By Howard Lederer
The Sit N Go (SNG) are a gift by online for players aspiring poker tournaments. Before the SNG, it was difficult to gain the experience necessary to manage a final table. You could enter in a dozen tournaments multi-table (MTT) and never reach the final table. Or you did one or two, to eliminate in the 8th or 9th place... Know to adapt to this particular situation (reduced number of players in a single table) is a crucial skill in a poker tournament and it is very difficult of to y lead live without investing lots of time and money. Online, this experience is just a click away! There are many benefits to practicing the SNG. For beginners, it is cheap, or even free. It is also very fun and accessible: you should not plan - a SNG starts when the table is filled - and it is usually finished after one hour. This is a simulator of final table and the master should be regarded as a duty for all good students!
Now that you know why you need to play them, let's look at how to play:
The most obvious difference between a SNG and a MTT, is that when someone loses his stack in a SNG, there is nobody to take his place. The MTT consist mostly of time to fight a full table, a ring game. But when a player was eliminated in the NSE, the number of players reduced even at the table. This reduction in force the game to Quicken. For example, imagine that you are 5 on the table, with blinds at 100/200; you play for $ 300 in blinds for 5 hands, or $ 60 per hand. As soon as someone was eliminated, you are more than 4. So now, you play for $ 75 by hand - an increase of 25% - while the blinds are the same. Necessarily, you have to play more, take more risks.
Since the size of the blinds from your carpet should always play a major role in the selection of your hands, I recommend starting with a very conservative selection of your starting hands. It will be doubly: first, the blinds you dictate play tight early on, when the blinds are small and that you play 9 (they do return quickly to you). Secondly, it helps you to establish an image close to the table, which will help you no doubt later when the blinds are high and you'll actually need to steal.
But there is another less obvious reason to play tight early and late Stuart: payment structure rewards tight players. Most SNG give 50% in the first, 30% in the second and 20% in the third. This payment structure tells you to play for third place. Why? Look at the structure of payment from another angle. Simply, the structure shows that 60% of the prize pool is already won when you are more than 3 players, 20% when you fall more than 2 and the remaining 20% are for the winner. If you can just reach the 3rd place, you win at least one-third of the 60% of the prize pool, so 20%. You have registered a profit, and you still have the chance to win 30% more. It is only when you are in the top 3 that your strategy should change at all at all. Now, it pays to gambler to win. Chips a he numbers once again: 60% of the prize pool is already won and mount a place is worth 10% more. But mount still a place worth a 30% extra happy - it is three times more for the former than for the second.
And with the blinds increase, it becomes even clearer that gambler to win is the correct way to play.
I see a lot of players use the exact opposite of this strategy. They feel they have nothing to lose, so they are looking to double quickly. They take their luck too soon when, for them, there's "nothing to lose". After that, once they are in the money, they tighten their game, thinking of the advantage to go up a place in the payment. If you start to rethink your SNG approach and adopt a 'soft at first, quick at the end' strategy, you'll see an almost immediate improvement in your results.
Good luck and see you soon on the tables!
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