So if you’ve been watching the Stars lobby recently you may have seen me playing some 5k sngs. Recently, a new player name NU Gatsby came onto the sng scene out of seemingly nowhere, and started sitting at the 5k non-turbos playing basically anybody. I decided to take a shot at him with Danny taking half my action.

It turned out that even though his play was unorthodox and he seemed like a big fish initially, after about 5 or so games I started to realize he wasn’t really all that bad. He was weak late-game but because of the structure of the non turbo a lot of times we never got there I actually learned a lot from playing him and have incorporated a little of what he does into my own game. I ended up getting rocked for 8 buyins in the first 15 games or so, and although he was an ok player I still felt like i was getting the best of him.

By the tenth game I had a great feel for him, and at this point I think we’ve played 20 games and I’m down 4 buyins. Hopefully he’ll sit more because if he does I think I have a really great edge.

Another player sitting at the 5k’s recently was Joe Cada. I played him for about 15 sngs and was up a buyin. He actually played much better than I expected, and honestly he got the best of me in those 15 games. I was in an impatient mood which plays into his strengths and he actually made a couple good big calls. Besides that he just ran hot, and when someone runs hot against you what ends up happening is 1) you never seen what they have 2) they have a sense of what you had because you folded and because of this 3) they have a huge advantage. I’m sure he’ll sit again and hopefully I can take what I learned against him the other night and beat him down.

Now let’s talk about SNE, when I first started this blog, I wanted Danny and I to be the first twins ever to be SNE. However, since I’ve been behind one SNE ever since I started in April, I would have to play exclusively on Pokerstars to achieve it. The fact of the matter is getting SNE as opposed to playing normally, I would only get the equivalent of about a 1% roi increase in sngs. But playing on ftp and being able to game select better, would give me a 3-5% increase in roi. And furthermore, the new superturbos on ftp are so fishy that it would be dumb to pass up playing them.

But I haven’t exactly given up on SNE. There are a couple of factors that may inspire me to make a run at SNE. Pokerstars will have dealt it’s 50 billionth hand in a few weeks and it’s possible that they have a double vpp week during this time. If this happens I could knock down 200k vpp or even more in that week, putting me close to pace. Or, if Joe Cada, NU Gatsby, or another player I think I have an edge on decides to sit at 5k’s for a while, I may be able to make a big vpp run. If both these happen, then it’s probable that I get SNE.

For now, I’m grinding pretty hard on both Stars and FTP, and I’ll continue to do so.