Why cant i beat the $1.50 sngs on pokerstars? (graphs included)

Hi sorry the first graph didnt work properly. Here is my pokerstars graph

Hey Sunchyme1,

I hope you don't mind, but I edited your post so your images work and put them in spoilers so that don't make your post look too messy/stretched

As for your play, I would assume that the faster the blinds go up, the higher the variance will be for the gametype, this is why Hypers are known for massive swings. Perhaps you'll have a better edge in the Normal 9Mans although they're quite similar.

Stars probably has more Regs but a lot more fish at the same time. Perhaps you should play less tables, anything over 4 I consider myself to be playing more like a robot than trying to improve, and it's the improvement you should be concentrating on more whilst in the Micros so you can win big later on

I don't play SnG's much myself so that's the only advice I can provide, but hopefully some more will come out from lurking and give you a hand!

While it is true that there are probably more regulars on stars, on the 1.5$ level that should not be a big hurdle.

The main problem with your graphs is that for 9man turbo, 700 tournaments is not a big enough sample size. A winning player can have breakeven +1000 tournament sets and that is not even the worst scenario.

Don't get paranoid over these things, in the end you just waste time that you could be investing on playing, improving your game, taking a nap or whatever.

My advice is that you keep playing as you are doing now, and also keep watching videos and studying. Also try to set a reasonable number of tables, like 8-10, until you feel confident enough to add somemore. At that level I wouldn't play less than 6 tables, even if you are a begginer.

When you reach at least 2000 tournaments on stars post again if you feel the need to.

GL.

Finding the same thing... Used to crush the $1 and $2 games 5 years ago on Full Tilt (break even at $5), but now losing at $1.50 games on Stars. The average poker player has become much more knowledgeable about opening/calling ranges and table position in my opinion. The tables used to be full of very loose and/or passive players, now they have a lot more tight players. I'm finding the adjustments difficult, but I keep working on my game and getting help from the community here and fully expect to see some winnings soon.

Good Luck to you.

thanks for the replies guys.

as for the grpahs, is the orange line what my profit should be? And the green is showing how lucky/unlucky ive been? if so, does this mean i am currently on a downswing?

i get that with faster blinds, variance should be higher, but i cant believe the difference between my 2 graphs.

Originally posted by sunchyme1
as for the grpahs, is the orange line what my profit should be? And the green is showing how lucky/unlucky ive been? if so, does this mean i am currently on a downswing?

Roughly... yes. I'm not 100% on how PokerTracker calculates the line, but suspect it is similar to how HoldEm Manager calculates it's Luck-Adjusted Winnings line.

Be aware that it only looks at hands where you are all-in before the river and your opponents hole-cards are known. So if you think of how many hands out of each tourney those conditions are met versus all the other hands you've played, you will see that the line only gives a general indication of how you are fairing when those specific conditions are met... So my opinion is that it is something to be aware of... There are others who feel very strongly about its importance or meaninglessness... I'm middle of the road.

Some even prefer to think of it as the Feel-good line based on the comments I've read - i.e. "you're under the line? no worries that just means you are running bad and things will turn around!" or "you're over the line? good for you, you've been playing well and getting lucky too!"

PT4 calculates ICM-adjusted winnings: for every pre-river all-in, it calculates the difference between the tourney equity in $ (according to the ICM) you've actually gained or dropped and the tourney equity you'd gain or lose on average if if you 'ran it infinitely many times', and adds that difference to the total tourney prize to get the adjusted winnings.

For example: assume that there are three players left with equal stacks in a 6-man $109 SnG, the prize structure is 65%/35%, and your equity is 55% at the point where you and the other blind go all-in (the button has folded). To simplify, assume that you win the entire pot 55% of the time and bust out in third the other 45% of the time.

Then before this hand your net tourney equity is $200 - $109 = $91 (1/3 of the prize pool, as stacks are equal, minus the BI; trackers ignore the influence of posting blinds and don't run future game simulation (FGS) as it would be too slow to compute). When you go AI, your average net tourney equity becomes 45% * $0 + 55% * (2/3 * $390 + 1/3 * 210) - $109 = 55% * $330 - $109 = $72.5, because if you win this AI, you'll have a 2:1 chip lead in the HU and be supposed to win it in 2/3 of cases (ignoring skill).

So, even though you were a slight favourite, you've dropped $18.5 ICM-adjusted, no matter what the outcome of the hand was.

Assuming that you won the hand and then the entire SnG without any further (nor prior) pre-river AIs (stack your opponent on the river in its last hand), you'll have won $281 net, but $281 - $18.5 = $262.5 net adjusted.

ICM-adjusted winnings are a better (faster-convergent) and unbiased (up to the imperfection of the ICM) measure of skill because they exclude the pure RNG luck factor but keep everything that's strategy-related. The acceleration of convergence depends on the tourney type, e.g. in turbos you need a twice smaller sample (number of games) to confirm or reject a winrate hypothesis (e.g. that you're a longterm post-cashback winner) basing on the ICM EV than on actual winnings; for hypers, this acceleration factor may be 3-4.

But beware of trackers' tourney detection mistakes. E.g. I chronically 'run below EV' in iPoker jackpot SnGs just because their prize structures are detected incorrectly and the ICM EV is miscalculated, so I have to switch the orange line off altogether. The EV line should be correct for Stars turbos (and, I hope, all Stars SnGs), but every time you pick up a new SnG type, check if PT4 detects its prize structure correctly (by right-clicking on a tourney where you got HU in a report and choosing to edit its prize structure manually).