I prefer Twister (despite Stars still serving my country)
Hi, Rok!
The thing is that SnG Hero and Blast (on 888) are strategically more complex formats than Twister, Spin & Go, Expresso (at Winamax), Jackpot Poker (on the WPN) and Fish Party (on the MPN), and thus aren't recommended for beginners, for the following reasons.
It's necessary to learn to play from the cutoff in 4-max games. HU hyper regs had a hard time learning to play 3-max before some theory started coming out in 2015. The theory of play in CO and vs CO isn't well-developed and I doubt that coaches will bother to figure it out in the near future, unless 3-max games become really dead. The HUD also needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
The bounty on Party and the 70%/30% prize split with a timer on 888 are game elements that alter the strategy significantly, making it intractable for calculators and (fortunately) bots. Hand review is barely doable because tracking software is yet unable to show on whom the bounty was (that's mainly because the programmers don't want to invest a lot of time into a feature that's interesting to too few customers).
To be successful at SnG Hero, one must figure out how to play 1) as the target player (the one on whom the bounty is), 2) in presence of the target player in 3-4-max depending on his position relatively to Hero. Those strategies are different from the basic Spin / Twister strategy.
While it's true that Party's blind structure is the same as Stars' (with levels lasting for 3 minutes and with no antes), and that the game proceeds exactly like in a Spin after the target player is out or takes a big chip lead, and that there are 1.33 times more chips in play and the HU phase starts with slightly deeper stacks than in Spins, I think that the inability to get a decent edge over fish in 4-max negates the advantage of being deeper HU and thus attainable ROIs aren't going to be great (I don't have a sample to confirm this claim).
Note also the top-jackpot-heavy paytable of multipliers in SnG Hero. It has the second biggest variance among lottery SnG formats (only MPN's Fish Party has bigger variance). On the contrary, Twister's paytable has the lowest variance (the top prize is 800 BIs).
The above, surprisingly, doesn't result in Twister being less soft. The problem with SnG Hero is that it's way too slow and it seems that its speed is not appealing to fish. Plus, as far as I understand, Party is traditionally more popular in East Slav countries than iPoker.
Last time I checked, I felt there was not more than one fish per 4-max table at the $10 level (or at least I was encountering all the same screennames too often). At the $20 one, there's too little traffic. Of course, this is a result of the Summer Grind promo, causing regs to load more SnG Hero tables at specifically the $10 level than they normally do (fortunately, the number of SnG Hero tables that one can open at all stakes combined is capped at 4; believe me, it's more than enough because players have only 13 sec to act pre + a timebank). I don't know what will happen to SNG Hero traffic after the promo ends. Maybe the $10 level will become a ghost town again (as in, it will take >2 minutes on avg to get a game going), because it needs 4 people to start and takes longer to finish.
I guess €10 Twister should be softer now than before because €20 and €50 ones have been added into the lobby recently and some of the €10 mass multitablers have moved up.
The biggest adjustment to be made in Twister is accounting for the antes. Playing it (after the 1st blind level) with the same ranges and custom HUD stats as the ones used for Spins will result in chip bleeding. But it's quite easy to edit the ranges, it's not a new strategic dimension.
I know a beast who managed to crush €10 Twister (before €20-50 ones were available) at 80 chips per tourney 6-tabling. He was a $200 Stars hyper division member so his ability is surely on the stellar side. But I do think it's possible for any serious player to learn to earn 30 CPT (which is enough to profit decently after rakeback) and, after some training, even 45 CPT 6-tabling. Considering that it's possible to play 50 Twisters per hour because the blind levels are 2-minute, it's not difficult to earn $15-30 (EV) an hour.
Summary: learn to beat Twister first, proceed to master SnG Hero only when Twister totally runs out of fish.
thanks for taking time and writing such a in depth review i appriciate it. Since pokestars closed the market for Slovenia,i was just wondering what was the closest to spins,i was looking at MPN,but the rake is to high 10,17% LOL :D,but i didnt know nothing about SnG hero so tnx for the information.Will stay on twister,Just need to adjust on the new blind lvl time and antes.Mybe ill just switch sides from William Hill to Betfair,i think Betfair has a bigger rakeback need to compare them to be 100%sure.
Winamax's Expresso does have 3-minute blind levels (and no antes, afaik). Its top multipliers are 10000x and 1000x, hitting 5 and 40 times in 1,000,000 games. The rake-based rewards are decent (there are special Expresso races). But I'm afraid Winamax is going to leave Slovenia soon too because its French licence forces it to stop operating in countries that require their own licences (that's why it's not available in the UK).
Jackpot Poker on the Winning Poker Network (incl. Americas Cardroom and Black Chip Poker) has a structure identical to Stars' Spins except the multipliers (the biggest is 2500x) and the ability to deal (only before the first hand of a 100x+ tourney and only if all the three participants agree, the prize pool is split 40%/30%/30%, i.e. the eventual winner gets 40%). The problems are that: 1) as it's a US network, the peak hours are in the European late evenings and early mornings; 2) during the European daytime, there are too many Russian regs in the pools; 3) the Sit and Crush rake race rewards primarily $25 and $40 regs and pays less to $10 ones; 4) the $25 and $40 stakes are said to be much tougher than the $10 one.
RyPac13, coffeeyay and pbogz1114 can give you more details as the WPN is yet the only US-facing network with lottery SnGs and they know its games very well. The games sometimes appear on Paul's Twitch stream (however, I'm not following it and I don't know how often he streams jackpots instead of MTTs nowadays).
Note that it's advised to choose VIP rewards instead of rakeback if you're going for the network's analogues of Supernova and Supernova Elite (paying about as much as Stars' before 2016, but note that the 'rake' for VIP/rakeback purposes is 3/4 of the tourney fee; the rest - 1/4 - goes towards the Sit and Crush prize pool).
As discussed above, lottery SnGs of other 'mainstream' networks (888, iPoker, MPN) have 2-minute blind levels and antes, except SnG Hero that has 3-minute levels and no antes.
I'm a poker vagabond - I try to grind every new lottery SnG format that comes out to see if it's worth my time (attractive enough to fish) or if I should wait for 'the games of my life'. The stakes are normally $5-€10 because fresh depositors seldom go higher and I hate hurting regs. (To draw an analogy with BDSM, I avoid fellow doms when there are still enough subs.)
Twister (€10, at the time when there was no €20-50) is so far the only format that I've confidently beat. I'd probably beat other formats too but I haven't had enough determination to grind.
Hi, Rok!
The thing is that SnG Hero and Blast (on 888) are strategically more complex formats than Twister, Spin & Go, Expresso (at Winamax), Jackpot Poker (on the WPN) and Fish Party (on the MPN), and thus aren't recommended for beginners, for the following reasons.
It's necessary to learn to play from the cutoff in 4-max games. HU hyper regs had a hard time learning to play 3-max before some theory started coming out in 2015. The theory of play in CO and vs CO isn't well-developed and I doubt that coaches will bother to figure it out in the near future, unless 3-max games become really dead. The HUD also needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
The bounty on Party and the 70%/30% prize split with a timer on 888 are game elements that alter the strategy significantly, making it intractable for calculators and (fortunately) bots. Hand review is barely doable because tracking software is yet unable to show on whom the bounty was (that's mainly because the programmers don't want to invest a lot of time into a feature that's interesting to too few customers).
To be successful at SnG Hero, one must figure out how to play 1) as the target player (the one on whom the bounty is), 2) in presence of the target player in 3-4-max depending on his position relatively to Hero. Those strategies are different from the basic Spin / Twister strategy.
While it's true that Party's blind structure is the same as Stars' (with levels lasting for 3 minutes and with no antes), and that the game proceeds exactly like in a Spin after the target player is out or takes a big chip lead, and that there are 1.33 times more chips in play and the HU phase starts with slightly deeper stacks than in Spins, I think that the inability to get a decent edge over fish in 4-max negates the advantage of being deeper HU and thus attainable ROIs aren't going to be great (I don't have a sample to confirm this claim).
Note also the top-jackpot-heavy paytable of multipliers in SnG Hero. It has the second biggest variance among lottery SnG formats (only MPN's Fish Party has bigger variance). On the contrary, Twister's paytable has the lowest variance (the top prize is 800 BIs).
The above, surprisingly, doesn't result in Twister being less soft. The problem with SnG Hero is that it's way too slow and it seems that its speed is not appealing to fish. Plus, as far as I understand, Party is traditionally more popular in East Slav countries than iPoker.
Last time I checked, I felt there was not more than one fish per 4-max table at the $10 level (or at least I was encountering all the same screennames too often). At the $20 one, there's too little traffic. Of course, this is a result of the Summer Grind promo, causing regs to load more SnG Hero tables at specifically the $10 level than they normally do (fortunately, the number of SnG Hero tables that one can open at all stakes combined is capped at 4; believe me, it's more than enough because players have only 13 sec to act pre + a timebank). I don't know what will happen to SNG Hero traffic after the promo ends. Maybe the $10 level will become a ghost town again (as in, it will take >2 minutes on avg to get a game going), because it needs 4 people to start and takes longer to finish.
I guess €10 Twister should be softer now than before because €20 and €50 ones have been added into the lobby recently and some of the €10 mass multitablers have moved up.
The biggest adjustment to be made in Twister is accounting for the antes. Playing it (after the 1st blind level) with the same ranges and custom HUD stats as the ones used for Spins will result in chip bleeding. But it's quite easy to edit the ranges, it's not a new strategic dimension.
I know a beast who managed to crush €10 Twister (before €20-50 ones were available) at 80 chips per tourney 6-tabling. He was a $200 Stars hyper division member so his ability is surely on the stellar side. But I do think it's possible for any serious player to learn to earn 30 CPT (which is enough to profit decently after rakeback) and, after some training, even 45 CPT 6-tabling. Considering that it's possible to play 50 Twisters per hour because the blind levels are 2-minute, it's not difficult to earn $15-30 (EV) an hour.
Summary: learn to beat Twister first, proceed to master SnG Hero only when Twister totally runs out of fish.
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Hey
thanks for taking time and writing such a in depth review i appriciate it. Since pokestars closed the market for Slovenia,i was just wondering what was the closest to spins,i was looking at MPN,but the rake is to high 10,17% LOL :D,but i didnt know nothing about SnG hero so tnx for the information.Will stay on twister,Just need to adjust on the new blind lvl time and antes.Mybe ill just switch sides from William Hill to Betfair,i think Betfair has a bigger rakeback need to compare them to be 100%sure.
You also play twister?what limits?
Winamax's Expresso does have 3-minute blind levels (and no antes, afaik). Its top multipliers are 10000x and 1000x, hitting 5 and 40 times in 1,000,000 games. The rake-based rewards are decent (there are special Expresso races). But I'm afraid Winamax is going to leave Slovenia soon too because its French licence forces it to stop operating in countries that require their own licences (that's why it's not available in the UK).
Jackpot Poker on the Winning Poker Network (incl. Americas Cardroom and Black Chip Poker) has a structure identical to Stars' Spins except the multipliers (the biggest is 2500x) and the ability to deal (only before the first hand of a 100x+ tourney and only if all the three participants agree, the prize pool is split 40%/30%/30%, i.e. the eventual winner gets 40%). The problems are that: 1) as it's a US network, the peak hours are in the European late evenings and early mornings; 2) during the European daytime, there are too many Russian regs in the pools; 3) the Sit and Crush rake race rewards primarily $25 and $40 regs and pays less to $10 ones; 4) the $25 and $40 stakes are said to be much tougher than the $10 one.
RyPac13, coffeeyay and pbogz1114 can give you more details as the WPN is yet the only US-facing network with lottery SnGs and they know its games very well. The games sometimes appear on Paul's Twitch stream (however, I'm not following it and I don't know how often he streams jackpots instead of MTTs nowadays).
Note that it's advised to choose VIP rewards instead of rakeback if you're going for the network's analogues of Supernova and Supernova Elite (paying about as much as Stars' before 2016, but note that the 'rake' for VIP/rakeback purposes is 3/4 of the tourney fee; the rest - 1/4 - goes towards the Sit and Crush prize pool).
As discussed above, lottery SnGs of other 'mainstream' networks (888, iPoker, MPN) have 2-minute blind levels and antes, except SnG Hero that has 3-minute levels and no antes.
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I'm a poker vagabond - I try to grind every new lottery SnG format that comes out to see if it's worth my time (attractive enough to fish) or if I should wait for 'the games of my life'. The stakes are normally $5-€10 because fresh depositors seldom go higher and I hate hurting regs. (To draw an analogy with BDSM, I avoid fellow doms when there are still enough subs.)
Twister (€10, at the time when there was no €20-50) is so far the only format that I've confidently beat. I'd probably beat other formats too but I haven't had enough determination to grind.
Origin of my avatar