Peanut Diet

"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts." - Orson Welles

I hate turbos. Or, more specifically, I hate super-turbo sit-n-goes. Why? Because I just played a hundred of the cursed things. 

And I can't stop playing them. Arghghg.

A few days ago, I played some poker at the Guru's house, and we tag-teamed a handful of $5 6max super-turbos on 'Tilt. The results were pretty good, with us clearing something like $50/hour for the session. One of the Guru's students, the Mad Moldovan, makes a small but steady 1% return on investment (ROI) playing higher stakes versions of these push-or-fold fests online for an income supplement, and the Guru was showing me how they work and what basic strategies to invoke....

...and, like I said, the results were pretty good. Then, on my way out the door for the drive home, the Guru said, innocuously enough, "Why don't you try some of these on your own? Go home and play some and see how it goes?"

So I went home and played some and saw how it went. That first day I got in a quick dozen  $2 games... and made a few bucks. The strategy I employed was simple: Just sit tight at the beginning unless I get dealt a big hand. Let a couple of the other players get knocked out, and then open up my game. Push or fold, never limp... and rarely, if ever, call a shove. Keep four or five running at once. Fold, fold, fold, fold, shove, fold, fold, fold. The name of the super-turbo game is ICM shove-fold poker, and any well-trained monkey can do it with a little coaching.

So this well-trained bug did just that, getting another thirty games or so in the next day. And my results continued to be positive. I skyrocketed up to $50 in profit without really trying, with an ROI of something like 75% over the 40 games played.

Now, variance is a fickle friend, and what goes up is inevitably going to come down. Sustaining anything over a few percent ROI at these things, per the forums and math gurus I've now subsequently read, even at the low stakes, is considered excellent.

Here's my graph for the first (last?) 102 of these cursed games that I played since returning from the Guru's house:

Can you say, "roller coaster?" All in all I made a whopping $38 for the entire effort. Worse, until the very last two game (a $10 and a $5 buy-in SnGs, which I won both), I was actually down a few bucks for the entire run.

When the Guru originally told me that the Mad Moldovan makes just 1% ROI playing thousands of these bad boys online, I was bemused. One percent, I thought? Jeez, that doesn't sound so impressive. How hard could it possibly be?

Well, pretty friggin' hard, it turns out.

Now I just have to go on a diet and stop eating these damn peanuts. I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating them.

All-in for now...

-Bug