January SNG Quest: The first half

SNGs played: 34

W/L: +324.70

In the money %: 52.9%

Return on investment: 43.3%

1st place finishes: 6
2nd place finishes: 7
3rd place finishes: 5
Bubble finishes: 4

# of times I mega-tilted at a bubble finish: 2

# of times a 2nd place could have potentially been a 1st place had Time Warner Cable’s abominable internet service not crapped out during heads-up play: 3

It’s amazing what happens when I don’t drain my bankroll by playing tournaments and satellites. It actually grows. Of course I have to look at these results sort of like how I look at the first week of a diet– you might lose 5 pounds like that, but most of it is water. It’s certainly not all smooth sailing from here and common sense tells me that sustaining a ROI like that in SNG play is well… unreasonable. I would have been happy with 20% and I have to keep reminding myself of that as I prepare for variance to kick in.

I played 32 of these 34 SNGs at the $22 buy-in level. That’s squarely in my comfort zone, especially when playing 2-3 at once. While I’m sufficiently rolled for the $33 games at this point, I’d rather mix them in slowly than risk tilting myself by jumping up too fast and experiencing the inevitable downswing at a higher buy-in level. So let’s see how I finish out January.

I’m also still loving those 90-player double stack SNGs on Full Tilt. Took 3rd in an $11 one last night for $99. I’ve found that getting the dead money and getting it early is they key to these. Seriously. It won’t be around for long, and there are plenty of people willing to stack off with top pair-crap kicker, middle pair crap kicker, bottom pair, a gutshot, no pair no draw… I’ve seen it all. Including open-pushes for 3000 on the first deal with K9 offsuit (he got called by pocket kings and made a runner runner flush… so gross).

The only cash games I have been playing this month are of the very low limit (.50-1 and 1-2) razz and Omaha 8 variety. I’m up a decent amout in each. It’s refreshing to play with some truly awful players again– I feel like I’m back in 2004 when no one knew how to play limit hold’em yet, and those games were still juicy. Now it seems like every LHE game on Full Tilt and Stars is just full of multi-tabling grinders. Boooo.

Then there’s all the NETELLER crap that’s going on. Their hippie founders were recently arrested and charged with money laundering. InstaCash has been suspended to U.S. customers. And as Pokerati Dan pointed out today, Party Poker stopped paying it’s sub-contractors out of Neteller over a month ago (I used to be one). Did they get a heads-up? Oy vey. I don’t want to say “the sky is falling” but we knew the other shoe was going to drop with the UIGEA at some point, didn’t we? Check out my fellow PokerWorks blogger Amy Calistri’s pieces on the matter over at PokerNews for more detailed info. And cross your fingers.