SnG Poker full time??
Hello,
I was wonder if anyone play Sit n' Go tournments for a living?
In other words...plays poker for the majourity of your income and the majourity of the poker you play is SnG tournments.
I would also like to hear any thoughts on this avenue as well. Good, Bad or not even feasiable? And also what kinda payout structure would most benfit a SnG player?
In fact any comments at all would be welcome
Thanks
"The only certainty is that nothing is certain."
— Pliny The Elder, Historia Naturalis, bk. 2, ch. 7.
"I slept and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke and found that life was duty."
- Ellen Sturgis Hooper
I was wonder if anyone play Sit n' Go tournments for a living?
In other words...plays poker for the majourity of your income and the majourity of the poker you play is SnG tournments.
I would also like to hear any thoughts on this avenue as well. Good, Bad or not even feasiable? And also what kinda payout structure would most benfit a SnG player?
In fact any comments at all would be welcome
Thanks
"The only certainty is that nothing is certain."
— Pliny The Elder, Historia Naturalis, bk. 2, ch. 7.
"I slept and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke and found that life was duty."
- Ellen Sturgis Hooper
Comments
Im not the best to answer this question for you but as a 25 yr old kid with no other income outside of poker I can tell you with assured confidence that is very possible to make a living off of SitnGo poker. For 5 years now I have been improving all aspects of my game through practice with online poker. The past year to year and a half has changed my life. Poker is everywhere. It used to be hard to kill the online games as back in the old days you had to be a pretty hardcore player to take your game out of the casino, download some risky software, and pray you dont get screwed with your creditcard deposit into this online poker site where other teams of colluders are awaiting your money.
Nowadays I have 10 different sets of software, 7 sites with growing bankrolls, and there are tournaments and ring games fitting for anyones preferred buyin.
To get closer to helping you now, when it comes to playing sitngos, there are two sites in my opinion you need to play. partypoker.com and ultimatebet.com
These two are all you will need to either improve your game, or make thousands of dollars a month simply playing SnGs.
partypoker is the site used simply for profit. It has the most players and in turn hosts some of the worst competition to be found anywhere in poker.
ultimatebet.com is where I have made all my money. This could be why I am so bias as to UB. It does have the absolute fastest deal online, and very smooth software much like pokerstars. Fast deal, simply meaning you can get in more hands at UB per hour than any other site on the net. No arguments can be made here.
For this reason, along with the very friendly blind structure I think it is very fair to say that UB, unlike partypoker allows for the cream to rise to the top on a more consistent basis. Partypoker SnGs to me are all luck once you get down to the final 4 or so and have to compete with the blinds being so big.
For practice UB has everything you need. They now start their 1 table SnGs at a buyin of 1 dollar. When it comes to SnGs you now get a few added choices at UB. Instead of offering just the 10 man full table SnGs, ultimate bet (and a few other sites) offer 6 handed SnGs. These are great for practicing finishing off the table.
Many players do well for awhile in the 10 handed SnGs but struggle to finish strongly when it gets shorthanded and the money is on the line. Play the 6 handed tourneies to work on your short game, it will help your full table game immensely.
This brings me to my favourite game.
Heads up SnGs at ultimatebet.com
You can not find a bigger jump in money than the jump from 2nd to first.
Finishing off a tournament and coming in first place not only gives you a great feeling of accomplishment, it also often gets you a nice chuck of change.
Practicing heads up poker is a must if you play tournaments and/or SnGs.
What good is it to get down to the final 2 and consistently settle for 2nd place money.
UB has heads up SnGs starting as low as a 5 dollar buyin, i would suggest getting good at these. At this moment in time I am struggling to think of something that could be more important than the way in which you play a player heads up in poker.
I think after some good hard practice at the heads ups and short handed sitngo's you will find yourself beating the full SnGs on a regular basis.
As far as finances go, it really depends on your bankroll as to what you are willing to risk. To give a clue though I would say i focus mostly on 30+3 and 50+5 when it comes to sitngo. I will play the odd 20 bucker and even jump in the odd 100+9. Unfortunately since i play too much I no longer keep individual stats I simply , I am not sure of how many I play a day or a week, and I am not sure of my in the money finish percentages.
All I know for sure is that over the past 6 months, (25 weeks worth, since all my notes and poker financial records are now done on a weekly basis right before I go to bed each Sunday night ) 20 of these weeks i have made a profit somewhere in the range of 500-1000 bucks. In the 5 missing weeks, I had only 2 weeks where I ended up loser, and had one monster week where i was up 2900 bucks.
So believe you me, it is very possible to earn a living off of SnG poker.
Now is the time however, the fish will eventually die off, so get practicing fast!
Hope this helps somewhat.
Kevin
PS. KrazyKanuck has been mentioned around this forum lately. He is a great example of a player who survives off of SnG poker. He plays exclusively SnG and multitable tournament poker, never risking his money in ring games. I am quite happy with my numbers as of late, but im still nowhere near KK's postal code when it comes to results.
PPS. i dont recommend pokerstars not because I dont like the software, but simply because I feel the competition at this site is far superior to the two ive talked about, and for this reason I find it to be a bad site to play SnGs.
However, some insist that you make no money playing SNG which is false. All you have to do is look at the leaderboard on Sharkscope and you will see that many players make a living off Sng and do very well.
You will make money if you make it in the money (ITM) no lower than 30% of the time but you must hit the higher winnings more often. If you win 40% of the time than you can affort to finish third more often. What is really important is bankroll... if you do not have a bankroll or you have one and can't stick to the level of game that reflects you're bankroll, forget about playing... you will not win...
I am working my way up and this is what I'm doing... this is working out for me...
1. I started with $140 and only played $5 + $0.5 Sng.
2. I play cash games on the side, nerver risk more than $6.00 at the table and change tables once I reach about $10 or down $3. I only go to cash games when I'm getting bad beats at the Sng and decide to call it a day.
3. Once I reached a profit of 60$ (a week of playing part time) I would keep playing the $5 game until I reached $71 or above. I would use this extra $11 to move up a level... If I won, I would keep going at that level... if I lost, I would repeat my rule of reaching $71 before I went back to the $10 game.
If you cannot do this successfully, you will not make any money at Sng since the higher levels (where the money for a living is) are much harder to beat. When you move up levels, some of you're moves will not work and you will have to adapt and go on forums and find out what is going wrong. You find that you're strengh at lower limits will be a leak at the next level and a huge leak two levels up... Also, very important to keep in mind... don't get coached by a player that plays high limits and then go play lower limits... I truely beleive that strong high limit players will have a hard time beating the lower limits unless they know how to adapt. It's not the same game.
I'm not at the point where I'm making a living at Sng... I still have my day job... however, if you really want to play and make money... start low and move up... If you decide to play higher limits when you're bakroll dicates a lower one is a huge mistake.... if you really feel you are ready to move up, then add money to you're account to justify the bigger game.... if you go down and can't beat the level, then you have to go back to the lower limit... don't try to win you're money back at the higher limit... again, if you insist on staying... add money again... DON'T PLAY A $10 WITH $140 IN YOU'RE ACCOUNT!!! .... otherwise if you get a bad run and lose you're bankroll, you will get set back in you're game (time lost) and will lose confidence....
gg
that being said, i do not play enough to consider it as a job (even though it is currently my sole income). however, i feel it is definitely possible to make a decent living off of SNGs primarily. like already mentioned above, you need to be ITM consistently between 30%-40% of the time on average to easily be making a profit. however, every 1st place finish can lead to a lowering of that percentage and still equal a good profit. considering most SNGs are 9-person with top three ITM, it's not difficult to see that one has a 33% chance of making the money before the game even starts. hence, simply by the numbers alone, it follows that SNGs can be very profitable.
just to add a little more of my personal opinion, i feel that SNGs just have a 'bad' rap in the general poker public because of two reasons:
1) people equate STTs to final tables in MTTs (minus the larger payouts) - this is problematic because it ignores a couple important facts. one being that everyone on an MTT final table is already ITM (almost always anyway). and two being the amount of chips in play varies dramatically. (i can even add a three here being the mentality of the players varies greatly from an STT to a final table MTT). therefore, when people play a SNG like a final table they'll most likely lose more often and give up playing SNGs.
2) people (for the most part) enjoy instant gratification. i feel that SNGs offer the least amount of gratification (on a 'bang for your buck' analogy). MTTs obviously offer the most (if you win or even place fairly high), and cash games offer more because you are literally playing with cash and every hand you play you are able to win cash literally. SNGs, therefore, offer at most about 5 buy-ins for a win (and usually 3 or 2). this is not 'enough' gratification for 'most' people. therefore, people feel that SNGs are not worth the time.
The grind is there for sure but with a solid system, and maximizing the amount of tables you can play, the payouts can be great. Then again you can go a full day, play 150+ games and come out completely even or down. A lot of it is your mentality...the variance can get a little wack with higher stakes games so sticking to like $6-$16 games...and like playing 10-15 tables can be rewarding. The days you end up losing you really cant think much of it and just come out and play the exact same way the next day.
I would really perfect your skills at sng's on a couple tables at a time before really playing multi-tables. But hell yeah its possible to make a living!
Hmm..I can't imagine he's making more than $20/h 15 tabling $16 sngs -- what's his ROI?
criss is one of the most well known and respected folks on 2+2 in regards to SnG's.
Over 20,000 sng's with a profit of $38,000+ and an ROI of 11% according to sharkscope.
He's also rated number 1 on Sharkscope in Holdem 9-10 seated $6-$15 Total Profit 2008 leaderboard
Ranked number 1 in Holdem 9-10 seated Turbo $6-$15 Total Profit 2008 leaderboard
And ranked 8 in any game $6-$15 total profit 2008 leaderboard.
So yeah I'd say he knows a little something about SnG's
However, the variance and beats can be soul crushing especially at the 225s+ compared to cash games and the vast majority of players leave the SNG world within a year.
Ryan