The Bankroll Building Project (Guide to Micro-Limit SNGs)
by Chris "Fox" Wallace

Sit and Go Success!
posted by fox on October 8, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
I found a little time to play today, and discovered that $5 sit and go tournaments might be a great way to build a bankroll at this level. I definitely caught some cards, but the play was weak and multi-tabling will work well for the type of play that I'm seeing in these things. I think finding the right type of weak play, rather than the weakest opponents, is very important for the lowest levels.

At these micro-levels I am looking to play a ton of tables at a high win rate for my present bankroll. Since I know that I have skill to beat any of these games, I just need to find the place where I am the most comfortable playing a bunch of tables. I think $5 sit and go tournaments on Full Tilt appear very beatable and they can be beaten with a very simple strategy that doesn't cost much in terms of brain power or time commitment. We could have a winner for this stage of the bankroll, though no-limit cash games have a lot of potential as well.

Current Stats (Graphs Below)

NLHE Cash Games +$21.50 over 642 hands

PLO8 Cash games -$8.50 over 94 hands

Sit and Go Tournaments +$50.70 over 14 SNG's (a few were multi-table)

Rakeback +$5.11

Total Income +$ 68.81

I also posted a video of one of the $5 SNG's as seen through a hand replayer while I narrate on pokerfox.net. I will have some no-limit cash games at the micro-levels up on the site within a day or two.

Once I have a larger sample I'll be posting various statistics from PokerTracker and some guides to beating the games and doing exactly what I'm doing to build up a reasonable bankroll.

Fox's Blog
posted by fox on October 7, 2007 @ 2:23 am
Down about $12 in the last two days from playing some multi-table sit and go's and some Omaha that didn't go well. In nickel-dime Omaha games I think I have learned that nut-farming is probably the only way to go unless you are playing one table and really paying attention. The skill level is high enough in the PLO8 games that you aren't going to win a big pot unless your opponent has a shot at drawing out on you.

Most of the mistakes in the Omaha games are being made preflop, and in Omaha you can play well after the flop and badly preflop and really only give up a very small advantage to players who play well on all streets. In fact it makes for a very frustrating opponent when someone is playing 50% of their hands, bluffing at a sign of weakness, pushing draws, and folding only when you put a good chunk of chips in the pot.

In Hold'em an opponent like that would be in big trouble, because seeing the flop isn't going to help him often enough, and he's going to be so far behind preflop when I'm involved in a raised pot, that he won't catch up very often. In Omaha the flop changes the hand so much that loose play preflop just isn't punished very much. The best strategy is just to play hands that can make the nuts and punish those opponents when they make the second nuts because of their weak hand selection. In these games the following hands go up in value.

Suited aces - Make the nut flush (and play it right) and you can win a pretty big pot, especially if there are low draws out on the flop and turn and you can get people to chase them for pot sized bets on the flop and turn. Other suited hands go way down in value because you are too likely to be facing the nut flush or opponents who will fold without a good flush of their own.

A2 - limping in with this hand can lure in the hands that go down in value in these games, notably the A3 and 23 hands that you can really beat up on. When I'm playing $100-$200 Omaha with great players a 23 isn't so bad because I have a chance to stea, every pot is 2 or 3 handed, and aggression is as important as cards. In the lower limit games, aggression doesn't mean as much, and the nuts means a lot more because it may actually be paid off.

All high hands (like AKJT) that can make the nuts easily are also nice, because you may make a monster that someone just doesn't believe and really punish them. The downside to that is that straights suck in Omaha. A flush or a full house will appear often, and someone always has a draw to a bigger straight, so I often wait until the turn to get really frisky with betting my straight. Giving people two cards to draw out on you after you put a bunch of chips in the pot can be frustrating.

Low card hands that do not contain A2 are absolute junk in these games, as are any hands that might make the second nuts or be quartered.

The multi-table sit and go tourneys I played were very weak in terms of competition, but the blind structures are pretty fast, so I can see very high variance in these games. The 18 person sng's look the best to me, because you get the mtt structure (instead of the fast 1 table structure) but still get a big percentage of the filed paid. That means you will have lower variance than the bigger ones, and you may also see more good situations to exploit because of the bubble coming so soon and lots of opportunities to be aggressive.

I have been very lazy the last couple of days, and that trend looks to continue tomorrow. On Monday I'll be playing a bunch of hands and trying to get some better statistics so that I can get a feel for how I am actually doing and what my win rates might be.

Plodding along
posted by fox on October 4, 2007 @ 5:50 am
I'm not playing nearly as many hands as I would if I were a serious player trying to build a bankroll. I could easily get in 1,000 hands a day playing 4 to 6 tables, but I'm only a little over 500 hands in my third day of the project. The sit and go's aren't counted in that, but it's still a very weak number. Graphs below