Here at Pocketfives we spend most of our time talking about Multi-table tournaments. After all, the rankings are entirely based upon MTTs, and the eye-popping prizepools that can be found around the net are certainly exciting. Many Pocketfivers play and enjoy MTTs, but a large segment of the community goes largely unnoticed. The sitngo is a staple of online poker and one of the most familiar games to the average player. The two interviews which follow are with sippin_criss and David “dhubermex” Huber.
Lenny: How many sitngos do you usually fire up at once?
sippin_criss: I run 12-16 continuously.
Lenny: Do you feel you get a chance to make any reads or higher level decisions playing that many tables or is it mostly mechanical?
sippin_criss: It is mostly mechanical, especially in the early levels. In the late game I know most of the regulars, so I can easily adjust my ranges to how they play. I tend to focus most of my attention on my shorthanded tables which allows me to get reads. Taking notes helps a lot as well.
Lenny: What would you say is your biggest edge?
sippin_criss: Making +EV pushes and calls in the late part of the game. I work hard on studying my push/call hands after each session, so I am confident in my decisions, and if I get sloppy I can pick up on it pretty quickly.
Lenny: Can you give an example of pushing/calling properly late?
sippin_criss: A lot of people make mistakes by calling too loosely on the bubble even with pretty good hands.
Say the blinds are 200/400/25 and stack sizes looked like this:
Hero (BB) : 4000
SB : 5500
BTN : 2000
CO :2000
Assume it’s folded to the SB who you know is pushing any two in that spot every time. AKs is only very slightly +EV, while AKo is actually -EV, even though the average sng player would be glad to call and race to “play for first.” In this hand it’s correct to call with 88+, and only then if the SB is absolutely pushing any two. The reason 88 is a call and AK is a fold is because 88 crushes a lot of hands in the “any two” range, but AK is basically a 60/40 versus most of them. If the SB was not as aggressive as he should be, and only pushing top 20% of hands here, your calling range becomes QQ or better.
Lenny: So, 4 handed are you just picking your spots to push against the weaker opponents who will either fold or call with weaker hands?
sippin_criss: Yes and no. I try to take advantage of pushing my SB most of the time when it’s folded to me and pound on the nits who try to fold their way into the money. Exploiting the bubble correctly is very important, but you also need to be aware of the guys who will call off 9 BB’s on the bubble with QJ and ace rag type of hands, and adjust your pushing range accordingly.
Lenny: Do you ever get to play flops and make moves, or not really? Would you say this is the nature of sitngos in general, or just multitabling?
sippin_criss: If you were playing 12+ tables and trying to see flops and outplay your opponents in each one you would probably just go broke. Later on there is the occasional opportunity to exploit a player’s habits and make a move, but for the most part it’s ABC poker. Even playing one table, I wouldn’t play very differently. It’s the nature of both sitngos and multitabling, I think.
Lenny: Do you enjoy playing that way? I mean do you sit down for a multitabling session and basically clock in and out?
sippin_criss: I do enjoy it because it’s something I’ve worked hard and gotten pretty good at it. It’s a pretty fixed and rigid way to play, but I think I prefer that. That is basically what I do. I plunk myself down for 2-3 hours, play between 30-60 sngs, clock in, clock out.
Lenny: Do you ever play poker for fun with friends, or just for fun?
sippin_criss: Yeah I play with my friends occasionally, it is definitely a fun way to get out of the grind now and then.
Lenny: Do you think sitngos are just a machine a good player can work for guaranteed profit?
sippin_criss: With a few basic tools yes. By playing tight early and pushing/calling properly late you are basically guaranteed long term profit. ROI is important, but not as important as $/hr. It is important to add as many tables as you can comfortably play. Not as many as you can possibly play, but the happy medium which gives you the greatest win rate per hour.
Lenny: Are you in school? Do you play full time or is poker more of a side gig?
sippin_criss: I’m not in school. I guess you could say I play full time since the past 6 months or so its been my “living” playing about 20-25 hrs per week. Over the winter I am going to get in a lot more play and save up some money so when spring comes I can focus 100% on golf and not have to play poker.
At the time of this interview sippin_criss was at the top of the Sharkscope leaderboard for total profit in the $16 range. He has since moved up to the $27s and has continued his success. I also was able to get the scoop from another successful sitngo pro, and co-host of the Pocketfives Podcast, David Huber.
Lenny: Did you see the thread the other day “Sngos- not real poker- discuss”?
dhubermex: Well, poker is poker. Sitngo’s are simply a shortened form of tournament poker.
Lenny: What about multitabling? I mean, are you are making very simple decisions most of the time and just taking advantage of all the weak players?
dhubermex: At low buy-in sitngos that is true. The decisions are mostly simple and mechanical. There is truly an abundance of weak play, so even when it gets short-handed the ranges of calling/pushing are somewhat straight-forward. When you start to get to mid-stakes SnG’s, it changes somewhat as the players gradually become better. A good player begins to realize that 80%+ of the players at mid stakes and above employ their own version of “tight-early, aggressive-late” strategy. To beat those games online training sites and software (SnG Tools, for example) become imperative.
Lenny: Tell me a little about SnG Tools, I haven’t used it.
dhubermex: SnG Power Tools does Independent Chip Modeling calculations, which is very important for bubble play. In theory, a player who has a sitngo multi-tabling expectation of +10% probably gains 7% or 8% of that ROI on the bubble. Independent Chip Modeling puts a dollar amount on your chip stack and it’s basically Risk vs. Reward in any given situation.
Lenny: How do you make your decisions when playing so many tables? Is it just so much experience?
dhubermex: A lot of it is simply experience, but usually when I’m 12-tabling the first thing I glance at when a table pops up is blind levels and my stack in comparison to the blinds. There are certain hands that can be auto-folds, auto-pushes, or auto-calls, all depending on where the blinds are. Many times it depends on who’s raising in front of me. As you move up to mid-stakes, you see a whole lot of the same players over and over again, so knowing how your opponents play on the bubble makes all the difference in the world when it comes to folding to an all-in raise or calling it.
Lenny: Late in a sitngo are you always pushing or are there ever times when you are just making standard raises?
dhubermex: There is just no value in standard raising, the odds just aren’t there to do that. It’s either push/fold/call all in, “standard” raising just doesn’t make any sense. On the flip side, late in a sitngo you will often see players limping, and that is a huge sign of weakness. The only limping that is justified is with monster hands, and only very sporadically.
Lenny: Do you still enjoy poker, or is it strictly a business?
dhubermex: Well, I’m “addicted” to poker in a way. It just happens to be my livelihood, so it’s extremely fortunate I am a winning player. I enjoy it, but I don’t enjoy playing at tables that are filled with good players. Something that always makes me chuckle is when people claim they “can’t win because of the bad players.”
As someone who has worked his way from 16-tabling $5 SnGs to 8-tabling $114 SnG’s, I can honestly say that I would LOVE to have more weak players and fewer strong players at the stakes I currently play.
Lenny: What do you get out of Pocketfives?
dhubermex: Pocketfives has been just been IT for me. In addition to being a part of the Podcast, and working with P5’s admins on a weekly basis, I truly respect and value PocketFives.com and its members.
Lenny: what about OT? You seem to really enjoy that crowd. Is it a way to keep your online time fun?
dhubermex: First of all, I enjoy reading insight and comedy from anyone. The Off-Topic crowd is just a group of geniuses and lunatics who join hands in order to make the online poker community even better.
Lenny: Any last thoughts?
dhubermex: I think the low point of my poker career was the night the Senate passed the anti-gaming legislation, and the subsequent announcements by some online poker sites to withdraw from the U.S. market. It was then that I truly found out about the grit of the Pocketfives admins and staff, as well as its members. While the majority of online sites have reduced production, P5s has aggressively sought to improve and innovate.
Lenny: Thanks for the kind words; we couldn’t do it without you!