* This turned into a much longer post than intended so if you wanna go straight to the questions, they're at the bottom. *

Gratitude

hey guys,

This is my first post, though i've been reading the stuff on this site since about Dec/Jan. So first off let me just thank you all for putting this site together and for all of you who write the articles and contribute to the forums. The information here is absolutely great and satisfyingly on-point in ways that hard copy poker literature (though still useful) invariably falls short. Currently i am exclusively playing Party Poker No-Limit SnG's and have found the tournament articles and the forum posts (especially one post with a highly detailed level-by-level strategy (sry don't remember the poster's name)) incomparably useful.

Brief History

After parlaying my original $50 investment over this past summer into about $250 playing Super System style (or more accurately a novice interpretation thereof) poker at the $25 PP NL ring games, my BR plummeted from a serious thrashing in the $10 SnGs and a from little regression-to-the-mean action at the ring tables. Moved into playing the $10s almost exclusively (lol i guess because they were "safer" despite their lack of profitably for me) and went deep into a hole as PP chipped away at me, one $50 check at a time. Down to about $500 in the red (all from $10 SnGs ! ) before I started climbing back up. Started looking around on the Internet for advice specific to these tourneys and began developing the uber-tight strategy that is necessary for SnGs and rolled (what turned out to be my last) $50 investment into about $200 near the beginning of this past fall. Kept climbing slowly when serendipitously I stumbled upon the veritable poker oasis that is this site and seriously refined my game. Got well above back even and finally into the black (booyah!) over christmas break (thank you X-mas and December birthdays) only to hit an excruciating period where the luck seemed to break in every direction but mine, which, by early/mid January, dropped me back to even. (Not so booyah)

Some solid play and help from the fair-minded distributor that is regression-to-the-mean (now working in my favor) got me back up to a point where i could comfortably cash-out my original investment and still leave enough profit to continue playing the $20 SnGs.... Parenthetically, how effing great a feeling is it (for those of you with a similar poker history to mine) to finally be playing on your poker profit alone! If yer anything like me, that day brings a happiness curable only by a utterly debauched night of serious hard consumption.... Anyway... with a continually improving livepokerforum style of SnG play I moved up to the $30 range and was fortunate enough to enjoy continued steady success. Recently, over the past few weeks, I have moved into $50 games and have continued climbing to a point comfortably above where - according to Nash's BR guide - I would need to be in order to play $100 tourneys. Which brings me, long-windedly, to my question...

The $50 NL PP SnG's

For those or you playing in the $30 tournaments and have considered moving to the $50's let me just say that personally, I have really enjoyed the move. In my (albeit limited) experience, these games don't play that much tougher than the $30. Obviously, there is some overall improvement in play, but if you're a successful $30 player you can probably handle it assuming your BR abides. Additionally, the extra T200 starting chips is nice and does seem to allow me to get to the 50/100 blind level with a little more maneuvering room. One more interesting - and somewhat ironic - point is that once it gets down to about 5 handed, when blinds start creeping up on the one end and the bubble starts coming into focus on the other, players are smart enough to know not to get crazy and their blinds become a bit more stealable. At this level, making good 2.5x blind raises and *selective* rereaises of those you read to be stealing, works quite well as more of them actually have to ability to lay down cards. There are some other interesting nuances at this level that I won't get into but overall the $50 have been pretty fun, and fairly beatable (least in the short run) so if your thinking about moving up, give it a shot.... I should point out however that all this needs to be takin with a few cartons of salt as I have (much to my discredit) never really gotten pokertracker working properly (an issue for another forum) and thus the above is very subjective and is evidenced only by the trajectory of my bank roll.

Ok, so now this brings me (for real this time) to my question(s)....

The Big Tables: Questions

So, for those of you playing at the $50 SnGs what have been your experience with it and have you found it more profitable than returning to the lower limits?

Have you changed or added anything to your game at this level?

What kind of difference is there between the $50s and the $100s?

And the big one - the one that kept me out of $50's for a while - how worried are you about collusion at these levels and have you noticed anything suspicious? To this end, I used to be *very* worried about it but now i'm a little more inclined to think that it would be much more profitable for a team to collude at a ring table than a SnG so perhaps its not as much of an issue (though as the money increases the curves probably do in fact cross somewhere.)

Anyway, thanks for indulging the long post, and again for the fantastic site.

- Ryan

Sorryno one replied to your post, because you asked questions I'm also interested in. Pls post again and let us know how the $100 tables pan out -- how much harder the play is at that level.. Good Luck!
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Bandy