin Finger, “0Piggybank” – sry Piggy, but it reminded me a bit of interviews with Lothar Matthäus…

Piggybank wins EPT Prague - by PokerNews.com

lol… obv didn’t realize HU SNG reg Patrick, bandano, Renkers was very deep at EPT Prague as well. He finished at 9th place – busted with QQ by…. Martin, “0Piggybank”, Finger’s AK who is chipleader going into tomorrow’s Day 5. Read more on Pokernews.com.

GL BRO!!!

The hand in which bandano busted got discussed all night long in the HUSNG skype channel by treezer, bandano, Piggybank, skaiwalkurrr and some other fishes. This key hand is pretty interesting regarding the ICM factor what makes the call with QQ and bandano’s bigstack look like “ICM suicide call”, but the history of both as well, knowing Piggybank is a very agressive and active player…

Here’s a short part of the skype discussion – I deleted the part where the fishes talking about plans buying liquor for the night…

[02:24:02] 0Piggybank: Do you want to explain me the Aks hand
[02:24:07] pistons87: YES
[02:24:08] pistons87: plz do
[02:24:09] Skaiwalkurrr: ur play was normal
[02:24:31] 0Piggybank: ft begun and i was openraising and 3bet most of the time on the table
[02:24:37] treezer: yeah ur shove is good
[02:24:48] 0Piggybank: already 5betshove 64s showed or fold to 6bet
[02:24:50] 0Piggybank: so bandano knows i can x bet pretty light
[02:25:16] 0Piggybank: than the cl opend
[02:25:22] 0Piggybank: i sat next to him
[02:25:29] 0Piggybank: and he is a good player
[02:25:36] 0Piggybank: so i dont wanna get a 4bet from him
[02:25:43] treezer: what position?
[02:25:44] 0Piggybank: because he thins i gonna 3bet a tonne
[02:25:56] 0Piggybank: because i dont wanna get it in with Aks
[02:26:04] 0Piggybank: so i flat
[02:26:10] 0Piggybank: bandano squeezed
[02:26:17] 0Piggybank: and if i just 4bet small
[02:26:24] 0Piggybank: maybe he shoves hand like
[02:26:25] 0Piggybank: 99, TT, JJ
[02:26:35] 0Piggybank: its like a suicide icm for me
[02:26:51] treezer: how deep was bandano
[02:26:58] 0Piggybank: i coverd him small
[02:27:06] treezer: in BBs?
[02:27:15] 0Piggybank: i dont wanna go for a 5betbluffcatcher with my AK
[02:27:25] 0Piggybank: its icm suicide
[02:27:36] Skaiwalkurrr: ya
[02:27:43] treezer: obv ur hand is std
[02:27:43] Skaiwalkurrr: noone doubted ur play
[02:27:45] 0Piggybank: 55bb
[02:27:51] treezer: but dont like the 3bet call with queens tho
[02:27:59] 0Piggybank: he snaped
[02:28:12] pistons87: omg
[02:29:13] Skaiwalkurrr: |-(
[02:29:34] pistons87: piggy
[02:29:41] pistons87: u should have told him u have aks
[02:29:53] 0Piggybank: cmon
[02:29:59] 0Piggybank: he should openfolds his qq
[02:30:05] 0Piggybank: against me
[02:30:27] pistons87: ya
[02:30:30] pistons87: and he snapped
[02:30:30] Ankush Mandavia:
[02:30:38] Skaiwalkurrr: yeah when u guys got all in u both shouldve like done something to make ur hand dead
[02:30:39] treezer: yeah its kinda sick
[02:30:40] Skaiwalkurrr: and chop pot
[02:30:52] Skaiwalkurrr: (y)
[02:31:26] Conor Shelly: ept final tables work like cash games
[02:31:29] 0Piggybank: i took my 1time…