SNG league benchmarks

Replay Poker Poker Discussion
1

I have been playing mostly Astral Ursa Major 9-seat SNG, so this post will be focused on that league.

To compete for the weekly tournament point leaderboard bonuses, you take your first 20 games and your best 20 games played that week, from midnight Sunday to 23:59 Saturday.

The tournament points are determined by the formula, (1000 * (sqrt(Runners)/sqrt(Finishing position)) * (1+log10(buyin))

This simplifies to 5398 * (3/sqrt(Finishing position))

What that means is, for 20 games played at 9-seat tables at 25k buy-in:

| Position | Points | x20 |
| 9th: | 5398 | 107960 |
| 8th: | 5725 | 114500 |
| 7th: | 6120 | 122400 |
| 6th: | 6611 | 132220 |
| 5th: | 7242 | 144840 |
| 4th: | 8097 | 161940 |
| 3rd: | 9349 | 186980 |
| 2nd: | 11450 | 229017 |
| 1st: | 16194 | 323880 |

Using this, you can watch the leaderboards and get a better understanding of how good a player is, based on their totals.

Typically, the First 20 winner ends up with around 200,000 tournament points, which means they’re averaging about 2.5th place finish over their first 20 games.

Best 20 winners are finishing with anywhere around 230-250k tournament points, meaning they’re averaging between 1st and 2nd place finish over their best 20 games. I haven’t yet seen anyone hit a perfect 323880. I know I’m trying.

Of course, the Astral Ursa Major league also includes 6-seat 25k buy-in games. The scale is different there, due to the number of players being 6 instead of 9. The bottom line is that 6-seat SNGs give fewer tournament points per game for the same buy-in. So if you’re interested in the leaderboard bonus, you want to play 9-seat games, in order to maximize your bonus points. For that reason, I’m not bothering to lay out a table for it in this post. But it’d be handy if someone else is interested in continuing this work to lay out tables for the other Astral league levels.

2

Don’t forget that the same points are applied to the monthly SnG leaderboard, giving you another chance to win more chips. Ursa Major points go towards the SnG medium monthly board.

The perfect score challenge is a tuff one. I tried the last three weeks of March, and the best I could manage was 295,422 with 69 games played. (Mar 17 - Mar 23) Let us know if you manage to pull it off.

3

I think my best 20 high water mark has been something around 240k, and there’s a long way from that to 323k. I’m not sure how many games it was. I won’t play more games to try to hit perfection, but if I have an exceptionally good week, and get 1st place in 20 games out of however many I play, I will predict that no one on these forums will hear the end of it. :slight_smile:

4

OK Pug, here’s a challenge for you… the 1 month I focused on the Astral Major league, i won 2,395,000 chips total from the weekly Astral Major boards and the SnG med board combined. Top that buddy!

5

I’d have to go back and look, but in a two week period I went up over 2M chips, in March or early April… I wasn’t necessarily playing exclusively playing Astral SNG league, but I bet over that month I did better than 2.3M.

6

To be clear, that number only counts chips paid by those leaderboards, and doesn’t count anything won by actually playing the games.

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7

Oh, I understood. I just wasn’t playing exclusively Astral SNG that month, and did take a couple of MTT and a few 3-Max, although I probably lost more chips playing 3-Max than I won. I probably play about 80-90% Astral SNG, though, so I’m guessing (without taking the time to go back and double check) sure that I’m close.

8

Do all 3-max SnGs start you with 500 chips? If so, I hate them!

9

I’m not sure; the ones that play at 50,000 and 25,000 do. I like them because they’re a reasonably good simulation of heads-up with huge blinds relative to stack size, like you get in a final table in an MTT. They’re quick, and they pay off a lot relative to buy-in. You don’t get a lot of room to make mistakes, but you also need to be able to bluff effectively to win them. I think they’re better practice if you’re at the smaller buy-in, but they can be quick money makers if you’re good enough to win more than you lose in them.

10

That’s fine, I wasn’t trying to be, dare I say, pugnacious. Just trying to inspire you bud.

11

Anything that involves me winning 2.3M chips is already all the inspiration I need :slight_smile:

12

So this week, on my first 20, I end up with 185k tournament points, good for 2nd place at the moment once the boards update. I may get eclipsed by a few who have yet to complete their first 20 and are not very far behind me, but it’d take a 1st place finish for their remaining games, most of them.

185k averages to around a 3rd place finish over 20 games. I had a couple of 1st place wins, but seemed to hit 2-4th place a lot more. Tonight, I had a ridiculous number of early exits due to stupid hand where I was ahead and then sucked out, and I also had a day earlier in the week where I kept making braindead decisions at exactly the wrong time after playing very solid deep into the game. Also had a couple of hands Tuesday where I mucked to no pressure when I was trying to bet, due to an overly sensitive mousepad on my laptop, which cost me another couple of positions in a couple games – super aggravating, but I didn’t go on tilt. Still had a ridiculously bad Tuesday after having a spectacular Sunday and Monday.

I seemed to struggle more heads-up, though, and when I got to the end game, I lost more of these than I usually do. I found it very difficult to put away anyone this week. It seemed like every time I was in against a small stack and they were all-in, they hit something improbable. And in heads-up play I’d hit sickeningly long cold streaks at the wrong time, and when I’d hit good cards my opponent would fail to come in, or fold to my raise, limiting how much I could take from them.

I did knock out a lot of players this week, too, but for some reason those don’t stick in my mind as much for some reason. I briefly went over the 8M chips mark earlier today, but dipped back beneath it. I should go back over again once I collect the bonus chips from the Astral league

In short, I’m capable of better. Much better. I need to be more focused at the table, and work on my heads-up game.

13

Have you noticed how the games play differently on different days of the week?

Specifically, those playing for the “first 20” rewards tend to play tighter early in the week. Once they have their 20 in, the game loosens up quite a bit because the “best 20” board kind of demands more wins rather than top 3 finishes.

It can pay to take a close look at the historical data for these boards, which is provided on that board’s promotions page. It’s good to know who the top 15 or so players are, and adjust accordingly when they are at your table.

Actually, this is a good thing to do with any board, especially the regionals.

14

I have noticed… but there’s been so many variables that feed into that equation. I’ve noticed more that I have an easier or harder time on certain days of the week, which is a different way of expressing the same concept.

I think time of day matters, too. There’s way more casual players on in the evening. If you try playing during the day, it’s going to be harder because the people playing at 6am-4pm tend to be serious poker addicts who have their game together.

Likewise, much after midnight, the players tend to be a mix of strong players who haven’t gotten tired yet, people who have gotten tired and should have packed it in, people who are in a time zone where it’s not actually late yet, etc.

It’s also worth pointing out, if you’re after tournament points, then it’s worth playing as deep into a tournament as possible, even if it doesn’t yield chips won in the game. I know you’ve previously expressed a preference to finish 9th rather than 4th, because either way you’re winning 0 chips, but investing less time in the 9th place finish, getting back into a new game quicker where you might win chips, and an early flame-out means you’re playing for big pots, which if you win would put you in an advantageous position to go deep into the tournament. All of which is true, but if you want a good showing on the First 20 board, you’ll want those first 20 games to go as deep as you can, every time.

15

i switched to rings last year and only play high rings now. let me know if u ever see a 3 peet…meaning winning 1st place 3 months in a row for the monthly board. march,april,and may of 2018 last year. also finished 4th the month before the 3 peet and 2nd the month after and was 1 place away from a 4 peet. i have never seen it done since ive been on the site for years but would like to know if u ever see someone else do it again… i also won both the 1st 20 and best 20 having played only 19 games for each. would like to know if u ever see that done again. i forget which month that was last year but sometime in the spring. as an ex avid sit n go player i am glad u both are enjoying the leader boards as i did. it really makes u a much much better ring player after u have dominated those boards. best of luck there

16

Sure, if you are playing for a “first 20” or “first 7” type board, you want to run deep in all of them.

I would say I am usually aware of the boards and who is playing to do well in them, but I don’t specifically play a different way to do well myself. I tend to play the way that’s fun for me, and this isn’t playing too cautiously.

I haven’t been playing much lately. When I am playing more, i do tend to focus on tournaments that go to one board or another. It’s not that I’m trying to do well on that board, but I figure I might as well have that as a bonus, if you get what I mean.

Truth be told, I played way too much in March, trying to win 20 SnGs in a week, and I’m burnt on poker.

I got a new 3d printer that I knew would come with several major defects right from the factory, and have been happily working to make it print well. I’ll be tired of that soon enough, probably as soon as I get it working, so maybe I’ll be playing more before long. Then again, I’m getting the itch to start a new business of some kind, so I might do that for awhile instead. Maybe a YouTube channel? Eh, maybe.

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17

Hey Puggywug, I usually play the Astral Orion 9-seat SNG’s and the tables for that are:

Position / Points / x20

9th / 4398 / 87,960
8th / 4665 / 93,300
7th / 4987 / 99,740
6th / 5387 / 107,740
5th / 5901 / 118,020
4th / 6597 /131,940
3rd / 7618 / 152,360
2nd / 9330 / 186,600
1st / 13,194 /263,880

PS I have yet to see anything near a perfect score here either, but like you, I’m trying!

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18

Usually, by the time SnGs are heads-up, there are less than 50BB in play, with the shorter stack having 15BB or less. It’s essentially a crapshoot at that point, with so little room to maneuver postflop. Don’t read too much into running “well” or “poorly” when the outcomes are going to be largely driven by coin flips.

I know it seems weird to caution you against being results-oriented when we’re talking about leaderboards that are entirely results-oriented. If you really want to focus on your heads-up game, take your chips to the HU rings, since even the HU SnGs end up short-stacked pretty quickly.

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19

I hear ya, but I really was running better heads-up a few months ago. It seemed back then like I’d win nearly every time. I had very few 2nd or 3rd place finishes, and if I got to 4-up it seemed almost as though I was destined to take 1st. Now, not so much.