This is a spinoff from where MVP asked me why I play at party.

There are a couple of reasons:
(1) Alot of the really serious players play at UB or stars. I run into lots of good poker players at the $100s, but not alot a great SNG players. Most people who specialize in SNGs are at other sites. As evidenced by what you'll read in forums and message boards.
(2) The "fast structure incrases luck so much" angle has been a bit overhyped. I mean, if someone can get a 42% ROI at high stakes, then c'mon...
(3) This is the most important reason: the best part of my SNG game is my ability to play well when the blinds are large, stacks are small, and there's between 2 and 5 people left. People make lots of dumb decisions that I (usually) don't make. This type of skill is more important in a fast SNG than a slow one.

About your first reason... I play exclusively at UB. I like knowing there's still some people there to give me a challenge. I know, I should constantly be seeking out the fish for more profitable games. But when you play tough competition, your play improves. I have definitely found that to be the case.

It's not like I'm actively trying to play at tables where there's a lot of good players. I just happen to run into them more than at PartyPoker and the likes. When playing limit games, table selection plays a huge role. I always try to find the ones with the biggest fish. I don't want to play against 5 other Tight-Aggressive players in a limit game! Obviously I cannot make this table selection choice with SNGs, so I have to adapt to each situation.

I guess it depend what your objectives are.

At this stage I'm playing for enjoyment and to improve my skill levels. Playing a mechanical system such as the one in your other post doesn't achieve either of those things for me, although it might be more profitable.

The better blind structures at UB and Stars enable me to make a wider variety of different plays, and the greater skill of the opposition makes winning a constant challenge at the level I play. You even get some really decent heads up games sometimes at the end because the blinds are relatively low. I can't remember a single good heads up game in the 200 or so I played at Party; the blinds are usually too large by then for it to last more than 5-10 hands.

I fully appreciate what you say, nash, but with my different objectives I'm sticking at UB and Stars for a while.

The Don

Oh, yeah, I was really responding to a specific question, NOT trying to say that others should play at Party or anything like that. It all depends on what you value, and what's important to you in poker playing.

About the poker pros, etc., its clearly true that *more* of them play at Party than other sites. On the other hand, Party has alot more high-stakes SNG games out there than any other website. Pros as a percentage of players at a table is much lower at Party. This is important to my annual income, so I assure you that I've looked into this. There are many people at Party who claim to be "pros" who are not very good players, and many of them are long-term losers in these SNGs. A more than proportional amount of the very good SNG players are concentrated where there are more friendly blind structures.