SNG Update

Posting on back-to-back days, what the heck is going on here?? Don't worry, it won't become a habit, I promise...

I just wanted to write a quick post about the progress I'm making on the SNG challenge that Poker Stars is running. The basic idea is that you play in SNG's of a certain buy-in, and for every cash that you make, you get a certain number of points. For example, in a 9-person SNG, 1st place is worth 45 points, 2nd is worth 27, and 3rd is worth 18. During the course of a week (Sunday morning to Saturday at midnight), your points are tracked, both in 20 game segments and 100 game segments. For any given 20 game segment, your points are totalled and placed on the low-orbit leaderboard, and each 100 game segment is totalled on a high-orbit leaderboard. At the end of the week, prizes are awarded to high and low orbit leaders for the various buy-in levels. You can read more here, if you're interested.

So, I'm playing my SNG's in the Venus division, which covers buy-ins from $5.00 to $9.99. The top 40 places pay for both low and high orbit totals, and while there's no way that I'll play enough this week to qualify for the high orbit, I'd like to get in enough play to try for the low orbit this week, and perhaps try for the high orbit next week.

Thus far, I've played in seven SNG's, and have two 1st place finishes, two 2nd place finishes, a 3rd place, and a 5th and a 6th. This is a total of 162 points, which means that if (and it's a big if, I know...) I can keep up this pace, I'd finish with 462 points; enough to cash for a few bucks. As is usual in poker, variance will always play a part - a couple of extra 1st place finishes would be enough to get that pace to the top five or so for a good payout, while a couple fewer point-scoring rounds would be enough to knock a person out of contention. Still, an overlay is an overlay, so I'm going to try to sneak in another thirteen of these before tomorrow at midnight. Besides, even if I can't quite maintain this pace, I'm making a decent return on this small sample size, and am willing to see where my true EV will be after a larger number of games.

Thanks for reading - I'll let you know how the quest to hit twenty played goes, and report my point total, even if it's not up to expectations/hopes. Take care!