Hello Sharkscopers!
Hey Fellow Sharkscopers,
I've been playing for about 5 years now, and more seriously in the last year or so. I've been trying to make money off Super Turbos on Full Tilt since April 2009, but its not been as easy as I thought it'd be for sure!
After having a mediocre month in October, I cashed big in a tournament and took out some of the money leaving me with a good amount to grind out the $7's. However, I really have been having a nightmare with them, losing nearly a grand so far. I'd blame half of my losses this month on the 2 weeks of faffing around with Parallels and trying to play by running that on my Macbook. 10 crashes later I decided that enough was enough and I went back to boot camp.
I've been getting some advice on playing these, and there is an interesting point on whether you go for the win or make the money. Playing more aggressively short handed near the bubble gives you more chance of getting more 1sts and 2nds, but more 5ths and 6ths. Playing to get ITM is less risky, but your winning sessions will never be as big. Its a balance that is hard to get right.
Last night I tried to do a "lockdown" as they called it in 2 months 2 million and tried to play all night. Played 150 odd sngs and cut down my tables to 8 to concentrate more and get more quality decisions in. Hopefully playing more would cut the variance and I should make a profit. But it just didn't turn out that way. Despite getting a lot of 1sts, I hit 3 sick 14 in a row non cashing streaks which included an array of ridiculous bubbles. After playing for 4 hours I quit and my ITM remained at a crazy 28%.
Over November I have lost about 90 buy ins for the $7 and I'm thinking of moving down back to the $3 or maybe playing both. Its kinda interesting to see everyone's graphs and stuff, i'm kinda embarrassed about my one, but sod it here it is. Now i'm gonna go crawl in the corner for a good hour or so :P
Comments
One more thing...there's a pretty good site with tips on playing Super Turbos. Not sure if it's valuable or not because I found it after I decided to stop playing those pesky SNGs. Anyhow, check it out:
Thanks for your comments inevermiss, its so good to get feedback like this!
Actually I do have rakeback and this is one of the primary reasons why I decided to play them. I actually started with $100 and maybe 2-4 tabling the $3 super turbos.
Managed to get that up to $1200 before I moved up to the $7's. Got that up to about $2300 before the variance/me tilting hit me. Rakeback definitely helps build up a bankroll, I probably wont be playing these otherwise.
Thanks for that website, I actually found it before.
It's extremely difficult to make any money on superturbos. I can maintain ROIs of 28-30% playing turbos but only seem to break even at superturbos. They turn into crapshoots too early and they attract aggressive players. So it all comes down to the cards.
If you want to play short tournaments I suggest DoNs instead. You can maintain ROIs well in the 20s on them yet they can often finish in 20 minutes (especially the 6-handed tables that I've started playing).
Otherwise just switch to turbos.
I am quite confident when I say that there isn't a poker player on the planet whose optimum $/hr win rate would be achieved on superturbos. These are simply designed by the poker sites to make more from buy-ins.
I've had similar results in the 7 dollar Super Turbos although I haven't played nearly as many as you. What I started to realize is that with those good players can expect to make about 1-3% ROI on their money. Then consider the rake and the stakes you are playing at...can you actually make any money? But then again, many of us play these games for fun and as hobby and the money really doesn't matter (we still want to win but 1% may not be that much).
Here is an example
1000 $7 + .50 Super Turbo Sit and Gos
Total Buy In = 7000
Total Rake/Fees = 500
Total Winnings at 1% - 3% = $70 - $210
So with the rake you can expect to lose about $380 - $430 dollars...because of the rake alone. If you get rake back that can change somewhat and also if your ROI is higher. I'm not saying people don't make money at Super Turbos, because some clearly do. Just saying it's very difficult. I wish I would have figured this out before I played 615 of them with an average ROI of 2%.