Sharkscope and 100 SNG's

I've come across an interesting service for online poker players. It's called Sharkscope. Basically Sharkscope is a database of all SNG results for the major poker sites. You can search for a player by username and it will give you some data about their past results.

You just type in their name, click on search and about 5 seconds later it will tell you how many SNG's the player has played, their win/loss per tournament (in dollars), their average buy in, and their average return on investment (a percentage). I'm not sure how they get the data and from what I can tell in comparing my (and Jen's) records to their data about us, it's not 100% accurate. But, it's pretty close. The service costs $15 a month for 150 searches a day, but you can do 5 a day for free.

After a few days of doing 5 free searches I put out the big bucks and paid for a month of searches. I've noticed a few interesting things. According to the Sharkscope FAQ section about 2/3 of SNG players are losing players. I thought it would be MUCH higher than that. Also from my searches it seems that about 75% of the players at the $100 level are winning players at some level. While there are a few winning players with average buys ins in the $100-$125 range (and higher) most of the players seem to be winning at smaller stakes and playing a few $100 tournaments here and there.

On the other hand I would expect that at the lower levels you'll find boat loads of losing players. For the most part, the money flows uphill. When I'm winning money at the $100 level it's mostly coming from people who are winning $55 players. These players are winning most of their money from $33 players who have won at lower limits and are trying to move up as well and so on down the line. At the bottom it's all losers pumping money into the system. It's like nature, where the lizards eat the flies and the lizard eaters eat the lizards and the coyotes eat the lizard eaters and the pumas eat the coyotes and giraffes eat the pumas and then we have giraffe steaks on Thursday nights. It's just like the picture of the food chain that all of you who went to California Public schools (except the one my wife went to of course) saw on the wall of your class room. It was right next to the periodic table of elements from 1895 and just above the world map where the U.S. was referred to as "The New World." Mmmmm giraffe steak.

Of course there are plenty of losers who would lose at any level and just want to play for an amount of money that's interesting to them. I was playing 5 handed in one game with a player who'd lost $36,000 over 2,000 tournaments with an average buy in of $145 and another who'd lost $76,000 over about 1,000 tournaments and had an average buy in of $430! It's costing the second guy about $75 every time he plays a tournament. He must REALLY enjoy playing.

So far I'm not sure how much the information I'm getting is going to help my bottom line. I noticed the first day that I was spending too much time looking people up and not enough paying attention to what they were actually doing. But, every time I look someone up I make a note on them with their info (the websites have a function where you can make notes on other players and every time you face them in the future their note is right there for you to look at). That way I never have to look anyone up twice and eventually I'll have notes on a good chunk of the players.

What I've found most helpful is finding a player who is playing way over their head. Anyone who has an average buy in of $20 or less and is playing in a $100 tournament is going to be nervous and really sweating the money. It's easy to push these players around. It's also nice when I notice that they're using tactics that are common to the lower limits, but don't work in the bigger games. The most drastic case of this was someone who had an average buy in of $7 and was losing at that level playing in a $100 SNG with me.

A few times when faced with a big decision I've stopped in the middle of a hand to look someone up. This has been pretty helpful since the same raise will mean two very different things coming from an experienced winning player or a big loser. While it's helped me win a few nice pots that I might not have, I've also screwed myself by calling when I would have folded if I didn't have any data about my opponent. The long term benefits are still up in the air.

On another note I finally managed to play 100 SNG's in a day yesterday. The key was getting my face smashed (repeatedly) by a big, grey, vibrating cat at 7:30 in the morning. I was able to get started at about 8:15 and managed to play 64 SNG's before I took my standard 2 p.m. lunch break. I'd gone back to playing 100's for the past week or two, but I decided to go with the 55's since I knew I wouldn't be at my sharpest towards the end.

When I got to about 85 I really started struggling with mental fatigue, but my results were great. In the 6 tournaments from 86 to 91 (inclusive) I got a 3rd, two 2nds and three 1sts which, while profitable, also meant that I was playing short handed in a ton of tournaments at the same time. To play the remaining 9 felt like it took about 4 hours, but I made it.

I won just over $800 which is right on pace with the $8 per tournament that I managed during my executive week challenge. Over the course of these tournaments I paid $6,000 in tournament buy-ins (the tournaments are actually $55+5), paid $500 in juice, earned 8,750 FPP's (worth $139.55), and played approximately 5,000 hands. If you were to play 5,000 hands in a casino it would take you 143 hours, which is six days straight around the clock without missing a single hand or three and a half weeks working full time. Isn't the internet great?