Are Super Turbos For You?

Playing poker professionally or part time solely from Super Turbos can be amazing, exasperating, frustrating, stupid, crazy, and just plain awesome. I've played various forms of poker for lengthy periods - PLO, NL, SNG's, DoN's, MTT's, Razz, and now Super Turbos. My favourite is definitely PLO and Super Turbos. I enjoy both very much and will definitely go back to PLO sometime in the future.

Top 5 Qualities you need to play Super Turbos (STs) -

1. The ability to withstand variance. If you are the type of person who whines after losing 5 buyins, then STs are not for you. You can lose 40 buyins in 2 hours while playing perfectly.

2. A good grasp of ICM and ranges. This is the fundamental part of STs. If you don't know much about ICM, then you are not going to be profitable in STs.

3. Constant reviewing. Since these take so little time, you can play a 1000 of them quickly. Playing so much could cause bad habits to creep in, so you have to constantly review and analyze your play. I can remember 2 pretty huge leaks that crept in to my play that was the difference between me being a breakeven player and a winning player.

4. Willingness to learn. Since the play is so shallow, you HAVE to take every possible edge you can get. If you have J2o and UTG pushes, it's obviously a trivial fold. But you have to ask yourself what's the worst hand you call with. Do this for every hand at every table, and soon your ranges become ingrained. Now adapt these to specific reads and HUD stats, and your game is even better.

5. Not being results oriented. If think a shove is 0.1% and you make it, you absolutely cannot think it was a bad shove when you lose. What you can do postgame is to go to SNGWiz and see if it actually was 0.1% based on what you thought his calling range is. Then do more reviewing and learning (points 3 and 4).

I feel that if 3 or 4 of these points fit you, but you don't have 1 of them, then it's going to take away from your ROI. There are a LOT of people who play only STs. The majority of them are breakeven or losing, like any other form of poker. But in STs, it seems like people just brush it off as bad luck, when in reality they have some serious leaks.

I am still learning everyday and perhaps in another 2 months, the list would look different. I do coach, so PM me on 2p2 or leave a comment here if you're interested.

Day 2 was pretty frustrating and breakevenish. I'm at 3583 after 2 days of the challenge.