Dumped two (small) SnG buy-ins last night while watching Ulong officially become the worst group of LOSERS in the history of Survivor, a dubious distinction. At some point, I want Stephenie to just go postal on the other team with the axe and chop them into tiny bits. Now that is one tough broad. The clowns at Koror are acting like they’re the greatest tribe ever… In reality, they simply got lucky and were matched up against the worst tribe ever: big difference.

Anyway, the two SnGs followed the predictable path. The first one ($8+.8, 20-seater) at Pacific was uneventful. I had a medium stack going into the final table, went card dead long enough to get short-stacked from the blinds, and ended up all-in with about a 4-1 advantage (JJ vs. Ax with bottom pair on a ten-high flop). Of course, an ace spiked on the turn to send me packing. No biggie. Like I said earlier this week, that kind of shit is gonna happen, especially in low limits.

So I figured that the Pacific gods were against me and fired up FTP. Got in one of the blockbuster $10+1 single table SnGs. Down to five with four of us basically tied for last and one table captain. Blinds at 50/100, I raise UTG to 250 with the Hiltons. I’m thrilled to get two callers hoping they both have Ax. Flop is Jxx and I fire a pot sized bet out there, again hoping someone hit the Jack. Sure enough, I’m pushed by the table captain with KJo. Again a 4-1 favorite. Again IGHN when the turn shows a Jack.

Sigh. Of course, losing back-to-back SnGs like that with those odds is about a 6% likelihood, meaning if I play two SnGs a day, I’ll bust out like that about twice a month… which sounds pretty close to reality. And even if I had won those hands, I would still have had some work to do to win (or even cash), but my EV would have been much higher than… um, ZERO.

I think many bloggers are blinded by the sheer quantity of bad beats and suckouts they see, ignoring the exponentially larger hand population. Some bloggers see almost 80 deals per table/hour while they’re four-tabling, meaning they’re seeing over 300 deals/hour. And remember, if the table has ten players, that’s 3000 hands/hour, which means pocket aces will appear ever four or five minutes on one of their tables. Which also means that they’ll be cracked three times an hour! It’s bound to skew perspectives….