March SNG Stats

March has been easily my most solid month yet. Here's the details:

ITM: 40.00%
ROI: 23.48%
SNGs Played: 60
Profit: $155.00
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1st Place: 9
2nd Place: 8
3rd Place: 7

Now for a little analysis... I can't help noticing and pointing out that although ROI is ultimately the number that matters, and that mine has been all over the place in the past months, on the other hand, my ITM numbers have seen an increase for each of the past 4 months. And with a sample size of about 200 tournaments in the last 4 months, I'd say that something is definitely working and starting to "click" for me.

As well, ROI is ultimately the number that defines profit, but I think that ITM is probably far and away more important (at least for me). My reasoning is this: A good portion of the time when you are fortunate to make it down to the top three, skill often takes a backseat to luck, and the cards do their thing to determine who gets what place... and the difference between a few 1st place finishes and a few 3rd place finishes can swing a healthy positive ROI down to nothing (or even negative). If you're consistently putting up way more 3rd place finishes than 1sts and 2nds, then yeah, you need to work on your three-handed and heads-up play. I think I play well enough when I'm ITM, and my 9-8-7 distribution this month confirms that. But the point remains: luck will do its thing when you're ITM... so the key is getting in the position for luck to do its thing more often, by increasing ITM%.

As I've talked about before, I've been working towards a tight-aggressive style, and March seems to have confirmed that good results can come from that playing style. One of the things which has become very apparent to me, is the general lack of bad beats... they still happen of course, but perhaps not with the frequency or severity that my previous playing styles have generated.

Another recurring theme which I find myself facing over and over are the people who think suited cards are a gold mine, and who will chase (or even jam the pot) on a flush draw. I tend to get a little irritated by these folks, and yeah, a few times I've been guilty of putting on the "table coach" hat and throwing out some odds with an insult or two, but lately I've seen so many of these flush people, that I'm becoming quite used to their presence, and really, once you can identify a flush lover, they're easy to play.

Lastly, I've been trying to identify my biggest leak in March, and I'm pretty confident that it's my sometime tendency to get married to a nice hand pre-flop. On a few occasions I made my standard raise with hands like AQs or AKs or 99, and just couldn't get away from them even when the flop missed me. I'd say in general, I tend to always fire out something like a half-pot bet against one opponent when I was the raiser pre-flop, and I'm thinking that at best this is about a zero EV move for me. Mostly because when the opponent calls on the flop, I get sucked into betting on the turn and continuing the bluff, which is a really negative EV move. I mean, he called on the flop... it's check-fold territory from here. Other than these situations though, I think my play has been rather good lately... with me rarely leaving a table disappointed in my play.

In general, I've been a lot more disciplined in March, treating every single SNG seriously, and working to maximize every possible chance of surviving to make the money. A little luck can obviously swing things one way or the other, but I'm shooting for 42% ITM (and again at least 50 SNGs) in April.