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Hey Guys and Girls,

Summer is here and school is over! Does anybody plan to play more now? If you are, post a hand you have had difficulty with here and I would be happy to give my comments. I know we all want to make money for the summer, hopefully I can help.

Hi Jax!
I fed up with my job, so I'm gonna try my luck as a full time stt grinder during summer. I play mostly fifty50's but probably gonna mix it up with some turbo 9 man sng's. My first goal is to play at least 50 games a day on 8 tables, and I will see how I'm doing. I never played more than 4 tables coz I only have a laptop so I have to get my hands on a second screen first.
My biggest problem in stt's is 3betting in the middle stages of a tourney. I don't know when, and what to 3bet with. AA KK is obvious, but let's say the BB is 50, stack size is around 1200 and someone raises preflop to 150. I have AK, I 3bet to 350 and I get called. I miss the flop, what do I do? Do I call a cbet? Or should I cbet if it's checked to me? If I do so, there would be half of my stack in the pot with Ace high. So most of the time I give up very easily with my monsters if I miss the flop.

Hi Jax!
I fed up with my job, so I'm gonna try my luck as a full time stt grinder during summer. I play mostly fifty50's but probably gonna mix it up with some turbo 9 man sng's. My first goal is to play at least 50 games a day on 8 tables, and I will see how I'm doing. I never played more than 4 tables coz I only have a laptop so I have to get my hands on a second screen first.
My biggest problem in stt's is 3betting in the middle stages of a tourney. I don't know when, and what to 3bet with. AA KK is obvious, but let's say the BB is 50, stack size is around 1200 and someone raises preflop to 150. I have AK, I 3bet to 350 and I get called. I miss the flop, what do I do? Do I call a cbet? Or should I cbet if it's checked to me? If I do so, there would be half of my stack in the pot with Ace high. So most of the time I give up very easily with my monsters if I miss the flop.

Hey Atisz,

Gl with the quest of 50 games a day. It twill take dedication, but very doable. Just make sure to give yourself breaks, not play longer than 2-2.5hrs consecutive.

You pose a good question. One that many of my clients have difficulty. "How to play AK?".

Short answer is you would you should push here. The real value of AK in the higher blind levels come from its fold equity. Meaning you feel very comfortable pushing, and if you called you are usually in good shape. So you can win in two possible ways, he folds pre, or winning on showdown. THis does not mean to open-shove, but when there is a fair amount of money (15-20% of your stack size) in the pot from a lot of limpers or another raiser, taking down the pot preflop is not a bad option. Also takes away the tough decisions when you miss.

As played, when making the decision to CBet, you should consider more factors than what you wrote. Things like your table image,the type of opponent, position, stack size all should be considered when deciding to CBet ( I know it sounds like a lot of factors, but trust me it becomes very instinctive).

But until you are comfortable in quantifying these variables, you should stick to one variable when deciding to Cbet, that is flop texture. On a dry flop you should Cbet more, on a wet flop Cbet less. Remember it is okay to raise preflop, then check/fold. But also consider that the better players tend to be more aggressive. So the key is to understand the times when aggression might result in more folds, like on dry flops, if your image is tight, if your opponent is tight, you're in position etc...

Let me know how it goes.

Best of luck to Fricirics, gotta love an STT grinder representing at the WSOP!

Switching from 4 tables to 8 wasn't going so well. Sometimes I was staring at one table, forgot to look at the other screen and I timed out a few times, and also folded too much. So I stick to 6 tables for a while. I finished the week with 63% itm, and 25 buy in profit. I'm way behind with the volume though.

Great job! Dont worry about the volume for now, more important you feel comfortable with your game. More important to get back to winning. If you want to post HH I would be happy to comment, or any other questions you might have. GL.

Hello Jax,

I have an another simple question. At 6-Max, how much buy-in downswing is normal and in long run how much ROI is good and and how much is bad?
I'm playing sit and gos, but for 2-3 weeks I had no winnings at the end of the days, so I'm a little bit uncertain in my play.

Hello Jax,

I have an another simple question. At 6-Max, how much buy-in downswing is normal and in long run how much ROI is good and and how much is bad?
I'm playing sit and gos, but for 2-3 weeks I had no winnings at the end of the days, so I'm a little bit uncertain in my play.

That is a good question, and unfortunately there is no clear cut answer. I believe from my experience if you drop more than 50-60 bi's then there is some type of fundamental leak in your game.

I think that you can hit a bad variance or unlucky streak that will cause you to lose 40-50 bi. But unlucky can lead to bad play real quick. When we hit a bad streak, we tend to overcompensate for the losses by changing our game around. Most of the times we are not aware our game has changed, but we overcompensate by sometimes tightening or loosening our game too much. So when the bad variance is exhausted we are left with a new playing style that is not our usual winning style, and this will turn a normal 40-50 bi downswing into 100-120.

An example is when I started by supernova elite quest in Jnauary of 2010. I was hit with a 120bi downswing to start the year. Up until then I have never suffered more than a 50bi downswing over 15k games. During that whole time I thgouht myself the unluckiest player around. It wasnt until I had a friend look over my HH that I realized I was overcompensating for my LAG opponents by playing even looser than they were.

During the downswing I just thought there must be something I can do to change things. You cant do this, you will run unlucky in poker, accept that. And just be like water and let it run its course, dont change your winning style to try and overcome bad variance, this will only lead to more losses.

Hello Jax,

I want to write about my experiences at $ 7 6-MAX normal sng on pokerstars. Please advise generally tactics to win more money :)

So: most of the players are very very tight at this limit. It's a surprise to me that the preflop 3-bet is not workig, all players folded their hand almost all the time. Should I keep the raise the standard 3-bet or change it for miniraise? I think it would be a weak move because the another player's worst hand can easily pick up with a good flop.

Another interesting thing is that nearly all players do slowplay at the beginning and in the middle of the game. Sometimes curious things occur: he had the nut flush on flop and on the river he checks, at 3rd times... Maybe he thought that I will bluff at last on the river. This things results that I have been a very tight player too. What would be the right way against these players? Or should I rely on the push or fold phase only?

Thx for the answer and GL :)

Hello Jax,

I want to write about my experiences at $ 7 6-MAX normal sng on pokerstars. Please advise generally tactics to win more money :)

So: most of the players are very very tight at this limit. It's a surprise to me that the preflop 3-bet is not workig, all players folded their hand almost all the time. Should I keep the raise the standard 3-bet or change it for miniraise? I think it would be a weak move because the another player's worst hand can easily pick up with a good flop.

Another interesting thing is that nearly all players do slowplay at the beginning and in the middle of the game. Sometimes curious things occur: he had the nut flush on flop and on the river he checks, at 3rd times... Maybe he thought that I will bluff at last on the river. This things results that I have been a very tight player too. What would be the right way against these players? Or should I rely on the push or fold phase only?

Thx for the answer and GL :)

I understand your frustration when the opponents do not do what you want them to do. Each sit-n-go will have its own "dynamic" or flow, and each player has their own "dynamic". The reason this is important to consider is you do not want to adjust your playing style because it was not effective against a certain opponent, or even against multiple opponents across multiple games.

Play your solid playing style, and know that it will be effective (if you are playing proeprly) over the course of many games, not just a few. That would be like folding pocket aces because you lost in three all-ins in a row. I hope you understand what i mean. As far as the guy check-raising the nut flush on the river, again that is something that isnt common, and you should not be concerned that being c/r'ed is common.

What do you think about this hand? Probably I played it bad. I didn't expect the 3rd guy to call my 5bet. But it happened, and I hit the nuts on the flop. I decided to trap him a little, that's why I checked. I was certain I was going to take down the pot, but ended up losing it. So who played it worse? Me or him calling preflop, then again on the turn with a flush draw? Would you have cbet the flop?

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