$20 Poker Stars SNG's

[Rockymv]

Ok, I need some moral support. I recently moved up from 10 dollar tables to the 20 dollar ones. And I'm having some trouble. I'm still up 100 dollars since I started with them, but my ROI is miserable (currently 21%). Every time I lose, I get this creeping feeling that I need to move back down a level. I have no ego problems with moving back down.

HOWEVER, I really think the problems I'm having have nothing to do with the skill level of the games. I am getting more suckouts and bad beats than I can ever remember having. This makes me think that I just need to press on, keep playing good poker and the odds will even out. But this crap just keeps happening. Any ideas or suggestions or comments or anything?

[k8s]

Are you protecting your hand or letting flush and straight draws suck out on you? You might just be having bad luck lately.

[Rockymv]

Well, I'm pretty sure these have been real bad beats, ones on the bubble when I'm all in on the flop with clearly the best hand and some joker gets his two-outer.

On a related note, however, I also wonder whether competition is actually tougher so I only seem to be having more bad beats. This really doesn't seem to be the case, though.

[aokrongly]

I haven't played on Poker Stars, but if the $10 SnG is the cheapest then you'll have a number of "let's try this game out" players. That will make the $20 game slightly tougher, but not much. If there are cheaper games that wandering fish can play, then the play should be about the same, maybe 20% tougher.

The way I gauge how tough a SnG is, is to see how long it takes for people to be knocked out, generally. Watch some tournaments and see how long it takes for the first round of people to go. With 20 player SnG I look at how long it takes the first 10 people to go. On Pacific, at the $8 table it's about 18-25 minutes, on the $16 its about 30 minutes. So they're a little more competitive, but not that much.

I stopped playing Party Poker SnG's when they started hitting 20 minutes before the FIRST player got knocked out on the $5 tables. I just popped over there and looked at a 20 player $5 SnG, 25 minutes into it and No One has been knocked out. I'm playing a $16 20 player on Pacific, it's 30 minutes in and there are 12 players left.

See the difference?

If there's no appreciable difference when you compare the $10 to the $20 SnG's there, then you know the answer for those games on that site.