Monday night I finally cashed in Flatline, playing expertly and taking down third place for a nice little cash that basically wiped out my losses for the last month.
On the same evening I (for some foolish reason) entered the Full Tilt Ferguson, a one dollar tournament that starts every night at 1030pm.
Actually, I'd say I was a fool to enter for two reasons - one, it starts late and typically you can end up playing till 2 or 3 in the morning if you go deep. Two, it was Razz night.
Razz, yikes.
It's not a difficult poker game to play, and I actually have a pretty good grasp on the fundamentals. But razz, perhaps more than any other poker game, illustrates with crystal clarity, the beast that is variance.
You can make every correct decision possible, but when the cards come and you "brick" out, there is very little you can do but suffer.
Razz is a sadists game, in that you can feel so clearly, exquisite pain and anguish as each face card hits. Example; you start with A2 in the hole and a four door card, then you catch a 6 on fourth street, and then a jack, a queen, another jack and finally you pair your ace on the river to finish with a J, 6, 4, 2, A, while the 10,8,6,5,3 gets under you and scoops the chips.
Nasty, nasty game.
Monday night I beat out 464 other players to take down second place and $117.
Sweet, sweet, razz.
In one MTT I wiped out my losses of the last two months.
I played well, but I also got lucky in that my low cards came and I didn't brick out too often. At one point early in the tournament I was down to less than 4 big bets, but I hung in there and just tried to make good decisions, including committing to the hand very early by raising and reraising to get all my chips in quickly.
I think the MTT is the way to go for me - the $1 tourneys seem to really be a good low stress way to occasionally get lucky and basically increase my bankroll substantially in one shot - potentially even doubling it or more if I get very lucky. The Ferguson, when it's NLHE, typically has a first place prize of 1K or more. Who knows, some day.
I'm a bit soured on SNG's, they're very hard to beat consistently. I think part of this is that I'm more experienced with and temperamentally more suited to the marathon of the MTT rather than the sprint of a Sit-n-Go.
The other part is, there are a LOT of people making their living or at least supplimenting their income with SNG's these days by using poker tracking software and elaborate math based formulas. This is so they can multi-table (upwards of 20 tables or more) and really make money based on a very formulaic approach. For a lot of people this works very well, and is hard for someone like me who is more player oriented and really enjoys the single table feel of live poker.
I have neither the aptitude nor the inclination to involve myself in a math-centric and software assisted approach to online poker. And I honestly don't have the ADD to endure a 4 table blitz of images, let alone 20 or more.
I find that if I have a nice starting stack (as in the Full Tilt daily dollar) and a nice gradual blind structure, I can hang with most players. These two factors are absent from most SNG's.
A third factor that just occurred to me, is the rake in SNG's. It's massive, especially in the lower limits. The Ferguson has no rake and the daily dollar has a guaranteed prize pool that effectively negates the rake.
So yes, I feel better, about myself and about the game. There is still money to be made, and I think by sticking to the MTT's, I'll have the best chance of really enjoying the game (even when I run bad) and actually showing a profit.
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