I'm not a playa, I just grind a lot.

Having dinner in between sessions, so thought I'd do an update.

Been grinding hard for the last 3 weeks. 16 tabling 9man super turbos during the day as well as playing mid and the occasional high stakes HU super turbos at night. Results have been quite good.

Graph for 9man super turbo SNGs for the last 3 weeks

Graph for HU super turbo SNGs for the last 3 weeks

For those that don't know what super turbos are, I'll explain. They are like a regular tournament/sit n go, with one exception. Like the name suggests, the structure/speed of the tournament is VERY fast, you can even say it's SUPER FAST (attempt at joke = [x] fail). Anyways, I've been specializing at the 9man super turbo sit n gos (SNGs), for the last year and a bit. So how it works is, there are 9 players, you start with 300 starting chips, and the blinds start at 15/30 and go up every 3 minutes. The payout structure is the exact same as a standard SNG, where 1st gets 50% of the prizepool, 2nd gets 30%, and 3rd gets 20%. 

Unlike a regular sit n go, where you would normally start with a very deep stack in relation to the blinds, in super turbos, your starting stack is 10 times the big blind. Because of this, there isn't much room for play post-flop, so a preflop "Push-Fold" style of play seems most optimal for super turbos. "Push-Fold" basically means that you're either pushing all in or folding before the flop. No raising and seeing a flop, and definitely NO LIMPING in preflop to see a cheap flop. An exception to this is if u have a hand like KK or AA and you're in early position. Since the stacks are so shallow, there tends to be a raise/shove before the flop almost every hand, so limping in early position to allow someone else to shove for you is a tactic that some players use to get more action for their big hands, as opposed to the times that they shove with AA and everyone folds and they only pick up the blinds. Having said that...I NEVER do it. I just push all in or fold. When I'm playing 16 tables at once, I try and make life as easy as possible for myself, and by only pushing or folding preflop, decisions and multitabling becomes that much easier. This is where the term "Pushbot" comes from...Cuz all I do is PUSH PUSH PUSH no matter what. =)

The thing about super turbos is that they are very swingy, and there is a lot of variance. A lot of people try to get into super turbos, but cannot mentally deal with the swings/bad beats involved. Anytime you get your money in before the flop in a dominating position and lose is very frustrating, let alone this happening twice, three, four and even five times in a row. The thing about super turbos, is that because of their fast structure, the majority of the time, the stacks get in before the flop, as opposed to regular sit n gos and tournaments where there is a lot of play postflop, and the stacks get in on the flop, turn and river, where for good players, the edge/equity is generally a lot bigger. as a result of the majority of play happening preflop, there will seemingly be a lot more "bad beats".  For example, taking a coinflip AQ vs JJ, hitting an ace, and then the guy rivering his jack. Or getting the money in preflop with AA against 99, and the guy hitting a 9. Believe me, when I first started, it was REALLY FRUSTRATING. In the first week or two that I started playing these last March, I didn't even think it was poker, I thought it was the biggest crapshoot in the world. But as you can see by my graphs, there is a significant longterm edge that good players can both have and exploit in these.

Graph for 9man super turbo SNGs since March '09

Other than knowing proper hand ranges (Push-Fold & calling ranges), to me, super turbos come down to one thing...VOLUME, which I will talk about in my next post. 

Until next time...

- Gustav "NotTheRealGus" Hansen