Finally Experienced some full length online MTTs

Oh yeah... I was supposed to post the good news. Well the good news is a little bit of a stretch

I got to play normal length online MTTs for a whole weekend. My wife had knee surgery so we shipped the kids out to keep them from getting in the way and being bored. Anyways since I had no kid duties I was easily able to take care of her while playing. The cool part is that Maximus was in full swing on merge so I got to play plenty of high buyin tourneys.

I did pretty well early on running deep In a lot of the lower buyins ($33-$109). Going into Sunday I was up over $1K. I gave a lot back though as I took a shot at the $525 and $215 main events and failed. I went down swinging short of the bubble though as I got caught in both events pulling a coupe semi-bluffs that ran into big hands and didn't draw out. I ended up winning about $500 or so overall for the weekend

The good news is I felt extremely comfortable playing at the highest stake MTTs. Normally I can't swing 6-7 hour sessions so I'm stuck playing turbo MTTs at best and they don't run higher than $60. Also the blinds escalate fast so there's only marginal wiggle room after the first hour.

I really felt that I was better than most of the field. Afterwards, I reviewed a bunch of key hands and felt good about them. I found a lot of good spots to 3bet and apply pressure and didn't get myself into trouble too much. Most of my reads seemed right too..

Unfort I didn't hit any big scores but i put myself in position late for it to occur. A couple more flips or suckouts here and there woulda helped but I had some good runs at the scattered $20-$40K first place prizes.

Bottom line is this: It was fun, I felt comfy and it was good practice for the upcoming wsop

With SNGs dying my next move will prob be to mix in more turbo MTTs. I doubt they will be as profitable since they do not run enough but ill still get to play the game I enjoy and make some $$ at the same time. Ill need to experiment with playing several sites at once (and hope my laptop doesn't crash in the process)

After the main event I prob will refocus my time to play SNGs on Bovada unless Merge corrects the mess they've made. Regardless I will follow the volume and/or money where it leads me

Sorry if the good news is anticlimactic. Gotta keep it positive somehow as US online poker dries up more and more

Merge SNGs are dead :(

good and bad news poker-wise...

first, the bad news...

SNGs on Merge network are dead as of May 1st. For those who don't know, Merge Network is a combination of poker sites (skins) that share the same software and player base. Carbon and Aced are owned by Merge itself. Sportsbook, Players Only and some smaller skins are owned by Jazette. Carbon and Aced have better rakeback deals and thus are frequented more by regs/better players. The other skins have sports books which historically means fishier players who bet sports and then go play poker for fun (often to win their money back). Yes, I'm generalizing and some of this is my speculation as to the player base...

anyways, On May 1st, Jazette decided to segregate their player base from the other skins. my educated guess and some rumors say this is to keep their weaker player base from losing poker money to the better players on Aced/Carbon. Supposedly, each month the skins have to true-up with each other and pay the difference in winnings amongst players. So if the Jazette skins historically are owing money to Carbon/Aced then money is trickling off their site which could instead stay on the site and be spent on sportsbooks or generating more rake in existing poker games. That is my theory at least...

the net effect is the segregation of these players has killed the SNG volume. SNGs need players to take off. Before BCP and Lock split off Merge I used to be able to play $50 DoNs consistently with $100 DoNs occasionally running. After they left $50 DoNs would occasionally run but I could still get in about 15-20 minimum $20 DoNs at night while multitabling.

This had already started to trickle down in February when Merge lowered their rakeback deals causing some SNG regs (like myself ) to play other games or other sites. Now, this is the final straw. The player base has been segmented so now is hard to even get one let alone 20 $20 DoNs going. Even the $10 DoNs (which I almost never have to play) aren't running.

Basically, SNGs are dead on Merge until something changes.

Now the good news... <continued tomorrow night>

PS. MTTs are not segregated... just cash games and SNGs